this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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As a biological male and someone who identifies as a man, it's pretty weak, IMO, to need someone else to make you feel a particular way.
Are you in control of your feelings, or do you constantly need someone else to reinforce, or induce a feeling in you?
Personally, I'm in control of my feelings, and bluntly, nobody else has control over me. Neither for how I feel, or what I think/do; with the only exception to what I do being governed in part by legality. Eg. If I know a thing isn't legal to do, then I won't do that thing. Beyond the rule of law, I do, think, say, and feel, whatever, and however I want.
To me, having that much control over my own self is what makes me a person living in a free country. Anyone who does not have the ability, like I do, to think, feel, do, and love, whomever and, whatever they want, is someone who I want to support in gaining that right.
This seems ...um.. naive. I love my wife and her opinion of me affects my feelings. And the more I care about my wife, the more I love her, the more her opinion of me matters. Humans are social creatures and we look for positive feedback from the people we care most about. To pretend like this doesn't matter is silly.
I understand your point here.
People we care about should be people we care to make happy, and who we want to make us happy.
I'm speaking more about agency. I use my own agency to limit whose opinion can even move the needle to my emotions. I decide whether their comments are something I should "take to heart" or disregard as an outburst.
Personally I separate myself from most situations and emotional involvement and look at things from a neutral, logical standpoint before I allow myself and my own feelings to be affected by what may, or may not be said in the moment.
I don't need anyone to do anything to make me feel happy, or like a man. I control that. I'm not going to blame anyone for how I feel.
If you don't feel happy, or you don't "feel like a man" (whatever that means to you), the answers to why you feel that way, or how you inspire those feelings in yourself are entirely within your power to control. You have agency over your feelings.
My SO, when she compliments me, makes me feel good, but I don't need her to constantly placate me with compliments in order to feel valuable, appreciated, happy, or "like a man".
It is emotionally healthy to look inward for happiness and satisfaction. Relying on the acceptance and platitudes from others to feel okay is codependent. I don't understand why anyone would want to give their agency over their feelings and emotions, wholly and completely over to others.
The idea of controlling your feelings seems laughable. If you have control they aren't feelings, just thoughts. You cant really control thoughts either, just control what you do with them. Except we know that humans in general don't have great control of our actions either. We just have to live in this comfortable little lie where we have control over ourselves despite all evidence to the contrary in order to maintain a remotely reasonable society, but it's not real any more than your belief that you control your feelings.
There's a saying that stuck with me: "feelings are never wrong".
Your feelings are a fact of your continued human existence. Unless you're a psychopath or sociopath (or whatever) and you literally don't feel, your feelings simply are.
From there I determined that feelings can be inspired incorrectly from a given happenstance. While you may initially feel offended by something that is said, it's neither necessary to continue being offended, nor is it necessary to always have that reaction to that given happenstance. Accepting yourself as you are is vitally important in restructuring who you want to be.
This is all borderline cognitive behavioural therapy. Training yourself to be the best version of you that you can be. I've been dabbling in CBT techniques for most of my life. I wasn't aware that it was CBT when I started working on myself in this capacity, but I've recently learned that a lot of the techniques I've been using to better myself, and increase my agency and control over my own mind and emotions, is used in CBT.
I would agree that some thoughts are not controllable. We all get intrusive thoughts and impulses that we choose whether we want to act on them. Whether that action is to open your mouth and speak those thoughts aloud, or type them out, or to take action based on those thoughts.
The thoughts and actions you describe I understand to be system 1 thinking. Aka, thinking fast. There's a great book on this called "thinking: fast and slow" which covers the ideas. Basically system 1 is your "fast" thinking, heuristic/instinctual/"muscle memory" systems. It's your "knee jerk" reactions and your first thought on something. System 2 is your contemplative and analytical systems, aka, "thinking slow". System 2 can educate system 1, which is how we form habits and "muscle memory"
System 1, we have little immediate control over since the majority of our sapience is fully embedded in system 2.
I would agree that there's a nontrivial number of people going around under only the learned behaviors from system 1, and doing very little analysis of what's happening by utilizing system 2.
While I don't think anyone has complete control of their own emotions, I do think some measure of control is possible through manipulation of one's own facial expression, posture, breathing & thought patterns.
Right you can hack your lizard brain with deep breathing to calm yourself down, but that seems like even more proof the you you think you are is only barely in charge of this mess we call a brain. If you can't calm down you can trick your body into calming down which then calms "you" down. Personally I tend to think the you you are is just a verbal processing system that retroactively analyzes what the rest of your brain does. If the reaction is slow enough, you can sometimes take charge and we call that modicum of authority "self control".
The whole microexpression thing, if valid, takes the facial expressions thing off the table.
Posture is...I guess controllable as a bulk coordinated muscle movement but tbh no clue why that's relevant.
I seem to remember reading that research of certain brain disorders has shown exactly that... Basically, without a functional corpus callosum, one side of your brain does something, then the other side (that had nothing to do with it) comes up with a reason why "it" did it.
People in general like receiving positive feedback. There is no need to assign feedback to gender roles.
I agree.
If I may ask, did you feel the need to post this because you felt that I was portraying the opposite, or are you building on the point?
I'm hoping it's the latter, but if it's the former, please tell me what I said that made you feel that way. I'm always trying to improve my communication.