You Can't Control Emotions

[ColorMixer]

I got into a discussion with one of my Christian friends. He seemed to think that he can directly control his emotions, and that God gave him a "spirit of self-control". I argued that you can only "self-control" your actions, not your emotions or thoughts. For this discussion, lets just grant that some part of your mind or spirit has libertarian free will, in the sense that you are able to freely choose between independent options with no outside influence. Such as to open the right door or left door. (Spirit vs flesh)

 

The discussion centered around being attracted to girls and making a move. He is really weird when it comes to this, he's all about treating all girls like a sister and pretty much never making romantic intentions clear unless God gives both of them a sign or something... I don't know how that's supposed to work in the real world. Anyway, he was arguing that if he saw an attractive woman and became hot and bothered, that his spirit of self-control was able to overcome those feelings. He said he's able to turn down the lust as well as any other emotion, including things like anger etc. He quoted stuff like love being slow to anger etc.

 

My main problem with this, is that from all of my human experience, I do not see how this is even remotely possible. He must be super human, and Christianity must really be true if he has such precise control over his emotions. I think we can't control our emotions one bit, but we can train our reactions through controlling our actions. What I mean is this. Say you are in an argument with one of those eebil atheists and the atheist gets you very angry because he is insulting the one and only Flying Spaghetti Monster. Would you agree that you are genuinely angry? Do you agree that you probably want to say and do things to that person that probably aren't morally right? (I mean really angry) like you want to bash his face through the wall or start insulting him back? How do you turn down your anger? YOU DON'T

 

Why you DO, is restrain your hypothetical actions. You do not bash his face in, you do not insult him back etc. If it really gets to you, you leave the situation (an action) and go take a walk or talk to someone else (an action). Do you really reach into your mind and turn down the anger valve?? No, you change your actions thereby changing your stimuli so that you do not become more angry. Over time your response to anger may not be as bad, because you have trained yourself to overcome anger more easily by these actions.

 

The same goes for any emotion. If you really wanted to be super sad, like to the point of absolutely crying, could you do it right this second? You might be able to fake crying and being sad, but internally I doubt you can truly become sad at a whim.

 

I think my friend was feeding me a load of BS. Whenever he's getting lustful, the way he overcomes it is by either not talking to the girl, removing himself from the situation, or simply refraining from the desire to do the action. I think this is the biggest problem of Christianity, teaching you that your emotions and thoughts are just downright terrible, and that you should change them... good luck with that. I digress.

 

 

Anyway, the other part of this is the whole romanticized notion of love. The bible clearly talks about loving being patient and kind etc... while all good I would say that being patient is being patient, not loving. The bible then talks about actions, like love keeps no account of wrong doings (action...) love is not easily angered, love is not rude (action)....

 

I say that love is simply that deep desire, attachment, affection you have for someone. Of course to what extent you love someone, now that usually changes depending on romantic vs platonic etc. But I think it's bullshit to think that love is this some amazing choice of commitment or something. It's just a romantic fairytale. Commitment is commitment, not love. From love does the desire for commitment arise, but love IS not commitment. I think too often we toss words around and interchange them without really thinking about what they mean. Emotions are not actions, but they are related. A lot of good things arise from love, but the emotions and actions ASSOCIATED with love are not love itself. And certainly I think the biblical definition of love is overdrawn.

[Shyone]

I think we can't control our emotions one bit, but we can train our reactions through controlling our actions.

I think there are ways of controlling emotions, at least indirectly. Avoid the thing that makes us lustful or angry, and we will be less lustful or angry.

 

Have you ever just closed your eyes and counted to 10? Meditated upon something pleasant when faced with the unpleasant? Told yourself, "I will not return his insults with insults - I will be better than that!"?

 

We can overcome fear by concentrating on a goal. We can think of our wives when at a stip club (that doesn't work very well however). We can focus on the argument and reasoning rather than the insults and ad hominems thrown at us.

 

I suppose that a certain amount of self-discipline is needed, but we all have that in us. It isn't granted by imaginary beings, but it can come from our imagination.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

We can't stop ourselves from having emotions, but we can influence them for the better. Though it has nothing to do with god. Our bodies are deterministic, and somehow we are indeterministic in that we have free will. So all we have to do is "act upon" our emotions by imagining something else, and we can superimpose other emotions onto the ones we have, like they do the fear of god, and since his fear of god was more powerful than his lust for women, he was able to control that.

 

Though I'd much rather just have the lust for women

[Guest Valkyrie0010]

I somewhat agree with you. I do think we can control and supress our emotions, but we never get rid of them.

 

That to me is own of the harms of xtianity, makes you repress yourself, and become in regards to sex a neurotic.

 

I was reading, the reviews a few weeks before deconverting for stephen anterburn's every man's battle.

 

And it talked about women, being taken advantage by out of control sexually men.

There answer is to repress it all.

But in five seconds flat I realized the repression is the problem, a sexual repressed man, gets aroused can't cope.

Make sense in light of the stat in the states of evangelical youth having the highest rates of teen pregnancy

 

I also don't think, the guy you talked to is totally lying either. He probably does control his thoughts like that. I would also bet he is no where near perfect at it either.

[Shyone]

I somewhat agree with you. I do think we can control and supress our emotions, but we never get rid of them.

 

That to me is own of the harms of xtianity, makes you repress yourself, and become in regards to sex a neurotic.

 

I was reading, the reviews a few weeks before deconverting for stephen anterburn's every man's battle.

 

And it talked about women, being taken advantage by out of control sexually men.

There answer is to repress it all.

But in five seconds flat I realized the repression is the problem, a sexual repressed man, gets aroused can't cope.

Make sense in light of the stat in the states of evangelical youth having the highest rates of teen pregnancy

 

I also don't think, the guy you talked to is totally lying either. He probably does control his thoughts like that. I would also bet he is no where near perfect at it either.

I hear self-flagellation helps control emotions.

[OnceConvinced]

I agree with you color mixer. You can't control your emotions. You can only control the way you respond to those emotions. Anyone who claims otherwise is mistaken. They are mistaking their emotions with their physical response. You can try to repress them, you can try to calm them down, but you can never prevent those emotions from happening to begin with.

 

It always seems bizarre to me when someone, in a new relationship, talks of preventing themselves from falling in love. I can't see how you can do that. For me, falling in love was never something I've been able to choose to do, nor is it something I've been able to stop. You just fall in love. You can't stop it, but it may be possible for you to work against that emotion and convince yourself you no longer love. But that requires some real work. You'd have to attempt to convince yourself that the person is not worthy of your love. It's similar to someone claiming you can choose to love God. No, you can't choose to do it.

[godlessgrrl]

I tend to be mistrustful of the "your emotions are a choice" line.

 

Why? Because the last time I heard it, I heard it from someone who had treated me like crap and didn't like the fact that I was angry at him for doing so. He fed me the "anger is a choice; you shouldn't be angry" line at me as a way of trying to make me feel guilty for being angry about his abusiveness - so that he wouldn't have to face up to what he'd done!

 

Yeah, emotions... they come and go, can't really be controlled, but can only be contained or mitigated, in my experience. Attitudes and actions can be controlled, but feelings? Not so much. They just are what they are. I've always done better when I've just let them wash over me, than I have when I've tried to deny or control them.

[skepticalme]

A very disciplined person can exercise quite a bit of control over their emotions. Its not easy (or healthy) but you have to be able to detach yourself from what is happening. The problem is that you can't repress it forever, you'll feel it eventually with interest.

 

A line from the song "Haunted" by Disturbed;

 

"My blood is cold as ice

Or so I have been told,

Show no emotion

And it can destroy your soul"

[Antlerman]

It isn't granted by imaginary beings, but it can come from our imagination.

If they are imaginary, then they are coming from your imagination, right? So it that sense the imaginary being did grant it.

"

Imaginary guitars and imaginary guitar notes exist only in the imagination of... the imaginer

" The Central Scruuuuu-tinizer, Joe's Garage, Part 2

 

 

We can't stop ourselves from having emotions, but we can influence them for the better. Though it has nothing to do with god. Our bodies are deterministic, and somehow we are indeterministic in that we have free will. So all we have to do is "act upon" our emotions by imagining something else, and we can superimpose other emotions onto the ones we have, like they do the fear of god, and since his fear of god was more powerful than his lust for women, he was able to control that.

We can control our emotions through thought. We can make ourselves cry, not fake tears, but real ones by thinking of sad things (actors do this all the time). We can calm our emotions through focus. But as you say, you can't rid yourself from having them altogether, as that would be to altar our biology itself to prevent emotion from ever occurring - which would be a pathology.

 

But to your friends, naive but somewhat true point, you can in fact condition your responses through various disciplines and practices. To the point that what would normally trigger a response of anger, could be conditioned to respond differently. I am certainly not of the opinion we are slaves to our biology entirely, but that our mind and body interact with one another. (I can literally make the pores of my skin sweat from simply thinking about eating spicy hot foods - and a long list of people who know me will attest to that).

 

The treatment of depression through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is just that, understanding that most emotions are directly connected to the thoughts we have, that they are the caboose and our thoughts the train engine. This I know is very, very true and can lead to deep depression, imagining negative scenarios, feeling frightened, angry, hurt, lost, despondent, etc - all from the thought with no actual, real event having occurred. This emotion serves as validation of the thought, because it made it experienced, it made it become reality to that person; they believe it, then keep thinking it, they keep feeling worse, it affects their actions, which affect their emotions, which affects their thoughts... and spiraling down they go. All from a thought.

 

So yes, absolutely we can affect and can control, both for positive and negative, our emotions.

 

So then to the idea of love. Love is not meant as just emotions, even though that's a common use. Love is also a philosophy, a principle, a value, an attitude. These are all also common uses of the word. So... if someone embraces Love as a 'way of life', an attitude, an outlook, a state of being... guess what? That mental position, that mindset, affects, impacts, directs, influences, their emotions and their reactions and their actions. So you likewise have a spiraling effect, but instead of downward (or directionless), it is a positive direction resulting in healthier psychology, healthier actions, and a healthier body.

 

However, your friend mythologizes it. But I suspect he is quite young, and he doesn't understand that truth yet, and simply understanding the symbols as little magical things that if he does will magically bring it down from the sky somewhere. The reality, is that it comes from within. And that little blurb above is a pretty basic understanding of how and why.

[ColorMixer]

Good stuff everyone, I think the main thing I was trying to get through to my friend was that we can indirectly control emotions, but not in any direct way.

 

I agree we have some degree of control, but it's really indirect. The cognitive therapy stuff is interesting. My thing is just that when someone tells me that I should or should not feel a certain way, I think it's total BS. If a religion is going to say "don't act like a douchebag when you are angry" I'll agree, but if it says "do not be angry" I call BS on that.

[Antlerman]

Good stuff everyone, I think the main thing I was trying to get through to my friend was that we can indirectly control emotions, but not in any direct way.

 

I agree we have some degree of control, but it's really indirect. The cognitive therapy stuff is interesting. My thing is just that when someone tells me that I should or should not feel a certain way, I think it's total BS. If a religion is going to say "don't act like a douchebag when you are angry" I'll agree, but if it says "do not be angry" I call BS on that.

Yes, I think to say to simply you shouldn't feel a certain way is not realistic. Feeling are real, and you do feel them.

 

The frustrating thing for anyone, is to have anybody tell you you shouldn't feel something. What that does is it invalidates those feelings, or blames you for having them. It is perfectly valid and no sin to feel emotions. It is not a moral question. And that's what's get communicated when someone says you shouldn't feel something. What we do with those emotions, how we use them, how we learn to make them manageable, is the question, not whether to have them or not.

[Franko47]

Ever been in the shower, and like you get shampoo in your eyes, and like you reach for the towel that isn't there because you forgot to put it out ? And like, now you stumble out of the shower with your eyes stinging and hopefully you won't fall and break your neck cuz you have to open your eyes a little bit, and wiping away the soap with your hands doesn't quite solve the problem. Now you've bumped your knee on the counter, and you have to reach for yesterday's underwear to wipe your burning eyes cuz you're desperate, and like it's gross, you know you realize you should change your underwear more often than every two days, and you finally stumble out in the nude to the hallway with the stinging gone but you're all wet and stuff and naked, but you really don't care if anyone sees you at this point because your super-angry and your knee still hurts, and like, the cat is sitting there in the hallway licking his paw and just having a good laugh at your expense before you stamp your foot on the floor and he runs off but you can tell by his tail in the air that he won this round, the soap won, the counter won, the missing towel won, and like you are off to a bad start to this day, and feel like going back to bed but you have to go to work, and like you realize that if anybody pisses you off for the next hour or two, it's gonna get real ugly.

 

 

Peace. I'm mellow, now.

[ColorMixer]

Ever been in the shower, and like you get shampoo in your eyes, and like you reach for the towel that isn't there because you forgot to put it out ? And like, now you stumble out of the shower with your eyes stinging and hopefully you won't fall and break your neck cuz you have to open your eyes a little bit, and wiping away the soap with your hands doesn't quite solve the problem. Now you've bumped your knee on the counter, and you have to reach for yesterday's underwear to wipe your burning eyes cuz you're desperate, and like it's gross, you know you realize you should change your underwear more often than every two days, and you finally stumble out in the nude to the hallway with the stinging gone but you're all wet and stuff and naked, but you really don't care if anyone sees you at this point because your super-angry and your knee still hurts, and like, the cat is sitting there in the hallway licking his paw and just having a good laugh at your expense before you stamp your foot on the floor and he runs off but you can tell by his tail in the air that he won this round, the soap won, the counter won, the missing towel won, and like you are off to a bad start to this day, and feel like going back to bed but you have to go to work, and like you realize that if anybody pisses you off for the next hour or two, it's gonna get real ugly.

 

 

Peace. I'm mellow, now.

 

What the hell?

[ShallowByThyGame]

Emotions are chemicals in the brain. They don't control our actions of course, but we often make bad decisions based on our feelings. When I am angry, i want to smash things. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I can take a deep breathe and let it pass. What the guy is doing is feeling emotions, and mentally trying to squash them. This however may have side effects...(ever seen someone generally calm totally lose it? If their system of handling emotions breaks they panic)

 

We however, can control them in some sense, because the brain reacts to the body, and the body helps inform the brain what to feel. Going outside on a sunny day will likely cheer you up because sunlight tells the brain to produce certain chemicals that make you feel alert and excited.

[lunaticheathen]

Yes, I think to say to simply you shouldn't feel a certain way is not realistic. Feeling are real, and you do feel them.

 

The frustrating thing for anyone, is to have anybody tell you you shouldn't feel something. What that does is it invalidates those feelings, or blames you for having them. It is perfectly valid and no sin to feel emotions. It is not a moral question. And that's what's get communicated when someone says you shouldn't feel something. What we do with those emotions, how we use them, how we learn to make them manageable, is the question, not whether to have them or not.

 

This is one of the major problems with christianity as a whole, as I experienced it. That whole "sin in your heart" tripe. When I was told that, I was a hormonal and angst-ridden teenager, I couldn't help it if one moment I wanted to hump someone, the next punch someone's face in. Of course, I shouldn't DO either of those things with wild abandon, but masturbation and martial arts helped more than just trying to "let Jesus in my heart to fix it." It never works! And who the hell is anyone to say that just HAVING those feelings is evil? It's insane.

Anyone who is taught to simply repress their feelings instead of truly dealing with them is a ticking time bomb. Many a pastor's kid gets to college and dives straight into the party scene. So much for keeping pure for Jesus. I wouldn't be shocked if many of the same also have anger problems.

[Deva]

Yes, you can control emotion BUT whatever emotion or desire gets sublimated or controlled comes out somewhere else - and then we can't identify it. Then it is in a different form. That's why so often we hear from criminals "I don't know why I did it" - they are being honest. They don't know where that action came from.

 

That doesn't mean I am excusing the action.

[Phanta]

Yes, you can control emotion BUT whatever emotion or desire gets sublimated or controlled comes out somewhere else - and then we can't identify it. Then it is in a different form.

 

Wow. I never thought of it that way, Deva. Permanently repressed emotions do inevitably ooze out in other destructive forms. It's wise to acknowledge and take care of our emotions by feeling them in a healthy environment. Repress at your own risk.

 

Thanks.

 

Phanta

[OpheliaGinger]

We can't control the fact that we have emotions, but we can control emotions by either choosing to feed them or not. You can get angry but you can also divert your attention away from the anger to quell it, or you could focus your energy on that anger and make it bigger.

[Galien]

This is a very interesting area for me. I have fought with my emotions most of my life and lost. I am constantly hijacked by sorrow and grief, and no kind of therapy or medication has ever been able to help me with that. So I have learned to live with it. I have also learned from close questioning of many people that some people are able to control their emotions. I agree with stucker it takes either a heightened sense of detachment or an ability to count the cost of emotional engagement and always find it too high a price to pay.

 

I am getting better as I am getting older, and having removed the plethora of assholes from my life I have been able to remove myself from the things that hurt me. But I realise I am almost 100% emotional when it comes to everything and I don't have once damn ounce of control over the way I feel abut anything. As I am getting older though I realise there are now some things I just don't care about with the passionate intensity I used to, and that has helped.

 

But as for turning off one's biology, well good luck with that. I did it for nine years and in the end it almost finished me. The church had helped me turn what is a pretty big part of my persona into a major guilt trip, and once released it came screaming out of me with a ferocity that took my breath away, and still continues to. He could always opt for castration if it becomes too much of a problem.

[Kathlene]

Ever been in the shower, and like you get shampoo in your eyes, and like you reach for the towel that isn't there because you forgot to put it out ? And like, now you stumble out of the shower with your eyes stinging and hopefully you won't fall and break your neck cuz you have to open your eyes a little bit, and wiping away the soap with your hands doesn't quite solve the problem. Now you've bumped your knee on the counter, and you have to reach for yesterday's underwear to wipe your burning eyes cuz you're desperate, and like it's gross, you know you realize you should change your underwear more often than every two days, and you finally stumble out in the nude to the hallway with the stinging gone but you're all wet and stuff and naked, but you really don't care if anyone sees you at this point because your super-angry and your knee still hurts, and like, the cat is sitting there in the hallway licking his paw and just having a good laugh at your expense before you stamp your foot on the floor and he runs off but you can tell by his tail in the air that he won this round, the soap won, the counter won, the missing towel won, and like you are off to a bad start to this day, and feel like going back to bed but you have to go to work, and like you realize that if anybody pisses you off for the next hour or two, it's gonna get real ugly.

 

 

Peace. I'm mellow, now.

 

Ugh...who wears undies two days in a row?

 

Great post though..Im pretty sure you would of been quite angry by then. I have a very hard time controlling my emotions, especially around my teenage son. Im surprised to be honest there aren't more rage murders between family members.

If you look at that alone, we do control our emotions. I don't know how, but if we didn't Im sure the mums, dads and kids would wipe each other out in the midst of that all consuming rage you can feel at times.

[JohnnieNaked]

I think my friend was feeding me a load of BS. Whenever he's getting lustful, the way he overcomes it is by either not talking to the girl, removing himself from the situation, or simply refraining from the desire to do the action.

 

Wow he's NEVER going to get laid.

 

I think this is the biggest problem of Christianity, teaching you that your emotions and thoughts are just downright terrible, and that you should change them... good luck with that. I digress.

 

Ya, unless of course they are 'godly' emotions, whatever the hell that means.

 

The bible then talks about actions, like love keeps no account of wrong doings

 

If this is true, and god is love, then why does god punish those who wrongfully disbelieve in him? Or does he hate them? And if he hates them then why does he save some of them anyway?

[FiddlingAround]

Great post though..Im pretty sure you would of been quite angry by then. I have a very hard time controlling my emotions, especially around my teenage son. Im surprised to be honest there aren't more rage murders between family members.

If you look at that alone, we do control our emotions. I don't know how, but if we didn't Im sure the mums, dads and kids would wipe each other out in the midst of that all consuming rage you can feel at times.

 

Apples to oranges. That's controlling actions in response to emotion, not controlling the emotion itself. I'm slowly learning to acknowledge and accept my emotions in various situations, because it really does make it easier to control my actions in response without completely shutting down.

[sumluvlifilth]

It's similar to someone claiming you can choose to love God. No, you can't choose to do it.

 

I agree with you on that. You cannot choose to love God. I think most people convince themselves that they love him out of the fear they have for him, just like this Christian guy was able to convince himself that he didn't have lust out of fear of God.

[OnceConvinced]

Deluded. Somehow he's able to eliminate his own human nature? Yeah riiiiiight. lol.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

We can't stop ourselves from having emotions, but we can influence them for the better. Though it has nothing to do with god. Our bodies are deterministic, and somehow we are indeterministic in that we have free will. So all we have to do is "act upon" our emotions by imagining something else, and we can superimpose other emotions onto the ones we have, like they do the fear of god, and since his fear of god was more powerful than his lust for women, he was able to control that.

We can control our emotions through thought. We can make ourselves cry, not fake tears, but real ones by thinking of sad things (actors do this all the time). We can calm our emotions through focus. But as you say, you can't rid yourself from having them altogether, as that would be to altar our biology itself to prevent emotion from ever occurring - which would be a pathology.

 

But to your friends, naive but somewhat true point, you can in fact condition your responses through various disciplines and practices. To the point that what would normally trigger a response of anger, could be conditioned to respond differently. I am certainly not of the opinion we are slaves to our biology entirely, but that our mind and body interact with one another. (I can literally make the pores of my skin sweat from simply thinking about eating spicy hot foods - and a long list of people who know me will attest to that).

 

The treatment of depression through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is just that, understanding that most emotions are directly connected to the thoughts we have, that they are the caboose and our thoughts the train engine. This I know is very, very true and can lead to deep depression, imagining negative scenarios, feeling frightened, angry, hurt, lost, despondent, etc - all from the thought with no actual, real event having occurred. This emotion serves as validation of the thought, because it made it experienced, it made it become reality to that person; they believe it, then keep thinking it, they keep feeling worse, it affects their actions, which affect their emotions, which affects their thoughts... and spiraling down they go. All from a thought.

 

So yes, absolutely we can affect and can control, both for positive and negative, our emotions.

 

So then to the idea of love. Love is not meant as just emotions, even though that's a common use. Love is also a philosophy, a principle, a value, an attitude. These are all also common uses of the word. So... if someone embraces Love as a 'way of life', an attitude, an outlook, a state of being... guess what? That mental position, that mindset, affects, impacts, directs, influences, their emotions and their reactions and their actions. So you likewise have a spiraling effect, but instead of downward (or directionless), it is a positive direction resulting in healthier psychology, healthier actions, and a healthier body.

 

However, your friend mythologizes it. But I suspect he is quite young, and he doesn't understand that truth yet, and simply understanding the symbols as little magical things that if he does will magically bring it down from the sky somewhere. The reality, is that it comes from within. And that little blurb above is a pretty basic understanding of how and why.

You misunderstood me. I can't believe i missed your response though. By the way you responded to me at length, you are saying nearly the same thing I was saying in short. I completely agree that we can influence our emotions and our emotional responses.