I've only just recently started to appreciate how much emotions can utterly dominate our thinking. We believe we are rational creatures, but we have all these emotional mechanisms in our brain that kick in and do a hardware override of everything. For me the first step in getting better control of this is just to understand that it's happening.
I came to this realization from a fascinating book about anger[1]. The idea of this book is to explain how your brain activates anger so that you can deal with it better. Hopefully my explanation won't butcher the technical stuff too badly, but I believe the gist is that anger is a useful mechanism in your brain that is supposed to kick in when certain conditions are met and drive you toward taking action when you really need to.
As such, there's a part of your brain that's sitting around monitoring to figure out if any such conditions have been met. When it decides they have, then two things happen. One is that it sort of juices your brain with something that heightens alertness and focus. This boost gives you the mental energy to act. (Think of something kind of like an adrenaline rush.) The other is that it directs your attention to the issue. It does this over and over and over again until it is resolved. If you don't act (because of impulse control, lack of opportunity, or failure to decide how), it's like hitting a snooze button. You can put the thought out of your mind, but the alarm will go off again and bring it back.
So, in computer terms, there's a hardware control system here. It turns on and periodically generates a non-maskable interrupt which jumps you into a routine it provides. And it cranks up the CPU clock speed to the point of nearly overheating. And there is no instruction to just make it stop. The only way to shut it off is to change the conditions that enabled it.
Anyway, the point is that our thoughts exist within the framework of this system. Our brains are capable of rationality, but this framework can kick in and preempt that. And anger is just one of many systems!
Therefore, if you want to gain control of your thinking, you must gain control of your emotions. (Emotional regulation is supposed to be important to mental health, and after learning about this one emotion, I can see why.) Gaining control might be a misleading phrase here because you can't stop or eliminate them. Instead, your only choice is to learn how they work and how to manage them. You need to learn to work within the framework. Which takes practice and honing skills. If you don't, then you are just being led around blindly by them, leaving everything up to chance. Either you get a handle on them, or they control you. Or maybe I should say they do control you, and your only choice is to control how they control you.
I came to this realization from a fascinating book about anger[1]. The idea of this book is to explain how your brain activates anger so that you can deal with it better. Hopefully my explanation won't butcher the technical stuff too badly, but I believe the gist is that anger is a useful mechanism in your brain that is supposed to kick in when certain conditions are met and drive you toward taking action when you really need to.
As such, there's a part of your brain that's sitting around monitoring to figure out if any such conditions have been met. When it decides they have, then two things happen. One is that it sort of juices your brain with something that heightens alertness and focus. This boost gives you the mental energy to act. (Think of something kind of like an adrenaline rush.) The other is that it directs your attention to the issue. It does this over and over and over again until it is resolved. If you don't act (because of impulse control, lack of opportunity, or failure to decide how), it's like hitting a snooze button. You can put the thought out of your mind, but the alarm will go off again and bring it back.
So, in computer terms, there's a hardware control system here. It turns on and periodically generates a non-maskable interrupt which jumps you into a routine it provides. And it cranks up the CPU clock speed to the point of nearly overheating. And there is no instruction to just make it stop. The only way to shut it off is to change the conditions that enabled it.
Anyway, the point is that our thoughts exist within the framework of this system. Our brains are capable of rationality, but this framework can kick in and preempt that. And anger is just one of many systems!
Therefore, if you want to gain control of your thinking, you must gain control of your emotions. (Emotional regulation is supposed to be important to mental health, and after learning about this one emotion, I can see why.) Gaining control might be a misleading phrase here because you can't stop or eliminate them. Instead, your only choice is to learn how they work and how to manage them. You need to learn to work within the framework. Which takes practice and honing skills. If you don't, then you are just being led around blindly by them, leaving everything up to chance. Either you get a handle on them, or they control you. Or maybe I should say they do control you, and your only choice is to control how they control you.
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[1]: The book is called "Healing the Angry Brain: How Understanding the Way Your Brain Works Can Help You Control Anger and Aggression". See https://www.google.com/books/edition/Healing_the_Angry_Brain...