Thread by @QiaochuYuan

100 opinions on emotional regulation part 2, starting at opinion 45, only a few days late

https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1205990362050785281

45. i actually lowkey hate the term "emotional regulation." it reminds me of this term "project manager of our lives": orients towards emotions as problems to be solved, or distractions to be dealt with (which is not how i orient!)

https://twitter.com/Malcolm_Ocean/status/1205033818224300032

46. the language we use to talk about our emotions really matters b/c it affects our meta-emotions - our emotions about our emotions, or even our emotions about the process of engaging with our emotions

47. what's the aesthetic feel of "emotional regulation" to you? to me it feels like laws and factories and armies. it feels like being constrained by the standards of an authority from the outside. not my aesthetic at all 😤

48. consider by contrast "emotional cultivation." as in cultivating a garden, or virtue, or skill. orienting towards the emotional world as a living, growing entity, that can be nourished and kept healthy. very different vibe 🌼

49. another alternative: "emotional discipline." that could have a more martial, ascetic feel, or a more authoritarian feel, depending on your associations with that word. i imagine a warrior-monk meditating underneath a waterfall ☯️

50. one last alternative: "emotional caretaking." more like the internal family systems feel: emotions as being held by parts of you, who may behave like children of various ages, who want things, who have relationships with each other - self-parenthood 👨‍👦‍👦

51. i wanna go back to "emotional regulation" for a bit. why is it that we might feel emotions need to be "regulated"? inevitably the answer involves fitting in with other people - in your family, at school, at work, in your intimate relationships

52. which is why for me the topic of self-regulation can't really be separated from the topic of group regulation. we try to prevent ourselves from feeling and expressing emotion in large part because if we didn't then we imagine *other people* would punish us

53. that desire to punish the emotional expression of others is itself an emotional reaction - perhaps a mix of fear and anger. it doesn't just come from nowhere! and we can imagine learning to work with that reaction as well, rather than treating it as fixed

54. your emotions are simply not something that you feel in isolation. we constantly affect each other's emotions - they leak outside our bodies, we signal approval or disapproval of each other's emotional expression which changes how we feel about our emotions, etc.

55. this really deserves its own thread but we could go into a long-ass thing about control over emotions and emotional expression as a tool of social control, and e.g. characterizing different ideological groups based on what kinds of emotional expression they allow vs. punish

56. it's worth being more explicit about this at this point: it really matters what stories you actually believe about what emotions are and what they're for. this is not a cute fun harmless topic. it's actually kinda crazy that i'm just allowed to talk like this

57. serious emotional work can ruin your life. learning how to access years or decades of pent-up anger or sexual energy can destroy relationships. it is absolutely crucial to develop the capacity to make sensible choices regardless of how strong your emotions get