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I'd like to know the neurochemistry behind this.

I have embraced my emotions and I have never been more miserable. Verses when I was a practicing Stoic and ignored them.

When you embrace your emotions, your brain focuses on different things. If I ignored an emotion, I can go back to work. If I embrace an emotion, I might dig deep into a PTSD-style event, and be bummed all day.

I'm not sure where this idea to 'get your emotions out when they come', I'm not sure its scientific.



> when I was a practicing Stoic and ignored them

Ignored, or acknowledged and prioritized?

Farnsworth in "The Practicing Stoic" Ch9:

So a first Stoic remedy for anger, as for other such problems, is a return to Chapter 1: recognize it as an option and let it go.


> Verses when I was a practicing Stoic and ignored them.

That's not what stoicism is about, at all


Ah fellow HN contrarian!

I didn't say it was. I was talking about how a philosophy was able to help me mentally.

I can explain Stoicism, I just didn't feel the need to. Other people can go google it.


> I didn't say it was.

You heavily implied it, and it's a very common criticism of stoicism, I don't want people to have such a negative view of it from the get go


Try meditation. So notice the emotion/thought, be curious about it and then let it go and return to the meditation.

You might also try EMDR to reprogram the amygdala.


> I'm not sure where this idea to 'get your emotions out when they come', I'm not sure its scientific.

IME it's from people who have no idea how to do it any other way, unfortunately. They never experienced being capable of suppressing emotions and lack the imagination that it can be learned. (Or maybe it can't, but some of them end up getting medication and realize what they were missing.)




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