If you're here looking for a Schlachthof playlist, it'll be posted in a little while. But in the mean time...

The following is just some random stuff I've had kicking around in my head - just want to be clear that it has nothing to do with anything specific/personal that's actually going on in my life right now.

Anyway, I was thinking about emotions and responsibility. In an effort to clarify my thoughts, here's a sequence I came up with:

1. Stimulus occurs - e.g. discovery of infidelity, just to pick a random example.
2. Emotional reaction takes place - e.g. shock, anger, sorrow, etc.
3. Decision as to how to respond to emotional reaction - e.g. choice made to scream at your partner, talk to them rationally, storm out of the room or whatever.
4. Chosen action taken.
5. Situation as a whole affects perception of future stimuli - e.g. subsequent experiences of infidelity will be colored by this first one and its resolution or lack thereof.
6. Changed perception of future stimuli affects future emotional reactions - e.g. since you know it could happen to you now, maybe the shock reaction is less next time.
7. Changed future emotional reactions implies a different range of options to choose from.... etc., cycle repeats

I think for many people - including myself when I was younger - the steps of this process are not very distinct. For example, the force of 2 may make it seem like 3-onward are just decided for you. I would argue, however, that understanding how 2 and 3-onward are separate, while probably difficult for many people, is crucial if one doesn't wish to be controlled by one's emotions.

Quick point of clarification: I include things like crying, getting shakey, etc. in #2. But I include anything that intrinsically impacts another person - i.e. things said, actions taken - as part of #3. Why? Because while I can grant, for example, that one can't control having the urge to hit one's girlfriend, it seems obviously irresponsible to claim that one can't control the choice to actually hit one's girlfriend. And I think if you admit that such is the case with regard to such an extreme example in which one might well find it hard to control oneself due to rage, one surely must also grant in cases where emotions are not running so high that one is analogously responsible for one's choices.

i.e. if you have an emotional dark side, that's okay in and of itself, but if you let it control your behavior such that you hurt other people, it is your fault and you are morally culpable.

And quick tangent about the point of clarification: I do know at least one person who would argue that crying, getting shakey, etc. are also all things that in theory you should be able to exercise at least a modicum of control over, but for the purposes of the current discussion I won't be quite that tyrannical with regard to self-discipline.


So, to elaborate on how this mental schema relates to me personally: myself, I have always found that my emotions are often not in accord with what I want rationally. i.e. by nature, I get angry more easily than most people, I get upset more easily than most, etc., and I didn't like the results this had when I was younger. For example, I might be cranky about something, even though I don't want to and think it would be more useful to just ignore the stimulus (screaming children for example), but it doesn't change the fact that I'm cranky, and various people around me insisting that I shouldn't be cranky would just make me crankier. All of which adds up to a waste of energy and saps mental effort that I could be putting into something else.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that at least for me, focusing on the decision to be made (step 3) instead of the emotion (step 2) is far more effective in asserting some kind of control. For example:

• Maybe I can't choose whether or not I feel grumpy about some loser propositioning me, but I can choose whether to sulk or to try to make the best of the rest of the night.
• Maybe I can't choose whether or not I feel jealous about someone I'm sleeping with who isn't technically my boyfriend, but I can choose whether to be a clingy, territorial bitch who annoys the guy or to talk to him rationally about it and/or vent via writing angsty song lyrics and thereby benefit creatively from my negative emotions.
• Maybe I can't choose whether or not I'm afraid of something, but I can choose whether I fight, hide or run away. In fact I would argue that choosing to act rationally in spite of being afraid is precisely what courage is; by contrast, I think lack of fear in such cases is often more a sign of stupidity than bravery.

Anyway, point being: the vast majority of people I know get really offended when someone tries to tell them that they shouldn't feel a certain way. Whereas if you just accept someone's emotions and go on to try to help them think through their situation, this is generally perceived, I think, as far more supportive behavior. I bring this up because if I'm going to make the claim that one is responsible for emotionally-motivated behavior, it only seems fair to also provide some thoughts about how best to effectively alter such behavior.


Other interesting implications of this way of thinking:

1) The feedback effect of 5-7 implies that, while one may not be able to control step 2 in the heat of the moment, over time 2 may change gradually. Some may be concerned that this amounts to repression of one's emotions. In response I would distinguish between repression and suppression:

• Repression is when you refuse to admit you have the emotion in the first place. As a result, it may color your judgement (step 3) without you being fully aware of it.
• Supression is when you admit you have the emotion (step 2) but choose not to act on it (step 3) - perhaps as a result you act a different way (step 4), which changes your perception of future situations (step 5), hence leading to the feedback effect just alluded to.

As per the way I've just described them, I think repression certainly can be a problem as it has the potential to hijack the decision-making process, but suppression to me is just part of growing as a person.

That is, I suppose maybe if you're some lucky sort who has fully appropriate emotions that are in accord with the rest of your psyche all the time, you might not need to suppress things, but in most cases I think people have at least some emotionally-motivated maladaptive behavior that could stand to be improved. One shouldn't be ashamed of the feelings behind the behavior, I think, but if one recognizes the resulting behavior to be problematic I do think it is one's responsibility to think about what to do about this - i.e. to suppress the one emotional reaction and choose to act in some other way.

At best - and this has been my own experience - through such suppression you may be able to train yourself out of the behavior, i.e. for me at least, the emotion is like a daemon, and if you don't give into it in terms of action, it eventually gets bored and fucks off.

At worst, you might suppress your emotions in one situation only to have them keep recurring in similar ones - thereby continuing to cause stress - but I would argue that even this is better than the alternative of allowing onself to be controlled by one's emotions.

Example: if you lose your job, you could get up and make yourself look for a new one even if you feel shitty, or you could sulk around until you also lose your apartment, your car and your spouse. The first option may not be easy if you're really upset, but it still seems like a better course of action than the second option.

Incidentally, thanks to my fellow grad student for inspiring this train of thought - I've found it useful to think about.


2) I don't deny that step 2 may at times be overwhelming for some people. But if this is the case, I think you need to either a) struggle through it with willpower or b) get medicated. I do think it is one's responsibility, if this is a problem for oneself, to do one of these things.

And if you really need b), I don't think there's any shame in that. What I do have trouble respecting is another option some (many?) people take, c) allow yourself to be compelled by your emotions and then claim afterward that it wasn't your fault because you couldn't help it. To the contrary, I would argue that, while feeling that way is fair enough, one needs to either learn how to control oneself or get help in order to facilitate controlling oneself.

On one hand I don't want to be unforgiving about failures of will, but on the other, look back at the domestic abuse example again. I think a lot of people will hold that even if you only lose your temper and hit your girlfriend once, you cannot claim that it wasn't 'your fault.' And again, if we are willing to say this in a situation where emotions may be running very high, it seems to me that to be consistent we would also have to say that in 'easier' situations you are no less responsible.

Does this mean then that I'm totally unforgiving? Only in theory. In practice, how willing I am to forgive probably depends on how badly the choice/action in question affects me personally. Also, there's a big difference between "My emotions got the best of me - I will put some thought into what to do about this in future situations, and/or I may need help in thinking about what to do" vs. just repeating "it wasn't my fault" ad nauseum.


3) I don't mean this to sound like a jerk to people with whom I talk about this issue regularly, but:
If this and other aspects of my psychology seem 'alien' to you, maybe you need to expand your view of what humans are capable of? I think the results of such a mental exercise may well be inspiring: "hey, x,y and z could do it, so maybe I can too."

Hmm. That's fairly positive so I think I'll stop there for now.