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[Xantalos]

But Solifuge, can you really just STOP yourself from getting excited over such things?

But more seriously, do you have the same sort of control over the more lizard-brained emotions, fear and anger?

I do, to the good of people I would've otherwise hurt.

[GlyphGryph]

Again, this isn't control over /showing/ the emotion, or controlling whether or not you act on the emotion, but being able to decide (before experiencing it) not to experience it at all.

[Xantalos]

Again, this isn't control over /showing/ the emotion, or controlling whether or not you act on the emotion, but being able to decide (before experiencing it) not to experience it at all.

In that case, only partial: I'm gradually becoming incapable of anger, and only one or two things anywhere scare me, so most of the time I'm just incapable of bad emotion.

[Solifuge]

But Solifuge, can you really just STOP yourself from getting excited over such things?

But more seriously, do you have the same sort of control over the more lizard-brained emotions, fear and anger?

Full disclosure? I don't think I experience Fear the way I used to. It's definitely not the same as it was when I was a kid. The closest thing I've had to a nightmare in the last 10 years is a lucid dream where I looked into a normal empty corner of a room, and was struck by an incredibly intense feeling of dread and anxiety over nothing. Literally. Then I woke up. It was weird.

But yeah, a surprise can still trigger a flinch or a fight-or-flight response, where my body kicks in the adrenaline, I get hyper-alert, my heart-rate increases, etc. But the Fear or Anger themselves have to go through that same mental gate emotions like Sadness do... and I generally choose to discard Fear. Fear is the mind-killer, and all that.

I sometimes let myself get Angry though, which has become more of an increase in Intensity for me. Anger has it's purpose, in signifying that something is wrong, and kicking me into action, so I can do necessary but potentially unpleasant things. I have a pretty strict control over it, and the only time I'll let myself get angry without trying to stop it is when people are being threatened. And at these points I get extremely brave and stupid.

I get really tense and shaky when I'm seriously angry (I think my body overdoes the adrenaline thing). That said, I don't get irrational, don't want to strike people, etc. My perception of time just slows down, and I get very attentive, focused, and intense, remember things I normally can't, and process things far quicker than I normally can. It's actually pretty useful, and I wish I could do it on command.

But yeah, for most purposes, physical Stress and Anxiety have replaced Fear and Anger in my emotional vocabulary.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

People generally experience a decease in vulnerability to fear as they age. Children are afraid of a lot of things because they don't have much in the way of wisdom and are very vulnerable, so a fear reaction to everything is evolutionarily advantageous. 

As one grows older, you (usually) gain enough experience in the world that you become deadened to a lot of your fear triggers. It all depends on the individual, however. Some people are broken by their fears instead of overcoming them, this leads to certain phobias and anxiety disorders.

Of course, some things will always cause fear as a matter of course. You can walk into dark rooms enough to control a fear of darkness, but falling off of cliffs isn't so easily experienced multiple times (although this does remind me that I've ridden rollercoasters enough to remain serene on smaller ones). With these things, it comes down to being able to channel one's fear into action rather than being controlled by it.

Also, this is why the horror genre exists. Humans like repetition, and we mostly don't like not having the option to repeat an experience even if it is unpleasant. So some of us devote our lives to making art that can dredge up gibbering child-level fear in older people, and some of us learn to like the terror. Unfortunately, most of these people suck horribly at their jobs because of how high a bar that is to reach.

[Sigulbard]

lol, potato.
Oh sorry, that was my brain's defensive mechanism for thought provoking topics.

[eerr]

Depression is an imbalance in brain chemicals.

You think too much, I bet.
You describe acting like a cat.

Either that, or said cats are depressed.

[Pnx]

Depression is a positive feedback loop of negative emotions. You're sad because you're sad which makes you sadder.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Depression can be described in several ways. One can also call it a breakdown of the brain's reward system, impairing an individual from being able to gain pleasure from anything they do.

[Trapezohedron]

I've been wondering what's been going on through my mind...

Ever since my family shot down my prospects of finally getting a relationship, I've been finding it hard to become attracted to people, especially those who I do not share a close bond with.

Despite how sexy a woman might appear, I give no cares as to how she's appealing to others if I have no idea who she is.

Likewise, for those people who I do know, I barely feel a pang of attraction towards them, and can't feel if I'm friendzoning their attempts to flirt with me or not.

It almost seems like I stopped giving a fuck about love, so I want to know why...

[sjm9876]

I find I too have a large degree of conscious control over my emotions. The only ones I don't are anger and sadness.

I get really tense and shaky when I'm seriously angry (I think my body overdoes the adrenaline thing). That said, I don't get irrational, don't want to strike people, etc. My perception of time just slows down, and I get very attentive, focused, and intense, remember things I normally can't, and process things far quicker than I normally can. It's actually pretty useful, and I wish I could do it on command.

This is also how my anger materialises. The emotion that would normally be called anger however seems to rise in me at completely random times.My sadness then tends to cause me to grow angry at the pointlessness of it, and then sad at the futility of the anger. Not a pleasent cycle.

In general, it is the more 'primitive' emotions that i am susceptible too - I often find myself in a mental state that could be assosciated with a wolf or somesuch creature. Which also makes dealing with other people rather confusing.

[scrdest]

 Emotions are subtle bastards. There are actually two types of emotions that are paired together, those that you experience consciously and those you kind of feel, unconscious ones. The latter act as what I suppose could be described as colored lenses, and are caused by neurotransmitter levels and limbic system activity, while the latter are more related to possibly prefrontal cortex, generally the evolutionarily younger parts that correspond to higher-level, conscious activity.

 Depression, for instance, impairs your ability to perceive things positively, leading to negative, conscious thoughts, which, on closer examination are quite irrational if you notice how biased towards negativity they are. But guess what, a depressive person who would notice that would get even more depressed once he realized it instead of doing anything to fix the problem, because he filters out most non-negative interpretations.

 Interestingly, it appears that depressed or healthily sad people tend to have a better memory scores than the same people when they're happy.

 Sadness and anger also tend to be somehow entangled with each other, with sadness replacing anger while the object of anger cannot be subjected to agression and anger replacing sadness when someone is blamed for causing it. It might be that sadness is anger redirected onto oneself.

 I suppose conscious control over emotions is hardly anomalous, given how willing your body into doing things seems perfectly in character for human physiology (placebos, nocebos, I choose you!). On the other hand, it might be less control and more conscious repression, and repression can surface at the perfectly wrong moment to bite you in the ass.

[Mr Space Cat]

Despite how sexy a woman might appear, I give no cares as to how she's appealing to others if I have no idea who she is.
Likewise, for those people who I do know, I barely feel a pang of attraction towards them, and can't feel if I'm friendzoning their attempts to flirt with me or not.
It almost seems like I stopped giving a fuck about love, so I want to know why...

I'm pretty much the same way, although I'm not really interested in why. I've stopped caring about "getting a girlfriend" as people put it, (or at least that's what I tell myself) because I've accepted there's no reason for me to. Any attempts would be awkward, stupid, and regretful since they would more than likely get nowhere.

Of course, it doesn't help that I'm surrounded by people in romantic relationships, even my closest friends, and I'm reminded that "I don't have what they have. Why not? Is there something wrong with me? blah blah blah self-doubts self-doubts" and then I get depressed and depressed me just stops caring about anything anymore, including whatever side projects I spend my time on and that makes me feel even more worthless. It's a vicious cycle and it sucks monkeys and so the easiest solution is to stop caring, push it out of my head, and pursue something "worthwhile"

So my mind just says "Eff it. You're better than this. Go focus on actually doing something with your life instead." and I do all these little side projects: guitar, drawing, video games, my pokemon let's play, when I was younger I wanted to build a puppet, then it was a robot, then it was painting, then it was writing, etc. I've jumped from project to project my whole life really, with few actually finished.

The emotion that would normally be called anger however seems to rise in me at completely random times.My sadness then tends to cause me to grow angry at the pointlessness of it, and then sad at the futility of the anger. Not a pleasent cycle.

Yeah, getting really really mad tends to make me get sad.

[Trapezohedron]

Hmm... well, I'm just interested in knowing why, because I'm surrounded by romantically-inclined people who insist that you're either in a relationship or you're gay. I mean, can't a man just choose to be alone for the sake of being alone and not wanting a girlfriend? Damn it, society.

[Solifuge]

If it's the family that's bugging you about it, that started to go away once I hit 20, though my Mum still likes to poke at that sort of stuff when I visit. It doesn't help that a close friend of mine likes to tell his folks about my personal life, who then tell my mum when they see her, and she (lacking knowledge of boundaries) proceeds to let the entire family know everything.

All I'm saying is that my dear old grandmother does not need to know when I've had a one-night-stand. Seriously. :I

Also, though I completely understand not wanting to "get a (boy/girl)friend" just for the sake of doing it, I wouldn't go so far as to hate romantic relationships at large. We spend a lot of time fussing over creating categories on the relationship spectrum, and trying to classify other people by where they fall on it; classmates, coworkers, friends, lovers, whatever. Whatever you call it, it's all part of the same continuum of caring about other people, and being cared about in return. One person could have a strong friendship that fulfills the same supportive role a romantic relationship does for someone else. And as humans we need those sorts of social bonds, or we're prone to go nutters.