* Emotions on your front porch *
Jacob,
When the next strong emotion comes to you, imagine that this emotion is an actual person who has knocked on your door. You come to the door, greet the person with your attentiveness, and almost immediately recognize that this person is in an "emotional state" and is demanding that you to feel that way too. Using your mental imagery, actually picture a person, appropriately dressed in some symbolic clothing, standing before you, and who is trying to get you to "buy into" their view of life. It is important to imagine that this person is quite outlandishly attired. You'll see Mr. Anger, or Ms. Love, or Mr. Depression standing there. This is a "pushy" person who will not take "no" for an answer.
Think how you would react, in real life, to just such a person who "suddenly is in your doorway unannounced" and who wants you to feel the same way that he/she is feeling. This person will be going on and on about being in love, or this person might be trying to convince you how horrible someone is, or this person might be trying to get you to share a big piece of chocolate cake RIGHT NOW!
Practice saying "goodbye Mr. So-and-so" mentally to the person politely and then quietly "closing the door" while the person is still "talking." It should be "okay with you" that they are "out there still" though now somewhat muffled, and you are attending to your other interests and not giving that person any encouragement by peeking out the window to see if they're still talking!
Practice this skill with every strong emotion that you have today. Note how your use of this skill improves and to what degree you can "objectify" emotions that are strong or even overpowering. See if clarity comes to you about how you can handle such "events", and see if you can "take your own sweet time" before you decide whether or not to "get into" this mood. And finally note if your "neutrality" and "live and let live" attitude shortens the duration of the emotion's "visit".
This exercise has these elements:
1. To practice using mental imagery to enable you to see an emotion as an actual, separate entity that "enters" your life--an entity that is a well known "friend" or perhaps a "stranger" at your door, but nevertheless is uninvited or uninitiated by you on purpose. The emotion might be welcomed but still have come unplanned.
2. To practice seeing that you have a choice on HOW MUCH to indulge in this emotion's request for the use of your nervous system, your time, your energy, your attention. The purpose here is to give yourself an amount of "decision time" in which emotions are considered as separate from your consciousness which "registers" your emotional activities.
3. To practice seeing that there is a possibility that emotional events in your nervous system can be allowed "their own space" where they can "live out their lives" without much resistance from you. To practice seeing that they do not have to necessarily obscure the essential distinction between "the experiencer" and "something to be experienced".
4. To practice seeing that "giving permission to visit" to an emotion encourages it to grow in intensity, to commandeer the services of the intellect to create reasons why the emotion is valid, and to last much longer.
Ask yourself,
How often today was I able to have a strong emotion without being "swept away"? Did I sometimes feel that an emotion was happening to me or did I feel that I WAS the emotion? Which way would I prefer to be my normal way of experiencing an emotion? When I see a movie that excites in me strong emotions and is a wonderful movie, does it really matter if it was a story of love or a story of anger? Do I equally recommend movies to my friends--even knowing that my friends will experience the whole range of human emotions including the darkest kind? Why don't I exclusively recommend movies that excite positive emotions? Is it possible that I can LOVE to have emotions excited by movies no matter what emotions they are? Can I take my "real emotions" that I have in daily life and put them into the same category and see them as "theatrical" events that are projected upon a screen called my consciousness? With such an analogy as my working concept, does it matter as much to me whether I have love or anger or depression or compassion as long as the "movie is great?" How interested am I in my life story? How's the movie? Does it have all the elements: drama, pathos, laughter, transcendence, pain, success, loss, fulfillment? Has any movie ever produced in me emotions as intense as those I feel every single day of my life? If I perfect this skill, do I become more like an actor, a director or a producer of my life's movie? Would I pay to see my life? How much? Would I recommend it to my friends?
**********
Rick,
Your comprehensive presentation revolves around the subject of emotions, without which life is intolerable. Simple play and friendly competitions are clear demonstrations of that fact. Cubs, kittens engage in games. At some time in evolution feelings took off as derivatives of some other activity. D-SP has explained that curiosity is vital for survival and that it developed from tropism. What is the elemental manifestation from which emotions derived as necessary for survival of the individual or just only for procreation? At this very moment, I have no idea, since I had not thought about this subject. Let's see. It is 19:18 March 8. Games are usually beetween two or more individuals, while emotions are entirely personal. Do birds play; does the Torah mention games? It tells about feelings: God realized that what he had done was good, other times he was angry. But play? He used clay to shape Adam, and then he acted as a surgeon, but no games at all. The earliest semblance of emotion probably was present in atoms and then in molecules, culminating in proteins, RNA and DNA, which are the principles of life. There are electromagnetic attractions and repulsions, while gravity is only attraction.
Let's advance now to the most elementary organized form of life: the virus. Its life appears to be centered in just reproducing. We have to jump to higher forms of life. Plants, do they feel? Some show reactions to touch, but that can hardly be considered an emotion, and certainly not play. Definitely, we must concentrate on cerebrated animals. And it appears that only humans developed the sense of organized game and a gamut of feelings, at the moment of acquiring the "meta" capacity: the ability to metathink, as D-SP has described. I have called the attention to the possibility of there being an inseparable connection between inventing scripture and becomig H. sapiens. Writing was not an evolutive phenomenon making him fitter for survival than his predecessor. By the same reasoning, it may be postulated that complex games and finely tuned emotions just happened, with no survival advantage to the species.
What I am postulating at this very moment (19:55) is that our species has been developing characteristics of no survival value! That we live longer and are very technologically minded simply changes the population accordingly. The Internet is creating a divide sui-generis: those who have and know, and the others. You, Rick, and I belong to the have and know, an also to a very limited subgroup of thinkers. By the same line of reasoning, I propose the philosophical thesis and scientific postulate that play and feelings flourished only with the bloom of metathinking, the emergent that stamped H. sapiens.
But there is a price to pay: man became dependent on being self-conscious in order to feeling alive. Those that can use their minds for thinking at higher spheres are in less need for actions that make them feel existing. Youngsters that act in an unaccepted way have lower levels of corticosteroids in their blood, indicating that they are less able to just experience emotions without creating real situations that make them feel that they exist. (The time: 20:28.)
Thus, your questions would get so many responses, that you would be unble to make sense of them. Our brains are very complex systems, in which neuronal and extraneuronal biochemicals play an essential role. We are the product of those systems. D-SP cannot deal with questions that do not have a physical reason explainable in terms of evolution and scientific facts.
There are all kinds of books and exercises of self-help, which rely on the type of exercises you mention. They might help adults, but the true solution depends on using the right kind of chemicals that can help the young sufferer to feel alive without resorting to inimical DOAs. We live in a very complex and imperfect reality, and correct information is essencial, not faith or lesser faire. Psychological support is important to reddress damage that has already been done, and to help the sufferer during his adaptationl period and further self-reliance. However, about half of the population will disagree with my ideas, even if they read them.