Life Without Emotions
How would your life be if you had no emotions?
- 15 Replies
I would get killed pretty quickly without the fear of jumping off the window to try to fly to Neverland without the pixie dust!!
It seems to me that without emotions, the experience of life would be very bland and flat. It’s hard for me to imagine, since I am so accustomed to feeling the effect of my emotions. It also makes me think of people who do suppress how they really feel, for example anger, they hold it in and hold it in then later explode because they didn’t let it out when it was at a “lower level,” say, frustration. When I was on hormone replacement therapy and prescription medications in my perimenopausal transition, I exhibited a lot of extreme behaviors which I generally attribute to the changing hormone levels and effects of the meds on my brain chemistry. This leads me to believe that there are emotions which are driven or controlled by psychological, spiritual and mental states, as well as driven by biochemical and physical factors.
My emotions impact my mental balance by sometimes creating cognitive distortions: when I am angry, I tend to accept only information that justifies my anger, and I find myself ruminating. Rumination is like a snowball rolling down a hill, causing the anger to get bigger and bigger, only it’s not a snowball but a hot coal.
When it comes to positive emotions I think there might be a similar but less painful distortion, where I think that if I can just have this thing/experience that’s causing pleasurable emotions more consistently, I will be more reliably happy – this is clinging, grasping, and it distorts my thinking by causing me to direct more attention at opportunities to repeat the experience that triggered enjoyment in the first place, perhaps to the detriment of my health. For example, Twisties! If these delicious salty snacks were enjoyable once, I will seek them out again when I am seeking pleasure, even though I know they are not healthy.
So pleasurable emotions impact our mental balance by appealing to short-term gratification when the discipline of long-term gratification would be a healthier mental habit.
Emotions have a motivational function in our biology and are essential for our survival. If we eliminated our emotions altogether there might not be suffering, but there would also be no motivation to do things that are conducive to happiness. We would not be motivated to seek meaningful work or develop fulfilling relationships. We would not be motivated to seek sustenance or reproduce. The world would be a bland place and we would not be motivated to even sustain our own lives.
As Ana said, without the emotion of fear we would do things that are potentially fatal. Without love we would not be motivated to help others or the environment. Without disgust we would be more likely to eat food that has gone off and we may get sick. Without sadness we would not know which experiences to avoid in future that were psychological harmful.
I think it would be pretty much a life of a robot. Without emotions, I wouldn’t be really present and wouldn’t be able to connect with people on any level.
I don’t imagine having no no emotions as feeling robotic. I think this state would enable me to fully connect because I wouldn’t get in my own way. I could love all beings without the need to compete or judge whether they are deserving of my love. This would be true equaninimity.
On the other hand, I question what it would be like to be in this flow state without anger to point out injustice and joy to point out beauty. It seems like the ideal state would be to see my emotions as messengers rather than defining me.
I like your thought progression there. Question for reflection: is equanimity the same as not having emotions? Is equanimity the same as indifference?
For me this is truly more of a reflection than an exercise. I lived very close to this quite nearly in full for several years of my life through college and early adulthood. I had some deep unresolved emotional trauma growing up that I had suppressed and repressed over the years heading into college. When I discovered in my psych class that its not normal for everyone to feel this way, I did what I thought at the time was the right thing and went to see a psychiatrist (this could still be the right course of action, but I wasn’t informed enough to do this and maintain control over my circumstances at the time). I was given an SSRI for depression which of course helped to get past the debilitating “can’t get out of bed even though I kind of want to” depressive episodes, though they still came at times, usually after things had built up. I now feel very strongly from my own experiences and working with acutely mentally unwell patients for several years that SSRIs, more so than just about any drug class, should be banned. I have seen no effective use cases for them and what they did to me, what I thought was help, was actually just assisting in the repression of emotions. I barely ever cried or felt true sadness and thus also lacked true joy, though I thought I had it at times. Funny enough, without emotions, or with severely muted ones, its a pretty miserable existence. People who self-harm or engage in highly risky, self-destructive behaviors more often than not due so not out of emotional outpourings, but because they feel numb and just want to feel something, anything they can assert their control over. Instead of having crippling depression from emotional disregulation and unhealed past trauma, I then had episodes that differed only in the amount I was able to feel and thus cope with via crying or whatever other means that might be applicable to a situation.
What’s more, I realize now looking back that having emotions being muted didn’t uncloud my vision and mind to allow me to properly navigate the path ahead of me in my early adulthood, but actually came closer to the equivalent of me pulling out a compass, but being prevented from looking at it and having to navigate via whatever minuscule shifts in the compass that I could feel might be telling me about the direction I am facing. Emotions are our compass, our map, or whatever means of navigation you prefer to call them haha.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Brandon Hunter.
Thank you for this rich and enlightening share of your personal experience. It is sad to see so many people being cut off from truly feeling their sadness through drugs. As we’ll see when we discuss sadness, if we suppress it we are also suppressing joy and meaning. What people with depression need is not to “kill” their sadness (that only creates a deeper, although less experienced, depression, as you felt it yourself) but to learn how to understand it and heal. Let’s do that together.
Emotions are messengers about something important to us. Don’t kill the messenger just because you don’t like the message…
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This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by
At the very least, without emotions such as happiness, it seems logical
that I would not know it to be possible to strive for happiness. I
could not even determine to live the day by reasoning or ethics, since
these depend on caring for others, and the emotions we experience when
being cared for or when caring.Grey, even and noch potential for inner development and learning. Without emotions, we might might not have motivation to do things, because it is not important. Would be difficult to get connected to other people and I would be eaten by a tiger, because we’ve no fear. Life without emotions is dangerous!
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
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This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by
I cannot (don’t want to) imagine a life without emotions. They are my fuel for the engine that moves me. Without them, I lack the motivation to move. I will no longer want or desire anything. Everything is colourless and joyless.
A life without emotion would be a life without color, without value, without much meaning. Emotions fuel our souls, move our bodies, motivate our minds.
A grey image of total apathy comes to mind.. I relate a lot with what others wrote: no colours, no motivation, lack of beauty. Emotions add beauty to life.
I already feel an emotion just trying to imagine life without emotions? How would I know what I valued and have the motivation to seek it with my whole heart. It means if I was mean to someone I wouldn’t feel sad and want to be better or if I wasn’t listened to I wouldn’t feel angry! So I wouldn’t even want to transform, so I wouldn’t even be here. Wow! Emotions help me feel alive, even in the difficult times, I can feel my heart and know that I am. Emotions are guiding me towards identifying truth. I would just like to know how to understand and live in a healthy, peaceful way with them.
That’s beautiful and super insightful! I especially liked what you said about that you’re only here working to transform your emotions because you have emotions that make you want to do that. Amazing!
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