differences and similarities between negative emotion and
physical pain
discomfort/painful ,s
internal feeling for emotion, and internal and external feeling for
physical pain ,d
emotion involves a lot of thought processes and sometimes behavior
and has wide range of outcomes,
physical pain the thought process is straight forward, "i am
feeling painful", d
physical pain is straight forward, emotional pain is complex and
subjective
emotion pain happens in the upper body. the regions that we sensed,
recognise and convinced the different feelings
like anger or fear are heart, oesophagus and breathing
discomfort.
physical sensation, emotions, cognition and behavior are
related.
How negative emotional process works
first an factor trigger emotion in you. you feel it in heart,
breathing and oesophagus discomfort. Your brain will instaneously
know whether it is either fear, sadness or anger.
Unlike physical pain like stomachache, emotional feelings are
triggered by sorts of things in life. therefore, it is a wide
topic.
In physical pain, the mind knows that the causes of pain is either
the problems in the body system, the food we eat. There is nothing
much to analyse or take action other than enduring or seeing an
doctor. The process is short.
In emotional pain, the mind will assume that the external trigger
is the starting cause. (for ex. , a teacher scold you in front of
the class) . the reasoning will take place, analysis of issue will
take place. However, our reasoning is largely shaped by society,
what our environment and past has taught us. Things like fairness,
morality, consideration and our feelings are the parameters we
weigh.
Because these values and reasonings are many and contradicting, our
minds are very stress in emotional pain because it cannot figure
out what is the truth. Unlike physical pain, emotional pain is more
confusing.
A bias perception, belief in the initial stage will lead to
mistakes in further thought, decisions and your actions. Our
emotions and thoughts get entangled in the process.
General solution
The solution can be divided into two parts. First, when an issue
happens, you must practised not being affected by it. Like when
teacher scold you, you feel sad. When you feel sad, it is
uncomfortable feeling, and you will take into account this
discomfort in your reasoning which is going to lead to
errors.
When teacher scolds you, you should learn not to feel sad because
when you succeed in doing that, you will save yourself from feeling
discomfort. This can be done by conditioning and practising the
calm feeling you want to get with the situation.
When you clear the emotional discomfort from the issue, your
reasoning will be clearer because you have filtered out the
feelings of discomfort which create strong bias because the ego
always seeks to protect ourselves from discomfort. This can be seen
if you recall that after an emotional episode and after a sleep or
some time, when the feelings of emotions are drained away, your
mind does not preoccupies itself with the episode so much.
It is the feelings of discomfort of the emotions that create a
strong basis for the mind to keep ruminating over an issue.
The second part of the solution is correct reasoning. This is going
to take a long time because a lot of trial and errors is going to
take place to verify what kind of reasonings is right or wrong. You
need not need to think about a event everytime it trigger a emotion
because as I have said, reasoning is a slow and long process and
usually we make many mistakse in perception here and there, plus
our faulty reasoning.
To err is to be human, so when you are emotional , dun fall into
the trap of trying to make sense and justify the issue and prove
that you are right or what all the time. You can reason and anaylse
no doubt but do it with calmness and when you got time. If you are
in a middle of a busy work day and your boss scolds you wrongly,
you peobably wil not have a lot of time to reason things here and
there.
Reasoning is a life long activity, as long as you are alive, you
can think. So think when you are not so tight in your time and
schedule. This will mean that you have to remove some of your
entertainment life to change it to self reflection period and self
improvement period.
the most important thing in emotional event is not to dwell so much
on the opinion and judgment of the issue. stop thinking will help
to remove alot of pain will feelings of unjustice or disgust.
instead, focus on your current discomfort that has already being
triggered. it is usually the sensation of the heart, oesophagus and
breathing. since there have already been triggered, just endure it
and dun mix it up by adding more thinkingof the issue. focus on
your body not so much on the mind which is very noisy.
this requires good body awarness and mind control, which buddhism
often preaches on.