YOU'RE OVERLY SENSITIVE

There are many techniques people use to shut off having to hear the emotions of others. One in the series of useless statements is the title here: You're overly sensitive. Where does one set the gauge or range of acceptable levels of feelings. I've always believed people feel whatever they feel , freely. Their actions may not be as free. Rage cannot give way to mayhem, violence, assault on another, or murder. However, one might fantasy all those things and cause no harm to anyone.

I've written before about the ploy of disqualifying someone's feelings to get them to stop speaking of them. Men, Nature's Natural 'Fixers', do this more than women (who can usually handle more feelings with less squeamishness). The usual ways of disqualifying are to ask, "Why do you feel that way?" without wanting to know the reason behind the feeling at all, but rather meaning, 'Why haven't you been able to turn off that feeling?", or simply stating, "Stop feeling that way."

Wikipedia defines emotion as an"affective state involving a high level of activation, visceral changes and strong feelings. Over the history of psychology there have been many different ways to classify emotions. Most current theories classify emotions as a set of basic emotions that can be blended.

Within psychology there are several, different, approaches towards emotions. Modern theories include cognitive functions of emotions, the neuro-psychology of emotions. There is an approach that emotions are evolutionary adaptations that allow people and animals to deal adequately with a broad range of situations with very limited conscious reasoning."

The area for which there is less research and understanding is how physiologic processes affect emotion. While that article deals with hormones and emotions, another deals specifically with pre-menstrual emotions.

One can learn to control emotions only by becoming skilled at acting, in whatever manner one believes to be a 'normal' reaction to the situation. We all have to learn to act at times. We try to control our tears and rage, we don't rant in places where we know we will be criticized rather than sympathized with, whatever we believe to be our suffering. Pride disallows an enemy to see our feelings for fear they will hurt us when we are vulnerable. Fear of 'hurting people's feelings' often makes people hold back expressing their emotions. There are many reasons why people 'act' differently than they feel. Our political campaigns are good examples. People only want to see and hear 'up' candidates.

When Hillary acted privately with her emotions she was viewed as cold. When she cried publicly in New Hampshire, she was accused of faking it. When Barack's minister expressed the rage felt by most blacks too close to slavery in their heritage, he chose to displace the rage rather than explain why he felt it. No reasonable person can hear a minister call God to damn our country and feel comfortable and patriotic. Not everyone has learned how to be tactful, politically correct, or discuss feelings instead of blaming others for their discomfort and frustrations.

Maybe someday we can go to a machine like an ATM, put money in, and get the proper balancing of emotions 'fix'. If all our money doesn't get spent in Iraq, we may go back to working on our own country and more research for a change.