I am seemingly prone to emotional reactivity. The time between something happening or something being said, to the time when I react in a crashing outburst are often not separated by much time. In plain words, I have a short fuse.
Is it something that bothers me? I suppose, yes. Is it something I wish I would get better at avoiding? Most certainly. Have I found a strategy to begin lessening this impulsivity? We’ll see…
Solace, if needed, would be found in knowing that I am not alone in my proclivity to a negative behaviour. While the specific symptoms of the personality I embody may vary greatly from the people around me, none of us are exempt from our own faults and deficiencies. Our brains act as an operating system of sorts, and each computer is bound to have a susceptibility to certain bugs.
The course-correct to these bugs, I’m led to consider, is to separate the agent from the emotion—to see the nuance between observer and actor.
When we so heavily identify with our agent role that reactions remain impulses, we are caught. Freedom from these symptoms comes from observation. “Anger, anger, anger… judging, judging, judging… comparison, comparison, comparison…”
We liberate ourselves when we are able to detach from the cognitive assessments that we engender through practically every moment of our lives. Rather than holding the emotion in the deepest part of our being, we can become the observer of the thoughts and feelings, simply naming and noting the emotions as they arise. “Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy… frustration, frustration, frustration…”
As we begin this practice of naming emotions, we begin to lessen our association with our personal role and identity. Doing this will increase the time between feeling and reaction, and we will more easily be able to diminish the effects of these internally systemic symptoms.
“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
— Ram Dass