We are NOT in control of emotions (and why that's not a bad thing)
I’m rereading Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. In part because Holiday is a huge proponent of rereading books. But it’s also because I have been recommending it to my clients as a good introduction to the practicality of Stoicism.
So there I was last night, reading the chapter “Is it up to you?” And I came upon the list of what is up to us (43). Here it is :
Our emotions
Our judgements
Our creativity
Our attitude
Our perspective
Our desires
Our determination
Later in this chapter, Holiday writes that “the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change” (44). Our emotions is italicised because I think our emotions are not up to us. If we chase what we cannot control, we face a harmful dagron. (Seriously, I cannot see dragon without seeing Strong Bad’s dagron.)
I first read Obstacle about two and a half years ago. Sitting on a beach. My copy is filled with stars and underlines and questions. But nothing is marked in this section. I naively believed that I could be in control of my emotions.
It is a testament to how much I have learned over two years that this idea that our emotions are under our control blew up in my face. How did I not see this before? How could I have just accepted this before?
Until a few years ago, I did believe that my emotions were up to me. But believing this led to shame, sorrow, and self-flagellation. And today? Years of reading and months of therapy have shifted my position on emotions.
So: our emotions are NOT up to us. Not even a little bit. And before you say anything, let me add that our REACTIONS to emotions are up to us.
To repeat: our emotions are not in our control, but our reactions to those emotions are in our control.
Hear me out.
It’s Neuroscience Time (please tell me this comes to your mind)
In the 1960s, a neuroscientist named Paul MacLean put forward the triune brain theory. His theory, while simple, has been central to late-20th century psychology and physiology.
Basically, the brain is composed of three separate areas: the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the neocortex.
The reptilian brain is the oldest part of our brains. It controls the systems we rely on for life: breathing, heart rate, body temperature, and balance. It’s about 500 million years old or so. Just about every living animal has a reptilian brain. But this isn’t the brain we are looking for.
The limbic system IS the brain we are looking for. It is also called the emotional brain. So yup, this is the one I’m interested in. The limbic brain emerged about 150 million years ago in mammals. It records memories of behaviours that produced agreeable and disagreeable experiences. It is the seat of our value judgements. The emotional brain is a fast subconscious evaluation and response system that is designed to keep us safe. And the limbic system is very fast. Think of a slap on the cheek, the first look at your partner after a long absence, stepping on another damn piece of Lego. First you feel, then you react.
And where does the reaction come from? The youngest part of our brain: the neocortex. It’s just a baby at 2-3 million years old. Primates, like humans, use the neocortex for language, abstract thought, and imagination.
In Everything is F*cked: A book about hope, Mark Manson introduces Feeling Brain and Thinking Brain in the front seat of a car (31). As humans, we want to believe that Thinking Brain is driving the car. Of course we do. Thinking is reasonable and rational. Feeling is over-reactive and twists in the wind. But this isn’t the case. Feeling Brain is the driver. Feeling Brain feels what is happening around us. Feeling Brain responds to emotions. Feeling Brain is controlled by no one.
And it’s a really good thing that Feeling Brain is the driver.
Bessel van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score, emphasises the “emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation to reason” (64).
EMOTIONS ARE THE FOUNDATION TO REASON.
Refer back to our limbic system being the seat of our value judgements. If we do not feel, we cannot value. Our reasonable brain, the neocortex, is slower to respond to information than the limbic system (that’s the Thinking Brain being slower to react than the Feeling Brain). And it is in that slower reaction time that Thinking Brain can react to whatever Feeling Brain is throwing at it. This is where we have control.
And to the Stoics, reason is what separates us as a species. If we cannot reason, we are no more than cats and polar bears. And if we cannot value, we cannot reason. And if we cannot feel, we cannot value.
Masculinity and the drive for stifling
Another reason why I think Holiday is off for writing that our emotions are up to us and that we are in control of our feelings is that it perpetuates the myth that a strong man is a man who denies his emotions.
One of my clients, MB, said to me at the beginning of our coaching program that he kept catching himself feeling more emotionally than he ought to. He believed that he could be emotional or he could be strong, but not both. He believed feeling emotional made him manipulative.That feeling made him feel out of control. Another client, PR, was unable to tell me what he felt when being disparaged by his brother. He simply did not have the words.
It may be because of the common understanding of what it is to be stoic that these two men hired me as their coach. They weren’t looking to deal with their emotions, they were looking for a way out of dealing with them.
Seneca wrote a letter to his student Lucilius that included his thoughts on the difference between Cynics (a rival philosophy) and Stoics. Seneca writes that “our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them; their wise man does not even feel them.” Stoics feel their troubles. My clients were more like the Cynics in not letting themselves feel their troubles.
Donald Robertson, one of the most popular writers on Stoicism, wrote the following:
A man who has great self-discipline or restraint isn’t someone who feels no inkling of desire but someone who overcomes his cravings, by abstaining from acting upon them. The Sage conquers his passions by becoming stronger than them not by eliminating all emotion from his life.
We become stronger through how we react to emotions. And to react to emotions with reason, we need to be able to feel and recognise those emotions.
My clients both walked away with new context in which to place their emotions. Emotions aren’t good or bad. They just are. They are reactions to the world and keep us human and safe. Gone were the “manly man” statements of emotional wussery. These men now know how to feel, and why it is important to feel.
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So here we are. I do not agree with Holiday. Not on this little inclusion that emotions are up to us in his popular book.
The first rule of Stoicism is to concern yourself with what is under your control. The majority of the things that Holiday lists in Obstacle is the Way are indeed in our control, like our judgements, our attitudes, our determination. But our emotions? No.
Stoics do not control their emotions. But, and this is a really big but (hee hee), they do control their reactions to emotions in order to live according to reason.
I know that Holiday is probably writing for clarity, and I have read other bits of his work that reinforce the need to react to emotions with reason. My point remains though: ascribing emotions as in our control is physiologically unsound and perpetuates the masculine myth of emotions are for weaklings.
So tell me, what’s your take on emotion’s role in reason?
