Involuntary negative emotional responses are important signals for your conscious experience. It's easy to label them "bad" but really they are just signals. What we do with those signals determines whether or not we are evolving towards a lower entropy state of consciousness. We can avoid them and all interactions with the outside world which cause them. We can avoid the root issue or loop we're stuck in which explains why they exist. We can avoid the hard soul work of cleaning our wounds.
Avoidance leads to more of the same, often ending in further pain, suffering, and despair. There may be short seasons where avoiding makes sense in order to prevent a much worse outcome, but even then, I'm not so sure. Yes, wisdom, timing, and discernment are all very important, but avoidance more often than not, from my perspective, creates patterns which are worse than the thing being avoided.
Instead, we can take these beautiful signals as sign posts, indicating our current state of conscious entropy. If we have trigger points or buttons people can push, we are not in control of ourselves. We have, essentially, given others authority over us in that they can control our emotional responses and, to some degree, the actions those responses create. If we are fully conscious and mindful, it's a voluntary choice to let an outside influence change our state of being. That's an enlightened, truthful place where we know ourselves, and we know how to react in ways that benefit ourselves and those around us.
In a way, I've gamified finding my own emotional buttons. To the extent they continue to exist and persist, I want to get to their root cause and understand them. Understanding negative emotional responses means understanding your fear. As Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, fear is the mind-killer:
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
To understand fear, is to evaluate its truthfulness. Some fears are important motivators for keeping us within our boundaries which include our commitments and responsibilities. Most fears are primal holdovers from a time our species were literally running for their lives. We're not being chased in the jungle. Let's stop acting as if we are. Let's root out the triggers, the buttons, and the resulting involuntary actions which cause so much negativity in our lives and the lives of those we care about.
In some ways, this post is a continuation of one from 6 months ago: How Do You View "Triggers"?
