Beyond religion - 9. Dealing with destructive emotions

• If we could not change our behaviour then we would be slavesof our emotions, but science is collecting evidence that change is possible
• Emotions are a combination of mental processes and feelings (actually there is no single mental process without feeling but for the sake of simplicity we call some process just thinking)

Emotional states

• Usually we classify the emotional states in two groups
• Positive: pleasant or joyful
• Negative: unpleasant or painful
• From the buddhist perspective the classification is different
• Beneficial
• Harmful: to our long-term wellbeing
•  Sadness, grief, and remorse can be unpleasant but not necessarily afflictive (they can help for example, to overcome the death of a loved one)
• Longing for something pleasurable can lead us to destructive behaviours (one extreme, could be get addicted to a drug).
• Destructive emotions undermine our wellbeing creating internal turmoil and depriving mental freedom
• Destructive emotional states, like greed, hatred, and malice
• Potential destructive depending on intensity, like attachment, anger and fear
• Emotions appeared for evolutionary purposes
• Attachment creates bonds
• Anger repel forces for survival
• Fear responds to threats by vigilance
• Envy prompts to compete to not disregard our needs
• However destructive emotions do not have constructive elements e.g. hatred is always destructive
• Duality of emotions appears also for doubt, shame, grief, competitiveness, egoism (distinguish between healthy sense of self and unhealthy sense of self)
• Destructive emotions have a tendency to distort the sense of reality (e.g. attachment becomes greed, anger becomes hatred) and makes us unable to act in our own interest.  They cloud our capacity of discernment
• Unrealistic perspective
• Anger family, characterised by an exaggerated repulsion: hatred, enmity, malice
• Attachment family, characterised by an exaggerated attraction: greed, lust, craving
• Envy, pride and doubt family, characterised by a mixture of excessive attraction and excessive repulsion
• Envy is attachment and attraction plus anger and hostility
• Pride includes conceit, arrogance, prejudice and obsessive embarrassment, that is attraction and repulsion
• Doubt includes anxiety, obsessive guilt rooted in fear and self-loathing
• We use a two-fold approach: to reduce the impact of destructive emotions and to develop our natural positive qualities
• Reduce: taking a position (commitment?9 to neutralize and use antidotes (positive antidotes).  Based on the understanding of the harm of the emotions use heedfulness, mindfulness, and awareness.
• Develop strong enthusiasm and determination to avoid the harm and the disturbance of our inner peace
• Understanding causes: we use to attribute the cause outside, but when we reflect, we understand that our reactions depends on our outlook, attitude and emotional habits.  Although we can be right, when something wrong happen our feelings can be often unrealistic and exaggerated, mostly dominated by our habits.  Therefore, we must pay attention to these habits.  For example, anger mostly perpetuate by our lack of contentment that facilitate the trigger of the destructive emotions.
• Awareness: we must be open and honest with ourselves and bring awareness to our emotional triggers, how we feel, and what behaviours they provoke.
• Attentiveness: it is difficult to achieve.  This is natural and we must develop awareness gradually, with patient perseverance.  Starting with the outward manifestations of our behaviour because they are easier to notice.  After some training, we can walk back the casual chain to eventually eliminate the afflictive emotion.
• Catching oneself: be vigilant to become familiar with the ways destructive emotions affects us physically.  The we can try to observe our physical and mental responses to the sensations (voice changes, closing fists, ...).  Then, we step back in the causal chain to the moment the emotion arises (use breath).  Eventually we can catch the emotion before it arises getting less sensitive to the triggers, and not allowing the projection that distorts reality.
• Moods (Dr. Ekman) there is a continuum between emotions, moods, and personal traits, each one more persistent than the precedent.  So the way of treating them is the same.  Although moods seem more difficult to change, they are not permanent (e.g. we change mood when we hear good news).  The way is always dealing with the underlying emotion.