Emotions on-demand

 


Hey, welcome in.


Have a seat, have a sip of water.



You've been poisoned with SHAME - do you know the antidote?


Thankfully, you do. You REMEMBER YOU UNCONDITIONALLY LOVE YOURSELF. Feeling better, you fight and overcome the evil doctor who poisoned you. Once subdued, you check the doctor's things to make sure there are no other poisons to WORRY about.


You find a case filled with liquid vials. Some look heavenly and some sickly.


Do you know which vial is for which purpose? 


Do you know the antidote for all of them?


Let's explore the case.


The vials read: 

🧪  Love

🧪  Envy

🧪  Happiness

🧪  Boredom

🧪  Anger

🧪  Fear

🧪  Sadness

🧪  Anxiety

🧪  Self-pity


🧪 You grab the rose-colored LOVE vial.


The front reads: 

PRESCRIPTION: "IF YOU WISH TO BE LOVED, LOVE"

  1. Love comes from understanding and sensitivity
    1. Be sensitive to everything around one—to the plants, the animals, the trees, the skies, the waters of the river, the bird on the wing; and also to the moods of the people around one, and to the stranger who passes by. This sensitivity brings about the quality of uncalculated, unselfish response, which is true morality and conduct. To be sensitive is to love.
      1. Realize it will be change and be lost.
      2. Love does that. It shines on the good and bad alike; it makes rain fall on the saints and sinners alike. Is it possible for the rose to say, 'I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad'?"
    2. Love is a verb. You can only receive true love by doing it yourself to people worthy of it...by loving people who will love you back. It cannot be forced, nor can it be something you do expecting it in return. And it doesn't only apply to marriages or "romantic" relationships. True friendships are founded on the exact same principle. You want to "build" a family? Then you have to learn how to love, and to wisely and shrewdly pick someone to love, who will love you back in the same manner. And when you find that person to love, do they express gratitude? Unbeknown to each other, on the day before Christmas, she cut off her hair and sells it to a wig maker to get the money to buy the chain fob, while he goes and sells his watch to buy her the combs for her long, beautiful hair. It's a tale of true love...love the VERB. A husband and a wife loving each other. Remember JFK's most famous quote? "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." JFK was talking about love. Loving your country. It's the exact same thing in a marriage, or a friendship or any other relationship based on mutual love.

That was a good one.


🧪 You decide to grab the SHAME vial again, recognizing the translucent oily liquid from earlier.


Taking a closer look, the back reads: 

ANTIDOTE: REALIZE YOU ARE LOVED UNCONDITIONALLY

  1. Keep healing your shame. Learn to treat yourself with self-compassion. Complex trauma creates shame and an experience of living in danger all the time. The parts you considered weak are valid and beautiful. You are worthy of love. Complex trauma creates human doers rather than human beings. They do in order to feel value, because they don’t feel like they have any value in being. All of their sense of value comes from externals, not internal, exactly the opposite of the way it should be.
  2. Vulnerability is the cure to shame. Shame is the intent to conceal. Without concealing there is no shame. Stand there. 


🧪 Next you inspect a sickly green vial called ENVY. Even the glass is curved and deforming.


The front merely reads: 

ANTIDOTE: KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU WANT

  1. Ultimately, envy is the result of not knowing who you are. It arises when you outsource your definitions of success to whatever norms you have adopted - whether consciously or not. In one person's case, it might be wealth. In another, it may be social media followers. In another, it could be the size of a home. Regardless of what the barometer is, the fact that you desire it means that you're looking. beyond the contents of your mind and into the collective pool of society. You're ceasing to look into what makes you uniquely you, and are gazing into the chaos of chasing that which you don't understand.
  2. "Beware of envy. The idea of caring that someone is making money faster than you are is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. It is not greed that drives the world but envy.",


🧪 You are drawn to inspect a bubbly vial labeled HAPPINESS. The serum hums when you hold it.


The front reads: 

PRESCRIPTION: CULTIVATE EQUANIMITY. PEACE OF MIND IS THE PRECURSOR TO HAPPINESS

  1. Saw wow. Realize how amazing the moment is
  2. Appreciation is the key to happiness. It's not about having what you want, it's about wanting what you've got. "Value what you have above all the rest, and conclude that no beauty can be greater than what you see." Perspective is the key to appreciation. "You can dance in the rain or sulk in the rain, it will rain regardless." We cannot change the weather but we can change our attitude towards it. 
  3. “If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are."
  4. “How can I enjoy this 10% more”. Every time I ask this, my whole body relaxes instantly

🧪 Next you inspect a vial that seems empty. The label faintly reads BOREDOM.


There is barely any text. Only:

ANTIDOTE: IMAGINATION

  1. There was a word my daughter asked me - what does boring mean. I told her it’s not a bad word but it’s a word I don’t really use, because I’ve never been bored. Because part of it means that your imagination is broken. So you’ve gotta find something to do and you’ve gotta use your imagination better.
  2. Foreboding boredom (not talking about pleasant idleness here) is the quiet horror of knowing you have burnt the part of yourself that desires. The problem isn't that there's "nothing to do", the problem is typically that you don't want to do anything. You have to continually return to what you love, what you think is beautiful and good.
  3. "Boredom is the very germ of all freedom"


🧪 The next vial is fancy and inscribed with FEELING IMPORTANT. Huh, even the text is different from the others. 


Once again, there is an antidote attached:

ANTIDOTE: "INTIMACY IS THE ONLY COMPLETELY SATISFYING ANSWER TO STIMULUS-HUNGER, RECOGNITION-HUNGER, and STRUCTURE-HUNGER"

As well as:

PRESCRIPTION for INTIMACY: SELF-ACCEPTANCE

  1. Intimacy is all about acceptance. If you cannot accept yourself for who you are then you can not accept your partner, it's a paradox of life. How do we do it? You must dig deep into your past, every aspect of your life, that made you who you are today. Why are you with the person you are with now? Do they make you feel protected, do they remind you of someone who was/is important to you (mother father etc)? Are you unconsciously exploiting some sort of personal trait this person has? It sounds crazy but all these things, and more, contribute to your life. But regarding intimacy, self acceptance is your answer.
  2. Having no identity also solves importance.


🧪 Your eyes are drawn to another sharp red vial. As soon as you pick the vial up it begins to bubble with powerful energy. The label reads ANGER


There is a calming script on the back: ANTIDOTE: NOT HAVING AN IDENTITY


  1. Anger comes from fear. When you are angry in a car, you identify with your body and the car, and you are suddenly aware of how vulnerable you are to losing - the car, and therefore the body, and you get angry. Road rage begins with fear. Without identity you don't need anything, then you can't lose anything, then you can't fear anything. And then you can't be something that's threatened. 
    1. Why do I get angry when I am insulted? Because I entertain the verity of the insult. Because something within you entertains the possibility that you might, in fact, be. Then something else within you grows irritated by the idea that you might be. This internal conflict manifests itself as anger. 
    2. "Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head. 'Ay but,” said he, “Whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him who he took me to be.' You didn’t throw water on me, you threw water on the man you mistook me for.",
    3. Anger is born of unfulfilled desire. It is born of unfulfilled expectation.
  2. The antidote to anger is understanding (love). If you’re angry, do not let it out. Anger is a signal that you do not understand, you do not love. The emotion comes from within, we if we let it out we are not dealing with it within. If someone calls you words, do not hit him out of anger. Understand that he is having a bad day, react with loving tenderness and a smile, love him because he needs it most.
  3. Healthy anger is how you respond to your boundaries being transgressed. The antidote to anger is action. When you are angry at someone standing out of line the emotion wishes you would tap them on the shoulder and ask if they could please stand in line 😁. 


🧪 The next vial is icy when you pick it up. It reads FEAR


There is a multistep formula on the front.


ANTIDOTE: BE OK WITH DYING

  1. All fear is fear of death: Loss, Abandonment, Getting kicked out of the tribe - all lead to death
    1. "One gets indifferent, hard and callous, and one’s mind becomes duller and duller. If we do not get used to it we try to escape from it by taking some kind of drug, joining a political group, shouting, writing, going to a football match or to a temple or church, or finding some other form of amusement. Why is it that we escape from actual facts? We are afraid of death and we invent all kinds of theories, hopes, beliefs, to disguise the fact of death, but the fact is still there. To understand a fact we must look at it, not run away from it. Most of us are afraid of living as well as of dying. We are afraid for our family, afraid of public opinion, of losing our job, our security, and hundreds of other things. The simple fact is that we are afraid, not that we are afraid of this or that. Now why cannot we face that fact?"
    2. "On a friend dying - We never feel grief when we lose something we have allowed to be free, that we have never attempted to possess.",
    3. Face your fear. 2) Imagine that you fail. 3) Write down what happens in the worst case. 4) Find acceptance of the worst case. 5) Revisit your fear. You will likely find its grip is no longer that strong.
  2. Hope gives birth to fear (Of loss). Hope comes from attachment. Attachment comes from need. 
    1. "Seneca learned from Hecato that limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope and you will cease to fear’ Both belong to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking to the future. Both are due to projecting our thoughts far ahead instead of adapting ourselves to the present.",
    2. Cease to hope and you will cease to fear. Cease to want and you will cease to hope. Cease to attach and you will cease to want. 
    3. Fear losing something real or in imagination <-> hope <- wanting something <- seeing something as a benefit you need / attaching to something (because you cannot survive without it) <- because you will die

And the ANTIDOTE to fear of death: 

  1. "And his ideas in death: Let us disarm death. Upon all occasions of every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, 'Well, and if it had been death itself?'",
  2. "A man with a good understanding faculty must consider what it is to die. He can conceive of it as nothing other than a work of nature, and he that fears and work of nature is a very child. Man can part with no life properly, save for that little part of life which he now lives: and that which he lives, is no other, than that which at every instant he parts with. A man cannot truly part with the future or the past, for how should a man part with that which he hath not?", 


🧪 You notice a vial where the liquid is very active, seemingly running in circles under the glass. It reads ANXIETY 


The front says ANTIDOTE: REALIZE YOU ARE SAFE: BE HIGH STATUS, IN CONTROL, and POWERFUL. MAKE CHOICES, BOX, HUG, EAT.


  1. Anxiety is a sign that you haven’t fully made sense of something in the past. Because the only way that the future can feel threatening is if you’re afraid that something you know you can’t handle is going to happen again. A) Your brain and your body are constantly feeling out how safe the current surroundings are, and it does that by gauging how many unknown variables there are. Bad experiences that are not fully made sense of remain feeling like a potentially dangerous unknown. B) Memories that haven’t been fully processed will linger. Lingering is a sign you haven’t learned how to deal with a challenge the first time around.
  2. Anxiety and excitement are the same aroused state, just positive or negative. Tell yourself you are excited
    1. Next time you find yourself overthinking, keep your eyeballs still. Your mind will stop ruminating.
    2. If you study deer who are charged by a bear, they have a third option after fight or flight since they are already going to die. They freeze, and then dissociate from the experience. If the bear does not eat them, you can see the deer get up super stiff, still part frozen, then shake themselves vigorously like they were cold. Humans miss this step after a stressful moment. Shake off the freeze. 
  3. Anxiety comes from dependency


🧪 Then there is one tiny vial in the corner of the case. It seems to be hiding like a mouse, or stuck in the side of the case like a thorn. It reads: SELF-PITY


The ANTIDOTE is simple: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY


  1. Even if your child is dying of cancer, self-pity is not going to help. Self-pity is the standard response, but you can train yourself out of it.


Do you understand the vials? 


Would you be a better doctor for yourself and others?


Before you leave, you decide to read the general advice on the back of the emotion case.

  • All negative emotions - anger, insecurity, jealousy, guilt, shame, and greed - are rooted in fear. All positive emotions are rooted in trust.
  • At the end of your life you will be dissatisfied. At the end of your life there will be things you have accomplished and wish you accomplished, the same as you feel now. Your relationship with that feeling is what matters. Your internal dialogue is the vector, not the environment, or what you’ve done, or any of that.
  • Happiness is a mimetic meme (and at some point it was sadness…). If you look back to 16th-century Renaissance Europe, there's a fascination with sadness that’s almost the equivalent of today’s fascination with happiness. You start seeing a lot of authors writing about how to be sad better, and what the appropriate sort of sadness is. It’s seen as valuable because it brings you closer to God. It makes you more humble and more serious. In some cases, a more severe form of sadness, melancholia, was aligned with genius. Careful what you value.
  • If you can be in a bad mood for no reason, you can be in a good mood for no reason. 
  • To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child
  • Separate your internal feelings from the external things going on around you. You will experience a full range of feelings no matter what; in fact, you wouldn’t want it any other way!
  • Platforms engage their users through fluctuating their emotions. This is why the crazy tiktok is every fifth video. Heartwarming, violent, surprising, comedy. Pingpong emotions -> cat video -> outrage -> cat video -> outrage to maximize engagement.
  • Why have mood at all? Sometimes there are good days to do things and sometimes there are bad days to do things. Emotions are like weather. You do need it to rain sometime in order to make food. I decided at some point I'm gonna have my PhD by the time I'm 30 and tenure by the time in 40.  Those were decisions I made like a ship would pick destinations. There were plenty of days in which things were challenging and so what you want to do in trying to navigate any course is when emotions come up, see them like weather. Sometimes you tack down the ship, you wait out the weather, sometimes you take a different course but you don't all of a sudden say, "I'm gonna steer for a completely different coast because the waves are choppy." Or, "It's looking really nice over there, let's just go over there instead." And so emotions are like weather and so you want to take advantage of them when they're taking you toward your destination but you also want to think rationally about than when they're not. And I think that's something that very powerful in navigating any kind of series of nodes of decision in trying to complete a process, whatever short or long term process that is.
  • It is before your birth, and you’re standing before a vast wall of books. Each book is a character. The book doesn’t detail the type of life – location, parents, job, school – but rather the internal experience of the character. Is the character optimistic? Is it sad? How does it react to things? You choose the book of a peaceful, graceful character, at ease with themselves, without fear.
  • "Your mind can’t tell fact from fiction. Your heart races during a horror movie even though you consciously know it is just a movie. Your mouth waters when you think of a lemon."
  • Participants were willing to pay the same amount of money to save 2,000, 20,000, or 200,000 birds from drowning in oil ponds. The number of birds made very little difference. The participants reacted to the prototype—the awful image of helpless birds drowning in thick oil. The almost complete neglect of quantity in such emotional contexts has been confirmed many times.