I get it! I finally understand! All of my reading and studying has finally paid off and I've made a discovery (crack out my patronage money please!)
Being a guy and more importantly a human being, Emotions have been really hard to understand, but I can finally put a definition to them better than Lieutenant Commander Data ever could:
Emotions are a higher level response to events of the past that are triggered in the present.
Imagine emotions as a scripted response whenever a very specific event happens in our present. Just like a piece of computer code, something triggers it, it executes a specific response, and suddenly we are "feeling" things. This is cool because there are only a few emotions (anger, guilt, frustration, fear, sadness, confusion, pain, happiness, love and I think that's all but correct me if you can think of any others[possibly passion?]). Sure, there are more complex emotions, like stress; but stress is a combination of confusion and frustration or anger; and there are more intense versions of emotions such as depression, which is extreme sadness mixed with possibly confusion or anger. All of these complex emotions are rooted in the basic emotions/
Anything can trigger an emotion, and Nothing can even trigger an emotion. Winning the lottery, buying a house, losing your house, buying a lotto ticket, tripping, sneezing, running into an old acquaintance, sitting at home alone, thinking--anything can trigger it and even the absence of anything (the lack of action, such as when you are thinking or when something happens to you that you have no control over) can trigger it. Any experience or desire for an experience can trigger it.
When an emotion is triggered, your mind makes rapid links to your past experiences. Every time that you felt fear, whether you were watching a scary movie or home alone or almost got in a car wreck, your subconscious mind is making a link to all of these experiences and recording data--generalizing data--to the point that it tells your almost-conscious mind: you've gotta go into anger mode, or fear mode, or frustrated mode, or confused mode, or sad mode. Suddenly chemicals are released in your body that cause a physical reaction, such as pumping more blood to prepare to fight when you're angry or releasing chemicals that improve your happiness.
When your mind "links to the past" what it is doing is comparing the past to the present so that it can categorize and make sense of what is happening. Having your dog die and your grandmother die will trigger sadness which is the brains way of saying to your conscious: "look, this is not very different from when Fido died. Now come up with a conscious decision of where to go from here and draw on your past experiences to make that decision."
This communication between your subconscious and your conscious is what I would call a "higher level response". It is a link between what your subconscious is good at doing (categorizing and making sense of things) and what your conscious is supposed to do, (make decisions). I used the term earlier "almost-conscious mind" but it is the same thing--it is a product of your conscious mind. Think of it as instructions from your subconscious to act and make a decision.
Here's where things get tricky. If it is Triggered by something in your present and it links to your past, then you're not really experiencing anything new when you feel that emotion. What you are feeling is the years of similar experiences in your life. So whether I am impatient because the guy at the cash register is taking up too much of my time (anger and frustration) or because my girlfriend cheated on me (anger and frustration) it's the same thing and only varies by degrees of intensity (and sometimes there really isn't variation between the two experiences).
Sadly, people believe that emotions are beyond their control. In some regards this is true, but when you take a step back you realize that you are in full control--remember: emotions are triggered responses, but they are triggered IN ORDER FOR YOU TO MAKE A DECISIONS . So next time you feel angry or frustrated or confused, if you can recognize the feeling and think about it critically, you realize that how you proceed is up to you. You can be mad at the clerk for being a slow old lady, or you can choose to take pity on her and understand her and think about your own life and you can prepare your own future so that you don't have to end up like her. The anger is a triggered response, but how you manage that emotion is completely up to you.
Unfortunately, there ARE things that you have no control over in this life: basically anything in your past. That old lady ringing you up is already slow already takign up your time and will continue to take up your time, you have no control over it at this point because your decisions led you to choose this store and this register. After your girlfriend has cheated on you, you can't control her, you can't go back in the past and change things to stop her--it's already happened. What your subconscious is telling you isn't that you should fight this person, it is telling you to do something so that in the future you don't face this scenario. (or in a happy situation it is telling you to do something to preserve this feeling and to make it happen again later).
So what do we do about negative emotions? --this is a mystery of life that I'm still trying to work out 100%, but what I DO know is that we need to address our emotions. Always. We need to OWN our emotions--just because your grandmother died doesn't make this feeling of sadness the doctor's fault. It doesn't make it your fault either that you didn't spend more time with her and you feel regret (sadness and confusion) for not utilizing that time. You can't sweep your emotions under the rug and say that you don't feel them, because it will only make the intensity worse the next time a sequence of events triggers that feeling. You can't blame others because the next time you feel that emotion you will think you are powerless to change things and you will instantly revert to your previous behavior the last time you felt that emotion.
You can train yourself into a specific action whenever you feel an emotion. People who have a history of running away from their problems are a prime example of this: they blame others or "life/fate/etc" (the absence of others), and then they never address the emotion and it happens again so they run away again, and then they feel the emotion and run away again. They get locked in a cycle of blaming others or no one, or themselves, and then they run away, and they do this because that's what they have trained themselves to do. The action becomes just as scripted as the emotion--and in fact, aren't there direct actions linked to the emotion, such as increased heart rate or chemical release?
Fortunately, you can (though it is hard) train yourself out of negative emotions. This requires a few different things:
First, you need to address what is at the root of the emotion. Let's say someone cuts in front of you in line and you get angry. Once you can recognize that you are feeling angry, you can think back to whatever similar circumstance made you angry--possibly the most angry experience that you can remember--and lets say that the thing that made you the most angry was that your best friend told you he was going to part from you because he found better friends. Made you feel worthless right? It made you feel angry because you were there for him and you would do anything for him and you think it's not fair. Well right now things aren't very fair either--that guy just cut in front of you even though you were waiting here first. And it's not that you wouldn't have LET him go in front of you if he had simply asked, but he didn't--and neither did your friend ask you if you were okay with taking a break from one another so that he could figure himself out. When (in this example) you realize that your anger is due to the fact that you think you have no control over the situation, then you are ready to proceed.
Second, you need to do something that can release that emotion. This is different for everyone, (and though I don't have proof of this, I think that it is different for every situation as well--ie, you might release things differently depending on the situation). For some people, taking deep breaths and stretching helps release the emotion. For others it's writing in a journal or going for a walk. Some people just need to tell somebody. I met a lady once (who I thought then was crazy and still do) who used to "pet the cat" to relieve her emotions--she'd hold up her arm and pretend it was a cat and that she was petting it...weird, I know, but it worked for her, so don't discredit it. --now that I've given you some examples, let me go deeper and give you a hint: doing something physical, such as shaking your arms or stretching serves the same function as going for a walk, so if you're THAT kind of person, doing anything physical can release the emotion. (this is why walking outside to take a breather works just as well as throwing a fist), if you need to do something expressive, writing in a journal can work just as much as talking to a friend because it allows you to focus your thoughts and energy into explaining yourself.
Third, you need to change your behavior. Whatever you would have done in the past, whether it's shut your mouth and not cause problems, or push the guy to the back of the line, consider doing the opposite (or the positive opposite, because you don't want to make a negative emotion into an even more negative emotion). If you would have normally not said anything, make a point to tell the person (politely) "look, I think you cut in line and it's going to make me feel better and less angry to tell you that I saw you and I don't care that you did that." Or if you normally would shoot your mouth off, try to do the opposite--hold it in as long as you can until they are gone (you may even need to try some other techniques like taking phsyical actions such as laughing or shaking your arms and legs out)
Fourth, make it a habit. Next time you feel angry, do the exact same thing you did last time, only this time around, you're in control of it and because you're in control of it you are capable of doing something positive instead of something negative. Over time all of these "negative" emotions you're feeling will trigger positive emotions and help you grow. Instead of being mad all the time or scared all of the time, you'll be more confident, more capable, and more in control of your life.
I think one of the keys to being happy all of the time is this kind of self-control. Most people get hung up on the first two steps--they don't address the emotion correctly (they deny the emotion or they attribute it to something else other than their own mind) and if they do confront the emotion and admit to themselves or others that they feel angry or sad and make it to the second step, then they miss the part about releasing that emotion. They claim it is just a part of life and they get trapped in the cycle or they revel in the emotion and make it into something worse (brooding over how mad they are, depression over how sad they are and can't get out of it, paranoia over how scared they feel, cynical angst because they're so frustrated, etc).
Sadly, I need to make a personal note here and say that I have struggled for a good 10 years or so (more like 24 years) with my emotions. I swept a lot of them under the rug because I wanted to feel strong and in control--but I wasn't in control when I did that. When I felt angry or sad or whatever, and I know I was feeling that emotion, I would brood in it and suddenly my relationships with people would become really tense. Sometimes I would get so frustrated with life and "the way people were treating me" that I would sink into depression and shut down, or I would get so angry at another person that I would retaliate back on them. (a few of these things I learned to manage, but I wasn't really in control of them, such as the retaliation--only did that under the most extreme situations). Later in life (up until recently, really) I would merely sink into a kind of depression at everything that I couldn't sweep under the rug. If it was a strong enough emotion I'd sit at home alone thinking about how miserable I was and sometimes I'd take it out on people close to me (especially if they were there when it was triggered).--I'd literally get grouchy and moody and not want to talk because I was thinking about the feeling, it would preoccupy my mind, and worse of all I wouldn't think of it as an emotion, I'd think of it as a collection of possibilities. My mother would criticize me and I would think there was a possibility she was out to get me--out to control my life, out to bring me down to her level or hold me back. I never wanted to address my emotions because I didn't want to be a weak crybaby because that's all I was when I was little: a crybaby and my siblings would make fun of me and egg me on to make me cry or make me so upset that I'd turn over the table that we were playing monopoly on or do something that ultimately got me in trouble with my parents (especially my mom who I later thought was out to get me because she would crack the whip when I was little). Ya, I was that bad. And when I was little I'd retaliate by egging my siblings on to get them in trouble so that they'd have to feel those negative emotions as I did.
What the hell was I thinking?--Now that I'm an adult I no longer want to make people feel those negative emotions and yet I'm so deep in this that It's hard to dig my way out--these emotions are so rooted that I automatically do them.
Now I know better. Now I want to change and I'm going to change them one by one and I encourage you to do the same. It's a very human process. It's called progression.--you break out of those bad cycles that you're in and you start doing things that are going to improve this area of your life: the emotional side.
Emotions are not bad things. Emotions are good. Emotions are a sign that you subconscious is doing it's job (Sorry Spock, but emotions are not illogical, emotions are superior to logic because they are the epitome of logic--they are the logic of your whole life compounded into the present: "when this happens therefore this will happen so go do something about it"). Emotions are your subconscious sending you a message saying: It's time to improve. Now that you know this and understand this you can start to appreciate it. It's a sign that you're human. It's a sign that you're intelligent. It's a sign that you're capable and that you trust yourself, because why would your subconscious keep telling you to change if it didn't have faith that you could change?--it would just shut off as it does with many people who are mentally ill.
As a final note, let me reiterate something: no one can make you feel a certain way. Other people may trigger these feelings inside of you, but they aren't causing these feelings. YOU are causing these feelings. You might be angry at the slow clerk, but really your brain is calling back to a time in your past when, because you decided to wait, you missed out on something and you blamed someone else or you blamed the circumstance. You might be frustrated at the clerk, but really your subconscious is harping back to a time when, because you made decisions, you were forced to wait as a direct consequence for your decisions.
Your girlfriend may have cheated on you and when you heard the news, you were mad at her and at him and maybe even at yourself, but really that feeling of anger is callback to all of the times when you chose to do something that resulted in an unfair consequence. All of those times that you agreed to share your candy with your friends and they overstepped their bounds and left you with nothing. Or how about the time that you left the front door unlocked and someone came in to steal your TV and all of your xbox games?--it's not fair, no, but you had just as much control over keeping your stuff from being stolen as you did from keeping your girl from being stolen. We all make mistakes such as leaving the front door unlocked or not providing for our girlfriend's needs, but what's done is done. Feel that pain, let it out, and then change for the future.
