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100 opinions on emotional regulation part 2, starting at opinion 45, only a few days late https://t.co/Y3zBzrPGza
45. i actually lowkey hate the term "emotional regulation." it reminds me of this term "project manager of our lives": orients towards emotions as problems to be solved, or distractions to be dealt with (which is not how i orient!) https://t.co/vX266h1lnA
@QiaochuYuan @misen__ @reasonisfun (This is an articulation thing; my sense is that QC and I are basically on the same page here... and it's a pretty similar page to the Dzogchen folks! ...but quite different from TMI-style meditation) https://t.co/pEa3bkVmPz https://t.co/eM9EIEsIDg
49. another alternative: "emotional discipline." that could have a more martial, ascetic feel, or a more authoritarian feel, depending on your associations with that word. i imagine a warrior-monk meditating underneath a waterfall ☯️
50. one last alternative: "emotional caretaking." more like the internal family systems feel: emotions as being held by parts of you, who may behave like children of various ages, who want things, who have relationships with each other - self-parenthood 👨👦👦 https://t.co/JeitfWIgsI
51. i wanna go back to "emotional regulation" for a bit. why is it that we might feel emotions need to be "regulated"? inevitably the answer involves fitting in with other people - in your family, at school, at work, in your intimate relationships
52. which is why for me the topic of self-regulation can't really be separated from the topic of group regulation. we try to prevent ourselves from feeling and expressing emotion in large part because if we didn't then we imagine *other people* would punish us
53. that desire to punish the emotional expression of others is itself an emotional reaction - perhaps a mix of fear and anger. it doesn't just come from nowhere! and we can imagine learning to work with that reaction as well, rather than treating it as fixed
54. your emotions are simply not something that you feel in isolation. we constantly affect each other's emotions - they leak outside our bodies, we signal approval or disapproval of each other's emotional expression which changes how we feel about our emotions, etc.
55. this really deserves its own thread but we could go into a long-ass thing about control over emotions and emotional expression as a tool of social control, and e.g. characterizing different ideological groups based on what kinds of emotional expression they allow vs. punish
56. it's worth being more explicit about this at this point: it really matters what stories you actually believe about what emotions are and what they're for. this is not a cute fun harmless topic. it's actually kinda crazy that i'm just allowed to talk like this
57. serious emotional work can ruin your life. learning how to access years or decades of pent-up anger or sexual energy can destroy relationships. it is absolutely crucial to develop the capacity to make sensible choices regardless of how strong your emotions get