Hazard’s Home
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How to Ignore Your Emotions (while also thinking you’re awesome at emotions)
posted - July 31 2019
Since middle school I’ve generally thought that I’m pretty good at dealing with my emotions, and a handful of close friends and family have made similar comments. Now I can see that though I was particularly good at never flipping out, I was decidedly not good “healthy emotional processing”. I’ll explain later what I think “healthy emotional processing” is, right now I’m using quotes to indicate “the thing that’s good to do with emotions”. Here it goes…
从中学开始，我通常认为我非常擅长处理自己的情绪，少数亲密的朋友和家人也发表了类似的评论。现在我可以看到，虽然我特别擅长从不发泄，但我绝对不是擅长“健康的情绪处理”。我稍后会解释我认为的“健康的情绪处理”是什么，现在我用引号来表示“与情绪一起做的事情”。开始了…
Relevant context 相关背景
When I was a kid I adopted a strong, “Fix it or stop complaining about it” mentality. This applied to stress and worry as well. “Either address the problem you’re worried about or quit worrying about it!” Also being a kid, I had a limited capacity to actually fix anything, and as such I was often exercising the “stop worrying about it” option.
当我还是个孩子的时候，我养成了一种强烈的“要么修复它，要么停止抱怨它”的心态。这也适用于压力和担忧。“要么解决你担心的问题，要么停止担心它！”同样作为一个孩子，我实际解决任何事情的能力有限，因此我经常行使“停止担心它”的选项。
Another thing about me, I was a massive book worm and loved to collect “obvious mistakes” that heroes and villains would make. My theory was, “Know all the traps, and then just don’t fall for them”. That plus the sort of books I read meant that I “knew” it was a big no-no to ignore or repress your emotions. Luckily, since I knew you shouldn’t repress your emotions, I “just didn’t” and have lived happily ever after
关于我的另一件事是，我是一个巨大的书虫，喜欢收集英雄和恶棍会犯的“明显错误”。我的理论是，“了解所有的陷阱，然后不要上当受骗”。再加上我读的那种书，意味着我 “知道” 忽视或压抑你的情绪是一个很大的禁忌。幸运的是，因为我知道你不应该压抑自己的情绪，所以我 “就是没有” 从此过上了幸福的生活
…
…
yeah nopes. 是的，不是。
Wiggling ears 摆动的耳朵
It can be really hard to teach someone to move in a way that is completely new to them. I teach parkour, and sometimes I want to say,
教某人以一种对他们来说完全陌生的方式移动可能真的很难。我教跑酷，有时我想说，
Me: “Do the shock absorbing thing with your legs!” Student: “What’s the shock absorbing thing?” Me: ”… uh, you know… the thing were your legs… absorb shock?”
我：“用你的腿做减震动作！学生：“什么是减震器？我：“…呃，你知道的…问题是你的腿…吸收冲击？
It’s hard to know how to give queues that will lead to someone making the right mental/muscle connection. Learning new motor movements is somewhat of a process of flailing around in the dark, until some feedback mechanism tells you you did it right (a coach, it’s visually obvious, the jump doesn’t hurt anymore, etc). Wiggling your ears is a nice concrete version of a) movement most people’s bodies are capable of and b) one that most people feel like is impossible.
很难知道如何排队，这将导致某人建立正确的心理/肌肉联系。学习新的运动动作有点像一个在黑暗中胡乱挥舞的过程，直到一些反馈机制告诉你你做对了（教练，这在视觉上很明显，跳跃不再痛，等等）。摆动你的耳朵是一个很好的具体版本，a） 大多数人的身体都能够进行的运动，以及 b） 大多数人觉得不可能的运动。
Claim: learning mental and emotional skills has a similar “flailing around in the dark” aspect. There are the mental and emotional controls you’ve practiced, and those just feel like moving your arm. Natural, effortless, atomic. But there are other moves, which you are totally capable of which seem impossible because you don’t know how your “control panel” connects to that output. This feels like trying to wiggle your ears.
声称：学习心理和情感技能也有类似的 “在黑暗中挥舞 ”的一面。你已经练习过心理和情绪控制，这些只是感觉就像移动你的手臂。自然、轻松、原子。但是还有其他一些动作，你完全有能力，这似乎是不可能的，因为你不知道你的 “控制面板 ”是如何连接到那个输出的。这感觉就像试图扭动你的耳朵。
Why “ignore” and “deal with” looked the same
为什么“忽略”和“处理”看起来一样
So young me is upset that the grub master for our camping trip forgot half the food on the menu, and all we have for breakfast is milk. I couldn’t “fix it” given that we were in the woods, so my next option was “stop feeling upset about it.” So I reached around in the dark of my mind, and Oops, the “healthily process feelings” lever is right next to the “stop listening to my emotions” lever.
年轻的我很生气，因为我们露营旅行的 grub master 忘记了菜单上的一半食物，而我们早餐只有牛奶。鉴于我们在树林里，我无法“修复它”，所以我的下一个选择是“停止为此感到不安”。所以我在黑暗的头脑中四处走动，哎呀，“健康地处理感受”的杠杆就在“停止倾听我的情绪”杠杆旁边。
The end result? “Wow, I decided to stop feeling upset, and then I stopped feeling upset. I’m so fucking good at emotional regulation!!!!!”
最终结果？“哇，我决定不再感到不安，然后我就不再感到不安了。我他妈的很擅长情绪调节!!!!”
My model now is that I substituted “is there a monologue of upsetness in my conscious mental loop?” for “am I feeling upset?“. So from my perspective, it just felt like I was very in control of my feelings. Whenever I wanted to stop feeling something, I could. When I thought of ignoring/repressing emotions, I imagined trying to cover up something that was there, maybe with a story. Or I thought if you poked around ignored emotions there would be a response of anger or annoyance. I at least expected that if I was ignoring my emotions, that if I got very calm and then asked myself, “Is there anything that you’re feeling?” I would get an answer.
我现在的模型是，我将“我的意识心理循环中是否有不安的独白”替换为“我感到不安吗？所以从我的角度来看，我只是感觉我非常控制自己的情绪。每当我想停止感觉时，我就可以。当我想到忽视/压抑情绪时，我想象着试图掩盖存在的东西，也许用一个故事来掩盖。或者我想，如果你四处闲逛，被忽视的情绪就会有愤怒或烦恼的反应。我至少预料到，如果我忽视了自己的情绪，如果我变得非常平静，然后问自己，“你有什么感觉吗？我会得到答案。
Again, the assumption was, “If it’s in my mind, I should be able to notice if I look.” This ignored what was actually happening, which was that I was cutting the phone lines so my emotions couldn’t talk to me in the first place. Actually, the phone lines metaphor is a bit off, here’s a better one.
同样，假设是，“如果它在我的脑海中，如果我看，我应该能够注意到。这忽略了实际发生的事情，那就是我切断了电话线，所以我的情绪一开始就无法与我对话。实际上，电话线的比喻有点不对劲，这里有一个更好的比喻。
Parent-child model 父子模型
My self-concept and conscious mind are the parent. Emotions are young children that run up to the parent to tell them something. Sometimes the child runs up to complain, “Heeeeeeeeeey I’m huuuuuuungry!” My emotional management was akin to the parenting style of slapping the child and saying, “Being hungry would suck, so you aren’t hungry.”
我的自我概念和有意识的头脑是父母。情绪是年幼的孩子跑到父母面前告诉他们一些事情。有时孩子跑过来抱怨说：“嘿嘿，我是 huuuuuuungry！我的情绪管理类似于父母的育儿方式，打孩子一巴掌，然后说：“饿会很糟糕，所以你不饿。
Yikes. 哎呀。
I know full well that you can’t slap someone into having a full stomach, but you can slap someone into not bringing their complaints to you.
我非常清楚，你不能打别人吃饱肚子，但你可以打别人一巴掌，让他们不把他们的抱怨告诉你。
I’ve experienced this directly extend to my internal world. My emotions / sub-agents aren’t stupid. They learned that telling me, “Hey, you’re concerned about your relationship with your friend!”, “Hey, we really don’t like getting laughed at”, “Hey, we’re concerned that this bad thing is going to happen indefinitely” would result in getting slapped. So they learned to stay quiet.
我经历过这直接延伸到我的内心世界。我的情绪/子代理并不愚蠢。他们学到了告诉我，“嘿，你很担心你和你朋友的关系！”，“嘿，我们真的不喜欢被嘲笑”，“嘿，我们担心这种坏事会无限期地发生”，这会导致被打耳光。所以他们学会了保持安静。
This got to the point where I’d feel awesome and great during my busy week, and then “mysteriously” and “for no reason” feel an amorphous blob of gray badness on the weekends. I had various social and emotional needs that weren’t being met, but I didn’t realize that. I quite intensely tried to introspect to see if this gray blob was “about anything”, but only heard quiet static. This was me being the angry parent with their kids having a dinner of half a slice of bread each, shouting, “Is anyone hungry?! Huh??! No? GREAT.”
这已经到了这样一个地步，在我忙碌的一周里，我会感觉很棒，然后在周末 “神秘地 ”和 “无缘无故 ”地感觉到一团无定形的灰色坏事。我有各种社交和情感需求没有得到满足，但我没有意识到这一点。我非常强烈地试图反省，看看这个灰色的斑点是否 “关于任何事情”，但只听到了安静的静电。这是我作为一个愤怒的父母，他们的孩子吃了一顿每人半片面包的晚餐，大喊：“有人饿吗？！哼？？！不？太好了。
Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
… and now?
When I was a kid, my desire to “not worry if it was useless” was mostly one of “people who worry seem to be in pain, I’d prefer to not be in pain.” Overtime, it turned into a judgmental world view. How wasteful and useless to be embarrassed/worried/scared/etc. This was the transition from a naive parent telling their kid, “Hmmmm, have you tried not being hungry?” to the angry parent shouting, “You won’t be hungry in my house!!” (one might wonder how exactly that transition from naive to judgmental happened. That’s a whole other story for a different post)
Over the past year I’ve haphazardly free styled towards opening up emotional communication with myself, and I’ve made progress. I’m still not sure what “healthy emotional processing” looks like, but I’ve gotten HUGE gains from just being able to sit with the fact that I’m feeling something, and hug the child that brought that emotion instead of slapping them.
I guess the biggest thing I wanted to impart with this piece was 1. the parent child model, but also 2. that ignoring your emotions can start as a simple innocent mistake.
Related. A sentiment in a LW thread I heard in the past few months was that the biggest barrier to rational discourse is creating environments where everyone feels safe thinking (not the same thing as a safe space). Extend that to the mind. The biggest barrier to rational thinking is organizing your mind such that it’s safe to think. I still promote and admire “look towards the truth, even if it hurts”, but I know see that if you don’t spend enough resources on addressing that hurt, the hurt parts of yourself can and will take measures to protect themselves. Treat yourself well.