Control over my happiness began with the realization that I can control my responses to feelings and situations.
I have a choice over how I respond to feelings.I may not have a choice over how I feel or events I experience. I do have some control over circumstances in my life.
I do things, but I do not control outcomes...I influence them. How I feel about an outcome is my choice.
I am not saying that people choose to be
depressed. I am saying people who are depressed have choices that can help them to manage or end depression.
If someone says mean things to me, there is a window of opportunity in my thought process where I can choose to feel hurt or angry or forgiveness. Being able to find and hold on to that window opportunity may be a learned skill, and it may be a skill facilitated by anti-depressant medication. At least, that is the theory I came to have have found to resonate with other psychological theories.
Despite my years of trying to manage negative feelings, some continue to come too quickly and too intensely for me to quell the hurt or anger. I have, however, become more aware of my choices (all the other things I could have felt) and become able to lesson the duration of the bad feelings by examining why I feel the way I do. How I behave when I feel a particular way can also be controlled.
I can evaluate my desired reaction and then choose my behavioral as well as my emotional response--perhaps it is better to say I can influence and transform my emotional response.Feelings, or the origins of feelings, may be beyond conscious control. I can, hopefully, develop skills at managing feelings when they arise.
What I am describing is an important component in
cognitive therapy. Being aware of your thoughts and examining the logic behind them can help you manage bad feelings and promote good feelings. Recognizing that you (I) am not a mind-reader, can not see into the future, and am feeling/behaving disproportionately to a situation are common strategies in cognitive therapy.
It is possible that a key component to a healthy mind is more than, or is something completely other than, an unrecognized need and/or aversion to affection, intimacy, acceptance, or sex. Maybe we are coping in bad ways. It may even be that we are so traumatized by an event that we treat all events that are even remotely similar as being that original event--like reading a script.
At one point in your life, you may have had the sense that you had just been repeating the same negative experiences. The same incompatible partner, the same arguments with family or coworkers. This could be because you are following a script. Someone yells and you respond in the same way you did when you were in a bad situation when you were 8...or the way you learned to respond by watching all the adults in your life when you were 8. We may follow similar patterns because we are attracted to things that hurt us or because we only know how to escalate bad situations instead of diffuse them.
Script theory or affective therapy is a useful way to reflect on patterned responses and events.
It might be helpful to keep a journal or draw when you need to process feelings. Brainstorm and cluster ideas according to intensity or relationships. Feelings need to be let out, in healthy ways, or they fester and rot and lead to more bad feelings. Good feelings need to be shared--as long as they are good for everyone. If you feel good because someone else is hurt, you may not want to share that--at least not with the person who was hurt.
Having feelings trapped inside may be creating unwarranted sensitivity, like one more thing in an already crowded closet.I came to my realization, that my freedom is my perception, when wrestling with the paradox of being free and determined. I came to the conclusion that I am free to choose how I think and feel, how I continue to feel, and am also free to choose how I behave. Even if so much of the structure of my thoughts, what I know, and the opportunities available to me are determined by waves of culture, I can choose what I do with what I get and with what arises from within me in reaction to it all.
I have a choice in how I respond to circumstances and feelings. So do you.
You have a choice.Here are a few interesting and related web sites:
Ways to Replace Negative Thoughts with Positive ThoughtsLife Positive online magazineHow to Cure Depressionnot an expert, just good adviceColorgenicsAn interesting self-test site to get insight into the mysteries of color and reflect on your feelings.
