A Field Guide to Feelings

Do You Really Have a Choice with Your Feelings?

If you say you got pisssed off, gripped by fear, sadness overcame you, lost hope, filled with gratitude, or overwhelmed by joy; the passive voice you use about your feelings reveals a misconception of how they work.

If you say something like, “She makes me mad when she acts like a bitch”, as if the author of your emotion is her, in the way she acted; then, you’re thinking you had no choice but to be mad. She was the only one with a choice; she didn’t need to act like a bitch.

If you believe emotion works like that, the solution seems simple. She has to stop being a bitch, then you can stop being mad. But it’s not so simple. You can’t get her to stop being a bitch unless you try telling her off to make her feel guilty. When she doesn’t feel guilty, you think there’s something wrong with her; but there’s not. There’s something wrong with your theory.

You go to see a therapist. If this is someone who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), she listens to your story and patiently explains, sorry, you’re missing a step. She may be acting like a bitch; but she didn’t make you mad. You made yourself mad. You had a choice in the matter. You’re the author of your feelings.

The idea implicit in CBT is that you can make yourself feel all sorts of things, depending on how you interpret an event. If you end up feeling angry or stupid, you interpreted the event in such a way that made you feel angry or stupid. It could have been interpreted another way, a way that helped you understand, perhaps, or a way in which you could be patient.

Similarly, your girlfriend has a choice about how she feels; she can feel guilty when you’re angry, like you want, or she can interpret your anger another way. She can say you’re just being a dick and not take your complaints seriously.

The ideas behind CBT are really nothing new. It’s based on an ancient Roman philosophy called Stoicism. These ideas have been around for a long time because they work ninety percent of the time. Most minor emotional storms can be quieted this way, simply by re-interpreting the precipitating event. If you’re angry all the time, about every little thing, or if you cry all the time, or if you’re always feeling hurt, then CBT, or stoicism, is a great idea, so you’re not constantly buffeted about by your emotions. Take charge of your emotions so they don’t take charge of you.

However, CBT, or stoicism, is one thing when you believe a stranger, or distant associate has done something to you; it may be less appropriate when the offender is close to you. If you’re on the bus and someone steps on your foot, it makes sense to give the person the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant no harm. If you were to go off on them, you’d be the one out of control. But, when someone close to you does something that bothers you, it matters more because they’re in a position to do it again. You have to address problems promptly before they get out of control. Therefore, if your girlfriend is being a bitch, then it’s important to say something because she might persist in his bitchiness if she doesn’t know it bothers you.

This doesn’t mean you should complain all the time, about every little thing. There are good and bad times to bring up stuff and good and bad ways to bring it up. Here’s where stoicism is a good idea, even if you can’t be a complete stoic. It can help you calm your emotional storm till you get a chance to have a discussion with your girlfriend about how you think she’s acting like a bitch, then it can help you have that discussion without turning it into an attack.

There’s another situation where CBT doesn’t help; in fact, it’s useless when you need it most: when the emotional storm has risen to a category five.

The following week, you have another appointment with your therapist. You sit down and immediately start to cry. Your girlfriend, the one who you thought was a bitch, died yesterday; she got in a car accident and was killed. You’re beside yourself with grief, feeling guilty that you ever were angry, then angry at the guy who hit him, then scared about dealing with this alone.

No therapist, even a CBT therapist, would ever say you have a choice not to feel those things. It sucks that your girlfriend died; there’s no two ways about it. There are a few ancient stoics who say it shouldn’t matter when someone close to you dies, they say we shouldn’t get close to anyone; but we can’t take them seriously. In acute loss, you definitely feel you’re in the grip of something you can’t control no matter how hard you try to manage it.

Thoughts and feelings are often conceived as being in opposition to one another. Feelings, are urgent and hot, while rationality is cold and calculating. Strong feelings take you over. At such times, rationality can’t touch them. If feelings are subservient to such cognitive operations as interpretation and judgment; if they are something you can chose or shape, then why do you suffer and lose yourself when you are in their grip? Why can’t you handle them?

I’ll tell you why. You can conceive of feelings, not as in opposition to thought, but as old, foundational thoughts and decisions, upon which everything thing else is built. Take fear, for instance. If someone lets a tiger loose in a room in which you are sitting, you’re going to feel fear, hopefully not disabling fear, but fear that motivates you to arise out of your chair and run away. You don’t want to have to think about it; you want to act first and ask questions later. Fear is there to take over the relatively slow way you normally make decisions and to make decisions for you; not because fear is an irrational force, but because it is acting on instructions necessitated by a prior, foundational decision. A long time ago you decided it was better to remain alive.

You may not remember deciding to remain alive, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t done it. We call self preservation instinctual, meaning that we were born with this decision written in our harware. Maybe, but it’s a decision that can be countermanded any time we choose, and many do; it’s called suicide. Anytime you elect to remain alive, rather than commit suicide, you are reinforcing the decision to remain alive; you also do it when you chose to pay attention while you are driving, rather than allow yourself to drift into the oncoming lane.

Love also is a decision. Yes, you may have been swept off your feet and fell in love, but it’s not like you didn’t have any choice in the matter; you decided to go for it. Additionally, you already committed yourself to grieving when you chose to love. Grief was hidden in the fine print. You can’t value someone without feeling terrible when she’s gone.

There are other terms and conditions you also signed on to when you chose to love. You agreed to forgive. You can’t be adding up all the good and bad points about your partner, or parent, or child, according to how you feel every day. Everyone has their bad days; we love them, no matter how annoying they can be. You would want him to forgive you, so, to be fair, you forgive him.

I’m not saying you have to put up with everything. I’m not saying you have to tolerate abuse or even persistent bitchy behavior. All I’m saying is that’s why breaking up is so hard. It’s supposed to be hard. Choosing to sever the bonds of love is like digging up the foundation of an old house and re-laying the stone to create a new footprint. You can do it, but it”s not something to take lightly, even if you could.

Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice. Read more of A Field Guide to Feelings and his other stuff.