{"id":4566,"date":"2020-11-16T16:46:15","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T16:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/?p=4566"},"modified":"2021-09-19T15:18:20","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T15:18:20","slug":"being-less-emotional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/being-less-emotional\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Less Emotional"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Emotions surge like waves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One minute you’re riding high, cresting euphoric stomach-lifting happiness, while the next moment you’re down in the depths, surrounded by claustrophobic walls of depression and unable to escape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such sensations are merely two sides of the same coin and universally interdependent, a yin and yang of necessity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s impossible to have the good without the bad, and often the ugly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological control<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This might sound tiring and you may think that psychological control and being less emotional is the answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, on a sea of feeling, incessant emotional storms create a kind of sensory sickness and overload that leave us worn out and washed up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than enjoying peaceful, calm emotions, we respond like a weather vane, either randomly happy or sad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There seem to be two main presiding factors\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emotional dysregulation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

External events<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Most emotional folk seem excessively reactive to circumstance, in that outside events have an outsized impact on their internal wellbeing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have a subject-object relationship with reality, with the randomness of life tweaking their emotional dials to make them stressed or relaxed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take someone cutting you up in the car, for example. How do you react? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By getting angry, if you’re like most people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You silently (or vocally) seethe, convinced that the other driver intended harm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if the incident doesn’t result in shouting, swearing and fisticuffs, that anger likely lingers for the rest of your journey, long after the episode has ended. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that’s just road rage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about the effect or more pronounced life-altering events on your emotional wellbeing, like getting fired or left by a lover? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These situations, often completely beyond our control, can feel like personal attacks in a cruel world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, even if we’re not overly impacted by extrinsic events, we must recognise that rather than arising magically, thoughts are the real engines of emotion, creating cascades of feeling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the problem? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts often don’t occur in isolation, but cluster in knots around particular themes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of one isolated instance, negative thoughts layer one on top of another in repetitive patterns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon, the recursive storylines suck us down into a negativity whirlpool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy generated by these thoughts soon transmutes into deep-seated negative emotion, consuming our whole being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natural states<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite the potential negative effects of thoughts and feelings, they are natural states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than presenting a problem in themselves, it’s how we deal with these sensations that to a large extent, determines the quality of our lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While you might think that being less emotional would provide a more serene and peaceful life, this often isn’t the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, blocking negative thought and dampening ensuing emotion simply isn’t possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, if I told you not to think of a polar bear, you wouldn’t be able to get the animal out of your head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In much the same way, artificially suppressing negative thoughts creates more of the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like some sort of biometric warning system, banishing negative thought simply causes the alarm to sound louder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what’s the alternative?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being less emotional isn’t the answer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Mindfulness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than eradicating undesirable thoughts and emotions, we must try to accept them with equanimity, however troubling they may be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first step is to understand that our identity isn’t determined by our state of mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thought and feeling simply arise spontaneously and we have no say in their emergence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By using meditation<\/a> and mindful awareness<\/a> to observe these objects of consciousness impartially as they manifest, we finally recognise the futility of basing our self-worth on the quality of transient mental perturbations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than allowing one negative thought to knock our confidence, and subsequently beating ourselves up in a vicious cycle of negative self-esteem, we can learn to accept both good and bad thoughts equally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Shakespeare so eloquently opined in Hamlet, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to be less sensitive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In summary, the next time you chastise yourself for your emotional reactions, reframe how you perceive these phenomena. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being less emotional isn’t only impossible, but actually damaging to your spiritual wellbeing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than diminish these thoughts and feelings, explore them with curiosity and openness using techniques like meditation and mindfulness<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sensitivity to these emotions can eventually be modulated through repeated, controlled and graded exposure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, only through the process of acceptance does psychological freedom finally become possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emotions surge like waves. <\/p>\n

One minute you’re riding high, cresting euphoric stomach-lifting happiness, while the next moment you’re down in the depths, surrounded by claustrophobic walls of depression and unable to escape. <\/p>\n

Such sensations are merely two sides of the same coin and universally interdependent, a yin and yang of necessity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4569,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeing Less Emotional | Bloomsoup<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you're highly sensitive to negative thoughts and feelings, you might think that being less emotional is the answer. 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