From my admittedly rushed reading of posts today, I got the idea that CH et al interpreted your position as saying people are able to control emotions themselves. If you meant this, I would agree with him; no one can stop those rushes of anger, fear, indignation, irritation, impatience, but one certainly can decide HOW to use the emotional response. ANd that's what I think you might mean. It's confusing when you say "control emotional responses", which implies the choice to NOT FEEL or to feel in a certain way. Not possible- unless one has had some kind of psychotic break with reality!
But I definitely believe we choose how to act on our emotions. So that if Terry says to me, "You are a stupid parrot," I may have the immediate uncontrollable feeling of anger or hurt, but I can choose my response- to say something rude back or I can choose to ignore him, or I can choose to laugh with him and ask for a cracker.
We all know what the BEST response is for us, we just don't always choose it. |
