Are emotions something you're born with or can you control them?
Posted on March 10th, 2010 by cfz
1 our cultural norms and mores influence how we interpret these emotions and express them
2 Many mental illnesses like bipolar and schizophrenia alter a persons ability to regulate their own emotions. this leaves their natural emotional responses altered and their ability to choose appropriate emotions altered.
3. It is evident in personality disorders a marked difference in emotions emotional responses perceptions and behaviors that are different from their given culture and repetitive. Two questions are raised in this diagnosis. 1- that if emotions were entirely preprogramed and not culturally interpreted this diagnosis couldnt exist. 2- If they are preprogramed and this diagnosis is caused by primarily upbringing can environment alter preset emotional mechanisms in the brain and if they are there by choice why cant the disordered individual merely choose to act "normal'.
I think I worded that rather poorly but you get my drift. Once variants to the norm like personality disorders, culture, or mental illness gets thrown into the mix it makes exclusively claiming one or the other very hard.
What you are implying is in fact ludicrous. People react automatically with emotions in certain situations because that is what they are programmed to do be 'society and norms'.
Some people might laugh if you told them they are going to die, and in those cases they'd probably psychiatrically assessed or have their head checked to make sure a tumour wasn't pressing on their emotive center.
You can in some circumstances choose an emotion though I guess. If I'm feeling sad I can think I am not sad, but in fact happy and make myself feel happy. By thinking about it, but usually they are instinctive and reflex.
I happen to be reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, an excellent book. Let me quote from page 26:
...there was the case of the happy husband: a man whose right prefrontal lobe had been partially removed in surgery for a brain malfunction. HIs wife told physicians that after the operation he underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming less easily upset and, she was happy to say, more affectionate."
From another source, cited below:
"Psychologists have found that about 50% of one's sadness depends on one's genes. This is shown by studying identical twins and learning that their happiness is 50% correlated even when growing up in different houses."
To your question, what you can control is little.
I always found the ancient Stoics to be instructive when I was studying philosophy. Here is a bit about what they believe:
"Borrowing from the Cynics, the foundation of Stoic ethics is that good lies in the state of the soul itself; in wisdom and self-control. Stoic ethics stressed the rule: "Follow where reason leads." One must therefore strive to be free of the passions, bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of passion was "anguish" or "suffering",[17] that is, "passively" reacting to external events â ” somewhat different from the modern use of the word. A distinction was made between pathos (plural pathe) which is normally translated as "passion", propathos or instinctive reaction (e.g. turning pale and trembling when confronted by physical danger) and eupathos, which is the mark of the Stoic sage (sophos). The eupatheia are feelings resulting from correct judgment in the same way as the passions result from incorrect judgment.
The idea was to be free of suffering through apatheia (Î±Ï Î±Î¸ÎµÎ¹Î±) (Greek) or apathy, where apathy was understood in the ancient sense â ” being objective or having "clear judgment" â ” rather than simple indifference, as apathy implies today. Stoic apatheia is rather the maintenance of equanimity in the face of life's highs and lows - getting carried away by neither." (from the wikipedia article on Stoicism)
My professor explained it this way: If you were slighted in some way, you would still enact the revenge you would do otherwise, but you would do it without the passion of anger--the blood boiling around the heart, as they put it.
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