You Should Choose How You React to Your Feelings

One of the things I love about parenting is being frequently reminded how many things are not the default for most people. While I see this most clearly in my 11-year-olds, I also see it in other adults as well as in myself. One of these human defaults that I think is worth improving upon is the instinct to “trust” your feelings, i.e. act on them without much consideration of: 1. Is the surface level source of the feeling accurate? 2. Is my gut reaction based on this feeling helpful?

What is the Source of My Feeling? We are often wrong about the source of our feelings, whether because we’rehangry, sleep-deprived, stressed, or in any other altered state that changes our typical reactions. When you’re very hungry, someone doing something relatively innocuous can result in you getting angry at them. The biggest contributor to your anger is not actually the actions you’re responding to (since under normal circumstances you wouldn’t react with anger) - it’s the fact that you’re hungry. Other times we might be right about the general source, but getting specific is necessary to productively act on the feeling: • You’re afraid of attempting some physical feat - is it truly dangerous, or are you just afraid for no good reason, or for a reason that was true in the past but no longer applies? • You’re anxious about an upcoming test - have you prepared as well as you can, are you anxious despite having prepared well, are the things you’re worried about outside of your control and thus not worth worrying about?

How Should I React to My Feeling? Even when you correctly understand the source of your feeling, your gut reactions are often not actually helpful in addressing the issue at hand or accomplishing your goals! Similar to the maxim in design and creative disciplines of “Listen to the problem, not the solution”, with feelings it seems you should acknowledge your feelings, but don’t blindly do what they seem to tell you to do. Consider the following situations: One of your kids hits the other, and you yell at them to stop: • They may or may not stop, but they certainly learn that yelling is an acceptable way to interact with others • The hitter learns nothing of the core reasons why you want them to stop • The underlying cause of the hitting is unlikely to have been addressed • Your anger is actually due to aviolation of expectation - you expected your kids not to hit each other (why would you expect that?!?!) - and you should really update your expectations given this clear evidence that your original model of the world was wrong You’re attempting to do a standing back flip, but after jumping you get scared and open up all your limbs, flailing wildly: • This slows your rotation and greatly increases your chances of injury This one from my kids: you’re having trouble falling asleep, so you open your eyes and look at the clock, or get out of bed to talk to a parent about the fact that you’re having trouble falling asleep: • Looking at the clock wakes you up a bit, and likely causes you to get frustrated either by the fact that very little time has passed since you last looked or because it’s now quite late and you’re getting stressed by the future impact of not getting enough sleep. • Getting up out of bed and walking into a brightly lit room to talk to someone else really wakes you up, and unfortunately parents don’t have any magical remedies for falling asleep other than just staying in bed with your eyes closed until you fall asleep (and reminding you to tell yourself a long, boring, detailed story or doing something similar that takes enough focus to not drift into stimulating thoughts, but isn’t stimulating in and of itself).

Applications to Physical as Well as Emotional Feelings This concept can also extend to the realm of feelings in the sense of physical sensations, not just emotions. Here the source is unlikely to be misidentified, but the best reaction to the feeling is often not the instinctive one: 1. Muscular Fatigue: The real message is “Your muscles are being worked, and at some point in the future if you keep doing this you may overheat/collapse/over-exert”. But the natural reaction to this feeling (Bad! Stop doing whatever is causing that!) should just be one option among many choices you could make in response to this new information. Those options could include (among many more):• Stop and take a rest • Slow down • Evaluate how much further you have to go, and decide how to adjust your pace (if at all) • Continue as you were, since you’re well aware of your limits

2. Cold: There is a broad range of temperatures (different for different people) that are uncomfortable but not actually damaging. Being able to notice the discomfort and decide that it’s not dangerous and can be ignored for now can really improve your lived experience! 3. Itching: Rashes, bug bites, and random itches due to hair or clothing either can (random itches) or should (rashes and bug bites) be noted without reaction. Kids find this super difficult, but the more you can avoid scratching, the faster you’ll achieve the goal of no longer feeling the itch. 4. Minor stings/cuts/bruises: Pain associated with such things is a useful reminder to avoid whatever caused it and to give a bit more protection to that area in the near future. Removing the negative valence associated with this makes life more pleasant! This is especially helpful for kids (who get little cuts and bruises all the time) and athletes in sports like rock climbing, contact sports, gymnastics, etc. where these things are just part of the sport (but not ultimately harmful in the long run).

Choosing Your Actions is Beneficial So at a high level, my point is this: 1. Feelings (both emotional and physical) carry useful information, but… 2. They don’t always “tell the truth” about what’s causing them and… 3. Even if you do know the true cause of the feeling, your instinctive reaction to it isn’t necessarily the best action to take and can sometimes be actively unhelpful. This all falls under the general concept of intentionally choosing how you act (or choosing to not choose and just go on instinct if that’s better for a certain situation!). Based on the number of times my kids respond to “Why did you just do that?!?!” with “…I dunno.”, it seems like choosing your actions is not the default human condition, but it is a default that can be changed with practice. Ultimately, by learning to view these internal signals not as commands, but as data, you can take back the steering wheel and consciously decide how to respond.

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