Why You Should Never Make Big Decisions When You’re Emotional
Two types of reactions make you instantly irresponsible
You will do almost anything to avoid suffering.
Most of us are experts at avoiding pain, frustration, and sadness. We use coping mechanisms instead of dealing with the actual problem.
We’re adept at abdicating responsibility, ignoring reality, blaming others, or outsourcing the suffering to someone else. Emotions tend to drive our decisions, whether or not we acknowledge them. Fear, anger, and shame are some of the most common emotional reactions we experience.
- Fear convinces us to confine the world to “us versus them” and “good versus evil.”
- Anger says something is wrong and it must be changed — now. And of course, it’s the other person who’s wrong, not me.
- Shame convinces us to diminish the real concerns of others and ostracize them for thinking or acting differently. (Oppositional dualistic thinking is the human default.)
None of those sound like a wholehearted, mindfully engaged way to live.
We either learn to transform our pain or we transfer it to others.
How can you be responsible with your emotions so you don’t internalize that emotional harm or transfer it to others?
Here’s what won’t help:
Why Terrified People Make Terrible Decisions
Emotions are directly tied to our sense of control. People who’ve worked to build a life of inner stability and peace sometimes refer to giving up control or feeling their emotions then letting them go.
When we’re driven by emotions only, it’s an unpredictable and often disastrous ride. Writer Elizabeth Gilbert explains in an interview with On Being podcast:
“Terror and fear make you irresponsible. They make you not think very clearly, right? And they make you willing to do almost anything to get rid of that awful feeling.”
How far do people go when they haven’t dealt with the source of that awful feeling? Gilbert continues:
“We’ve seen people do that on the individual level, and we’ve seen cultures do that. And we’ve seen politicians who find ways to exploit terror and fear in order to get short-term power or sometimes long-term power. Because if you can figure out how to hold the reins of other people’s fear, then you can control them for a while.”
Fear is powerful, so people who use fear can easily manipulate others. How can we break the cycle?
“One of the very most powerful ways to not end up being controlled by that is to remain more curious than you are afraid.
Any time in the community that there’s anybody who’s keeping their head, I think it’s a benefit to everyone around them. I think everything is contagious. Our fear is contagious, but our courage also is. And our courage makes other people be able to be more brave, and come out of their houses, and come out of their shells, and out of their fear.”
You Can’t Control Your Emotions, But You Can Control Your Response
Fear, anger, and shame are easy reactions. It’s easy for others to respond likewise. Emotions arise because that’s how our bodies work. (Hell, I even get emotional from traveling.)
It’s not inherently wrong to be afraid, to wonder if there’s something wrong with you, or to get angry. What matters is what we do with those signals from our bodies:
- How will we respond?
- Do those emotions have the final word, or do we channel them into something more constructive?
- Do we measure them up against the reality of the situation?
- Do we let others speak to the credibility of those emotions, or maybe how we’re partly responsible sometimes?
Reframing Emotions, Not Ignoring Them
Like we avoid suffering, we sometimes avoid our real emotions because of what they’re saying to us: something drastically needs attention. Instead of ignoring those emotions, blaming others, repressing our feelings, whitewashing our painful memories and the emotional baggage that comes with them, we can address things in a new way.
In my book, I share stories about how emotions from my past threatened to limit my relationships, faith, work, and daily choices:
“We keep chasing those same feelings even if they’re remnants of the past. Those tastes of glory keep us going back to the same sources of affirmation, or the memories of pain keep us locked up and guarded against people who remind us of someone who hurt us earlier in life. When we operate out of those emotions, we lose touch with our present ones.
We trade the past we cannot change for the present we can, but we end up losing out on both if we don’t snap back to reality.
Author Ben Arment summed it up like this:
‘You can view the bad things in your life as either tragedy or trajectory.’”
We can keep returning to those emotions and memories, but reframe them to help us make progress: they don’t control or define us, but they were simply part of our life at that time. We’re on a new path now, moving forward, making better decisions, rolling with the punches, learning to grow in a life full of variables.
What does it look like for us to be brave and curious when we’d normally resort to fear, anger, or shame?
It’s a tall order, but I’m going to try to remain curious and open-minded instead of defensive and reactive. Will you join me?
- Originally published on johnweirick.com.
- tbh most days, I don’t know if I should write poetry, curate food and drink and travel recommendations, or just give up and succumb to Netflix. Consider this my own experimental liminal space. If I do anything new, you won’t hear about it on Facebook — but maybe on this infrequent email newsletter. Thanks for reading.
