Controlling Your Emotions

I was quite an extroverted child at first, some might even say I was hyperactive almost all the time, that was until I experienced trauma, after which a personality shift occurred where my personality went to the opposing extreme, I became extremely introverted and reclusive.  During my teenage years when this introversion was at its peak, or its trough, depending on your perspective, I shifted my focus from myself onto other people.  Rather than focusing on my own impulses to the extreme, I focused on observing other people.  These formative years were really the start of my interest in Psychology, and in particular Behavioural Psychology, long before I knew the term and long before I had any real exposure to actual scientific theory that backed up my observations.

Before I knew how to put into words what I was observing, I was able to recognise patterns in other peoples behaviours and I started to categorise people based on those behaviours.  I knew how to respond and how to behave around people based on the observations I had made.  During this time I wanted to keep people at a distance, I didn't want people to get close to me and I didn't want them to know much about me, both for similar reasons.  I lived inside several closets, not just the one created by my sexuality but others too such as the closet create by trauma.  In every instance there was an eventual moment of "coming out" where I first had to admit to myself what I was experiencing or what I had experienced, and then eventually admitting that to other people.

As a gay man one thing you learn quite quickly after coming out for the first time is that it isn't a "one and done" process, you are perpetually coming out to people.  Every new person you meet eventually has that moment of realisation either when you tell them or when they figure it out for themselves.  Those who are more flamboyant or expressive in their sexuality whilst they serve as the vanguard and bear the brunt of most animosity directed at the gay community because they are the most visible element of it, also benefit from the arguable gift of a glass closet, in that everyone who meets them is in no doubt as to their sexuality so they never have to "come out" of the closet, and even when they do it's met with the "we already knew" response.

That personality flip that I experienced after trauma took me to an extreme that I have spent years returning from.  The work that I have had to put in and the weight of that effort is not to be understated.  Throughout the process however there has been one constant and that has been the emotional guidance system that has helped and often hindered me from navigating through that process.  So much to the point where there has been an incredible desire to have a switch that I could manually control that I could use to turn on and off emotions depending on whether they are of benefit or of detriment to me respectively.

Whilst the idea of being able to control your emotions like this might sound quite dangerous and toxic in nature, this is actually an ability most people do possess whether they realise it or not, and an ability which a small percentage of the population lack.  The part of the brain responsible for regulating emotions is called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex [ACC], and in a normal healthy brain it is able to have a degree of control over emotional impulses.  It's not as simple as an on and off switch as I desire but rather it serves as a volume control dial of sorts.  The ACC allows most people to pursue actions against their emotional impulse, in other words it is the part of the brain that allows you to "grin and bear it" and employ stoicism.  As I said however, a percentage of the population lacks this level of emotional control and the reason for that lacking appears to be neurological.  There have been numerous studies for instance that show for individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD] this ACC does not activate when people with ADHD experience emotional distress.

Knowing that this part of the brain exists and understanding its function is only the first step to developing a means to gain more explicit control over your emotions.  There have been studies carried out that seek to determine whether it is possible to train the ACC to activate and whether the intensity of that activation can be controlled or modified.  Most of these studies go beyond my understanding of the field however as they branch away from Psychology and into Neurology, the former being a branch of social sciences and the latter being a branch of Neuroscience.

This highlights a fundamental problem that we often run into when we attempt to expand our understanding, we inevitably reach fields of study that require experience, and structured education in order to adequately understand the content.  The problem is, not everyone is able to admit the boundary of their understanding and many will often venture beyond it and subsequently draw conclusions that vary greatly in their accuracy or inaccuracy as the case may be.

As far as Psychology is concerned, I have no formal education in the field beyond behavioural psychology as a primer to Human Computer Interaction, a limited exposure to cognitive psychology, again for the same purpose, and also exposure to behavioural psychology through training in Management of Actual or Potential Aggression [MAPA] and Management of Violence and Aggression [MOVA] both of which revolve around the same point of focus, both of which I learned about during my time working for the National Health Service [NHS] here in the UK.  The only other formal exposure to Psychology I have had is as a patient going through therapy for various things and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy [CBT] which I have mentioned in previous posts.

I can recognise the limits of my understanding and also recognise the risk of pursuing interest in a field through self study and exploration without validation and verification to ensure the conclusions drawn are accurate.  This is part of the reason why I have not ventured further with exploring the topic of ACC Training to increase your ACC activation, or the potential to do so as from what I have seen these are experimental ideas that are still being studied and continuously developed - most also require functional MRI in tandem to determine if they are working, this isn't about mentality and mindset or how you think about thinking [Metacognition] this is about altering your physiological state which you have no way of monitoring for yourself to determine efficacy.

Still that idea of having more explicit control over your emotions is incredibly appealing and has left me wondering just how much of my inability to focus at times is down to mitigating factors that I can control, and how much is down to the wiring of my brain as I have never actually been assessed for ADHD or Autism Spectrum Disorder.  If either of these were present I would assert that I would be considered very high functioning as yet I have achieved quite a few things that many people with those conditions would find incredibly difficult, not impossible but incredibly difficult.