I often hear from our clients who suffer from disorders such as panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and phobias; Teacher, I wish I didn't have a feeling of fear, I never worried, I didn't experience a feeling called sadness, I'm always afraid, what should I do! What should a person who is afraid of everything do? I am very unhappy and lonely! How can I get over my anxiety? I can say that sentences and questions like these helped me write this article.
When I start writing, I would like to start with a question. With your five basic sense organs; Have you ever thought that you cannot see, taste, notice smells, hear sounds or feel the object you touch?
When we visualize this situation, almost all of us realize that our lives have become almost impossible. Just as our five sense organs facilitate our physical life, we can describe our emotions as elements that protect and direct our spiritual life and even enable us to survive. When we imagined a life process in which we were devoid of emotions, we would experience serious difficulties and problems both psychologically and socially. I would like to ask you to stretch your imagination a little to explain this.
For example, let's say that a very advanced tool has been invented by scientists with which we can completely eliminate any emotion we want. Let's say, for example, that when we use this tool, we completely get rid of our feeling of fear and no longer feel fear at all, no matter what.
-What do you think our lives would be like in the face of such an invention?
-How would our relationships with your family, spouse, children or friends continue?
-Or how could people who had no sense of fear and had to work at the top of a tall building continue to work at that height?
– What would your non-swimming friend do without fear during your seaside holiday?
-How would we cross the street with heavy traffic?
-How would we use our motor vehicles?
The feeling of fear is the negative emotion that our clients generally state that they are most disturbed by. It comes first. However, it is not compatible with life for this feeling to completely disappear or disappear from our lives. On the contrary, when a situation that truly threatens our lives occurs, our most valuable friend that will keep us alive is our sense of fear. Even though human beings today make their lives easier with technological devices, manage to extend their survival time with developments in the field of health, and make life safer with the laws they impose, if we lack the sense of fear, our lives will probably end in a short time.
To give an example on this subject, we can look at the statistics of traffic accidents. According to statistical data in America in the mid-1970s, alcohol was the most important factor in 60% of traffic accidents resulting in death. The cause of death of more than half of young people, especially between the ages of 16 and 20, is related to alcohol.
So what causes such a statistic?
Certain areas of the brains of people who use alcohol are affected. Especially those affected The first of these areas is the emotional area. As a result of affecting the emotional area of the brain, alcohol causes the person to relax, reduce anxiety, cheer up and thus lose behavioral control. Although small doses of alcohol do not completely eliminate a person's feeling of anxiety, increasing the dose reduces the person's feeling of anxiety to similar levels. The person's sensory perception continues, but the decrease in the sense of fear causes the person to behave without thinking about the possible consequences, which can lead to tragic traffic accidents. Let's take it. Let's think of someone who has never felt sadness or unhappiness in his life. I wonder what the life of such a person would be like?
The feeling of sadness or unhappiness is an emotion we feel, for example, when a loved one leaves us or when we experience a loss that results in his death. Imagine what someone who has never experienced this feeling will experience in their social environment and relationships? He might not realize what he was deprived of in his life, and maybe he wouldn't even care about it. It is even possible that he has He would not appreciate what he had and would not try to protect it, and would gradually become poor and lonely.
On the contrary, if we never experienced the feeling of happiness, which is one of the emotions we consider positive, this would result in a negative picture, but a picture that does not match with life would not be formed. . Most likely, the person would live a bad life, but the consequences of being deprived of the feeling of happiness would not be as devastating as losing the feeling of unhappiness.
We also know that living chronically deprived of the feeling of happiness is a picture that is incompatible with life: Such phenomena are called "dysthymia". It has been defined as a psychiatric disorder. Many people can survive this way. The idea that not feeling unhappiness can cause more serious losses than not feeling happiness may seem strange to you, but if you try to visualize this situation, maybe you will agree with me.
Another emotion that is considered as a negative emotion is "guilt and regret". Let's think. What would life be like if people did not feel guilty?
On this subject, I would like to tell you about "antisocial personality disorder". The most well-known feature of this personality structure is that individuals with antisocial personality disorder do not feel guilty. People with this disorder show and feel almost no signs of remorse or guilt, despite all the torment they inflict and all the pain they inflict. As a result of this disorder, they often have problems with the security forces and the law due to the terrible crimes they commit. Therefore, the fact that we do not feel guilt and remorse will most likely cause us to live in a life where we constantly commit crimes.
The feeling of anger is one of the emotions that sometimes disturbs people, although it is not as intense as fear, sadness and guilt. But what would our life be like if we never felt the emotion of anger?
If you try to remember when you got angry, you can more easily understand what role it plays in your life: Anger is an emotion we generally feel when our rights are usurped, or when a behavior we do not want is displayed deliberately or knowingly. Express your anger to the people in front of you Imagine people who do not reflect this emotion much or do not feel this emotion. We usually say that such people have a mouth but no tongue. So is it healthy to act like this? Where does the result of acting like this lead us?
Most likely, people would start to ignore us and behave as they wish in our relationships. In short, they would start doing whatever they wanted.
As you may have noticed, all our feelings actually have very important functions in our lives, and no emotion causes a negative result on its own. On the contrary, not feeling our emotions or being deprived of them may have negative consequences.
Just as we need all the limbs in our body and they all have a duty and function, we can think of our emotions as limbs that make up our spiritual structure. All our emotions, both positive and negative, are necessary and have a very important function in our lives. In fact, it should be noted that our negative emotions are relatively more necessary and vital than positive emotions.
To summarize, our emotions are the most important part of our sign system. What we need to focus on is noticing our emotions, understanding them, seeing what they indicate and trying to act accordingly. It is not to ignore our emotions.
Another point we will focus on is what kind of connection there is between the event we experience and the emotion we feel, and how much does it overlap? If our reaction to the event we experience and the emotions we feel are extreme, it may be useful to get professional support.
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