How We Control and Distinguish Emotions

For centuries, emotions have been viewed as passions and as vicarious experiences, as crisis and catastrophe, and as roots of much of our pleasure and creative endeavors. Sentiments have been regarded as emotional residues and pleasure and pain as the pivots on which your passions revolve.

Our forefathers suggested a close relationship between instinct and emotion. The role of emotions has always raised two problems, one concerning the conflict between diverse emotions and the other covering the conflict between emotions. The ancient people were acquainted with the violence of emotional excess, which they called madness and ultimately began to speak of stable emotional attitudes that could be made to conform to reason.

The problem of emotional control involves our own emotions and those of others. We try for some measure of control in rearing our children. We also attempt to influence the feelings of others. By not showing the clenched fist, we see how it is possible to conceal our inner feelings when the occasion demands. An appropriate smile covers some unhappiness. We learn that our own exuberance at some good fortune has to be inhibited on occasion. We restrain or sublimate our sexual impulses and learn to take our anger out where there will be little or no retaliation. We also learn to control emotion by becoming adjusted to the stimulus that produces it. Since emotion is a reaction, any procedure that gives an individual adjusting power over his environment will lessen his emotional reaction. While emotion inhibits clear thinking, fortunately it is also true that clear thinking inhibits emotion.

Since most emotional experiences depend upon some immediate situational climate, one answer to control emotion is to understand and try to change the situation. We do this frequently. We tell a humorous story to cover our embarrassment and direct attention away from its cause. We tell a joke before giving a speech or otherwise try for immediate acceptance by an audience by relating to it in terms of some feeling. We play for time when we are in a situation inducing anger. We try to look at problems in perspective, make comparisons with those less fortunate than ourselves. We learn to realize that emotion often stems from people with very strong attitudes and hence try not to provoke them, because we know from our own experience that we will also react with our on attitudes.

The wise person leans to distinguish those situations in which he can freely express himself from those in which he cannot. He knows the difference between giving an intellectual answer and an emotional answer to a question. And he learns that individual control of emotion cuts down on its disruptive consequences. Whether an emotion will inhibit or facilitate the attainment of some goal depends upon the situation. The wise person measures his control of emotion in terms of its short term and long term effects. Being able to tell the difference between those emotions which help us and those which hinder us provides one the required guideline for control of our emotions.