SELF

I’m an Emotional Junkie, but Sometimes I Hate My Feelings

When to give up control and why

I’ve been a cinephile since I was a kid. I didn’t know it back then, but I was obsessed with television shows, cartoons, and films. I’ve found out later that I have a tendency towards addiction. It’s not booze or drugs, I never had a hard time with those, it’s little things that require emotional investment.

I’m not capable of doing anything without having strong feelings. It’s an advantage and a burden at the same time. I can only do something consistently with passion, and I can only resist contempt for so long before I surrender against something I hate. Most of my jobs were the latter, and so they never lasted long.

Eventually, my temper breaks out when I have to face controversial and stupid demands from superiors. When other people try to control me, I have a hard time adjusting because I refuse to buy in sheep mentality: it’s in my DNA.

Over the years, I improved on this, but it became clear to me that I’m not the right person for certain jobs. There is a limit to what I will do for money. Simply raising my salary was never a motivational boost. It helps, but I prefer to choose something I love doing with less pay than doing something I loathe for more money. I’m not the type of person who gets happier looking at his bank account increasing while my free time decreases simultaneously. I need to balance it out.

I’m a stubborn person, which helps in certain life areas, but in my personal relationships, I can hardly call that an asset. I have to shape it drastically, otherwise, I become an insufferable jerk.

I like to keep an illusion of control. As some people say, we can’t control everything in life, and planning is useless because nothing turns out the way we planned them. I say that’s a fair amount of horseshit mentality, but I understand where they are coming from. They are spontaneous and not in need of any sort of control, they are just going with the flow wherever life takes them. Some would say I might resemble certain symptoms of OCD, but I don’t think that any of it is beyond normal.

I don’t go insane if my plans don’t unfold the way I imagined them, but I rather have them than not. If everything goes south, having a plan C provides a safety net, something to fall back on. Although, I admit when all my plans failed at some points in my life, those tough times strengthened me and made me challenge myself in a way that I haven’t before. Failures are a road to success, however, mentally it can be quiet difficult to handle them.

Feelings give you strength and boost your courage to push beyond boundaries, but sometimes they make you feel miserable and helpless. They’re frustrating because you don’t have power over them. Mark Manson wrote in his popular self-help book,

“Emotions are not a choice. Behavior is.”

That speaks volumes to me. Use what you feel, control what you can. Even when you’re in love, the behavior is something you can choose over emotions. You can act like a selfish and childish idiot, or you can act with humility even when your emotions are screaming inside you. You can avoid certain situations, walk away from bad arguments, and refuse to fight over irrelevant differences.

I’m a confrontational person. I don’t shy away from arguments because sometimes it’s important to face them even if you lose and feel like crap afterward. They can teach you how to better yourself if you’re ready to learn from them and admit if you’re lacking strong enough reasons to prove yourself right.

I’ve done that many times. It’s an awkward feeling realizing that you’re wrong. It doesn’t matter how passionately you argued and cited seemingly compelling reasons. When you know you’ve failed, it can feel like something died inside you.

However, that can be the groundwork for self-improvement you never expected. I had to learn how to get back from those lost battles and use them to my advantage. For many years, I didn’t even see the importance of them. It took a fair amount of time, self-reflection, and humility to recognize that I’m no expert and I’m still learning.

For someone who always plans and wants to be in control, facing defeat is challenging. I’m not talking about a lost football match or a poker game, but an emotional and mental defeat. It can be as simple as a small argument with your partner, a heated discussion with your mom, or a fight with your best friend.

Those small losses keep me up at night because I’m so frustrated I can’t stop running them through my mind over and over again. They weaken me at first by taking a toll on my confidence and strengthen my insecurity. Second, however, they also make me realize that I need to question my beliefs, occasionally. Not always, but sometimes I must.

It’s necessary to distinguish between worthy and unworthy disputes because only one of them is healthy. Often I dive into the ones I should avoid, and that changed me in the last few years by making me realize that it’s not always necessary to confront other people. It’s better to let go of that itch. My best friends and my parents taught me that. I wouldn’t call it a victory because it’s only a self-reflection that serves as a beginning of self-improvement.

Emotions make us kind and thoughtful, but they also make us unbearable and envious. The challenge is upon us, to learn how to employ them correctly by remembering Mark’s words: “Emotions are not a choice. Behavior is.”

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