Feelings, applied



Notes on what feelings are and how to live with them, how to use them productively etc.

Behold the signal of Old Time/that bids you close your pantomime

Depression

See depression.

Feelings as loss/reward functions

See predictive coding and moral wetware.

Shared feelings are made of shared beliefs

See simulacra, and tribal beliefs.

Acceptance and commitment

Alternative approach to handling first-emotional-response feelings that are not helpful. Sounds interesting and useful, in that people I know seem to get use out of it. Would I?

This Is How To Be Resilient: 4 Secrets To Grit When Life Gets Hard:

So how do we control our negative feelings? Easy answer:

You can’t.

Control is the problem, not the solution. Any rigid attempt to resist negative feelings won’t work in the Willy Wonka land of emotions. The only way to win the tug of war with feelings is to drop the rope. We must go from avoidance to acceptance.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: acceptance does not mean caving and giving in. You don’t have to like, agree with or obey the feelings. But you can’t ignore, avoid or fight them. Acceptance means allowing them to unfold without judgment, resistance or compliance.

Incoming

@DonMexlar’s feel pyramid.

References

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 2017. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Illustrated edition. Mariner Books.
Haidt, Jonathan. 2013. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Illustrated edition. New York: Vintage.
Parr, Thomas, Giovanni Pezzulo, and Karl J. Friston. 2022. Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

No comments yet. Why not leave one?

GitHub-flavored Markdown & a sane subset of HTML is supported.