Living on the Edge as a Way of Life
By Carmine Coyote on May 16, 2008 in Decisions, Science and Nature
Has excess become the new norm? Are we losing a sense of what it means to lead balanced lives? Are we living too much on the edge for our own good, overextending not only financially but emotionally, psychologically, and physically as well? Are we just too stressed out emotionally for our own good?
People like to think of themselves as fairly rational, but it’s not true. Most decisions are taken emotionally — then justified afterwards by the use of some kind of reasoning. Emotions impact how we think far more than thinking affects how we feel. So if we spend much of our time on ‘red alert’, with our emotions stirred up to boiling point by stress, haste, and anxiety, it won’t be surprising if we become attuned to living on the edge: either elated or depressed, with nothing in between.
Dr. Dayton’s suggestion is better maintenance of ‘emotional sobriety’, which I take to mean refraining from becoming so drunk on emotions — our own or those of others, experienced vicariously via the media — that we can no long think or see straight.
Emotional sobriety is about finding and maintaining our emotional equilibrium, our feeling rheostat, the one that helps us to adjust the intensity of our emotional responses to life. Emotional sobriety is tied up in our ability to self regulate — to bring ourselves into balance when we fall out of it.Good self regulation can help us in literally every part of life from our relationships with other people to our ability to regulate the amount of food we eat, the alcohol we drink, or how much sleep we get. That’s because the limbic system where we process our emotions has jurisdiction over our mood, appetite, and sleep cycles. When our limbic system is out of balance we can become moody, lethargic and unmotivated. Our powerful emotions can over ride our thoughts and make it difficult for us to use our reason to bring our intense emotions back into balance.
There are many books and articles about work/life balance. How about something related to a better thinking/feeling balance too?
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On May 16, 2008, peter vajda said:
I have a slightly different take-that our thoughts drive our emotions and not the other way around….that when we sense something “out there” or “inside”…a person, event, circumstance, place object, or other thought, we then have have an initial reactivity (often unconscious) to that object/person that triggers a reactive response, a feeling or emotion…what in psych. is called an object relation.
Object relations which we have created in childhood and during adolescence and bring into adulthood drive much of our behavior…but, for me and my experience, it’s the thought, first, about that object/person (and what that person or object or thought represents to us-fear, love, resistance, loss of control…) that triggers the emotional reactivity and this can happen in a split second — that often makes one feel the emotion is first in the reactivity chain.
Emotional sobriety, then, for me, is understanding, consciously, why I feel the need to become reactive to an event or person…the same as “why do I need to drink?”
As Shakespeare said, “An event is neither good nor bad. Only thinking makes it so.”
So, pehaps, a place to start is: “What am I thinking about?” and then, “What do I think about what I’m thinking about?” And see what feelings and emotions are arising…whether we are across from a parent, a boss, a partner, a car, or a defective fax machine.
We project emotional and feeling reactions on to each of these but it’s what we think about them first(what they “represent” to us - e.g., love, fear, security, safety, wounding, trauma, acknowledgement, pain etc. ), again, often unconsciously, that triggers our emotional and feeling reactivity to each of these “objects.”
On May 16, 2008, Carmine Coyote said:
A great comment, full of interesting and challenging thoughts, Peter.
Thank you.