We’re emotionally set on edge when we confront a life or death situation like a gun pressed to our head. But can our thoughts alone create the same emotional anxiety? Just think of the nightmare that woke you in a cold sweat.  The scary feeling when you imagined falling from a ledge on the eightieth floor.  The surge of anger when you thought of being unjustly treated. The memory of that car accident.  Or for some, simply the thought of dying.  Our thoughts can create the same emotions and sense of fear. It seems so real although the actual event is not happening to us. Our emotions do not rely upon outside stimuli. They pulse with the same power in the inner sanctum of our minds.

The Inner Sanctum of Our Mind Is a Source for Both Emotion and Reason

This stimulation of our emotions by our thoughts alone happens just like the real event, faster than our thought process.  And it can overcome us in a microsecond. Wherever the stimuli comes from, outside or inside, it leaves us with only a small window of opportunity to grasp the chance to think through the situation and to make a responsible decision on what we should feel, think or do. If we miss that small window, we must, as soon as we can, wrest our thoughts from the escalating emotion and examine the emotion rather than submit to it. We then open a new window of opportunity for our reason to take over.

Emotions Can Operate Independent of Reality

We can observe something more when we awake from a nightmare. Notice it takes a few seconds to return to normal, doesn’t it? The emotions remain real even after we become conscious of the fact that it was only a dream. Therefore, the stirring of our emotions is not dependent upon an ongoing imagination. We have already realized that it is over. Emotions can operate independent of reality. They are seemingly a world to themselves, coming or going with or without will, existing with stimulation or without it. They can even creep up on us without conscious thought, as in a nightmare. Part of our confusion is in the terms we use, which are not precise because it is so difficult to be precise about feelings.

We can also set our emotions in motion by fantasizing. Unreal monsters frighten our children. These creatures appear that have no connection to what our children have ever seen or in any way encountered. Science fiction films and horror movies that bear little resemblance to reality are stock-in-trade for scaring adult audiences. Emotions do not depend upon the world of reality or even anything we believe in to get at our emotionally vulnerable spots.

So, What Are Emotions?

What are emotions? Or how do our minds work if they are not dependent on reality? It’s a question we humans still can’t answer after millennia of experience with ourselves and with life. That is, perhaps, not surprising since the mind we use to understand our mental processing is no greater than that mind itself.  Therefore, it cannot stand aside or above itself to gain a perspective.

To think of the emotional mind in physical or mechanical terms is to reduce us to being a machine of sorts and life to being a deception, neither of which we can live with. We think of ourselves as so much more.  And our self-image is not satisfied with being proud of a mind that engages in merely robotic meanderings.

If such limited perceptions of human life and genius are how we are to understand ourselves, we have also lost the magic and mystery of life and sold out all our creative wonders (such as intuition, imagination, emotions, and ingenuity) to mechanistic explanations. Do we not feel taller, bolder, stronger when we think of ourselves as more than mechanistic marvels, but rather as images that reach beyond the stars? Is not life represented to us more satisfyingly when we think of ourselves in terms of mystery? The emotional mind is beyond us, bigger than us.  Yet, it lives and moves in us and, as a result, we feel we are intricately a part of its magic.

Emotions Bring Both Meaning and Challenge to Life

An F child sitting in class or an F adult at a meeting can be distracted with no outside disturbance evident, suddenly breaking out in tears, or a sweat, or be otherwise far away at the whim of their emotional mind. Understand what could be happening to that child and what is happening to you when you lose your concentration and these powerful emotions transform you. The brain does not know the difference between what we vividly imagine in the inner sanctum of the mind and what we experience in real life.  And it can process both as though they are real. Have you asked yourself what we would be missing if emotions had to be connected to some reality that is currently happening before we could feel them?

So, the NF (who is super-sensitive and lives primarily in their inner world) finds his thoughts and feelings can conquer him without time for him to stop the initial interruption.  He then punishes himself for being mentally incapable of the concentration others seem to have.

Emotions Bring Both Meaning and Challenge

Don’t feel inferior if your emotions gain control of you. You only need to evaluate them and make decisions about them as soon as possible.  And the more you believe in this possibility, the more you will be able to achieve this “after-the-fact” control. Your emotions bring both meaning and challenge to your life.

I wonder how many children have been reprimanded for such mental experiences that disturbed their attention in class.  Or scolded for waking from a wild and scary dream to upset a tired parent. The stronger the F, the greater the chances of such happenings. It’s truly all in their minds.

What Have We Learned?

We can learn much from our attempts to understand the way we are impacted by our emotions, such as:

• Emotions are not dependent on reality.
• Emotions can come seemingly without conscious provocation, as in a dream.
• If we don’t catch the first opportunity to examine them, we can catch the next.
• The more we practice self-control, the stronger our mental muscle becomes.
• We would be impoverished by the disappearance of emotions that are stimulated by things inside of us and by nothing we can detect.

Yet, we have not learned the whole story about our emotions.