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Comment by jancsika | Hacker News Reader

Do you do the same with emotions? E.g., a) What is this emotion, b) no, that's the undue amount of stress from this particular encounter, c) larger, basic emotion that is the reason you're ruminating about a total stranger taking 20 seconds at the counter to decide on a coffee order after waiting 10 minutes in line... :)

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No, I treat emotions as yet to be vocalized or identified observations. Emotions are like unsaid statements, hanging in a pregnant pause. If I find myself caught up in emotion, that is a likely scenario where bias can enter my self conversation, and being aware of the danger of self conversation bias, I turn my suspicious self against myself and re-center logically. Wash away that emotion with analysis and awareness.

I find trying to hide and wash away emotions tends to be a dangerous strategy long term. I get that sometimes emotions are unproductive for the task at hand, but the longer you keep washing them away with "logic", the stronger they keep returning at inopportune times. The long term strategy that works for me is to acknowledge them, actually listen to them, but also recognize I have the ability to act despite them. Easier said than done of course.

My use of "wash away" is more like "transform from unstated feeling to stated feeling with new analysis minimizing bias, for future decisions". It's not a suppression, it's a making stated what was unstated before. It's an attempt at self honesty.

Ah fair enough, that wasn't completely transparent to me.

"Fighting and hiding emotions is counterproductive if your goal is clarity and internal harmony" is a life-lesson that took me all too long to learn, so I'm a bit militant about pushing back on the "fight/hide/ignore" approach to this.

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