Sometimes when I talk to friends about building emotional strength/resilience, they respond with “Well I don’t want to become a robot that doesn’t feel anything!” to paraphrase them uncharitably.
I think wolverine is a great physical analog for how I think about emotional resilience. Every time wolverine gets shot/stabbed/clubbed it absolutely still hurts, but there is an important way in which these attacks “don’t really do anything”. On the emotional side, the aim is not that you never feel a twinge of hurt/sorrow/jealousy etc. but that said pain is felt, and nothing more happens besides that twinge of pain (unless those emotions held information that would be useful to update on).
Likewise, though I’m not really a marvel buff, I’m assuming wolverine can still die. Though he can heal crazy fast, it’s still conceivable that he could be physically assaulted in such a way that he can’t recover. Same for the emotions side. I’m sure that for most emotionally resilient people there is some conceivable, very specific idiosyncratic scenario that could “break them”.
That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a motherfucking bad-ass with regenerative powers and can take on most threats in the multiverse.
Maybe emotional resilience is bad for some forms of signaling. The more you react emotionally, the stronger you signal that you care about something. Keeping calm despite feeling strong emotions can be misinterpreted by others as not caring.
Misunderstandings created this way could possibly cause enough harm to outweigh the benefits of emotional resilience. Or perhaps the balance depends on some circumstances, e.g. if you are physically strong, people will be naturally afraid to hurt you, so then it is okay to develop emotional resilience about physical pain, because it won’t result in them hurting you more simply because “you don’t mind it anyway”.
Keeping calm despite feeling strong emotions can be misinterpreted by others as not caring.
To some extent, the interpretation is arguably correct; if you personally suffer from something not working out, then you have a much greater incentive to actually ensure that it does work out. If a situation going bad would cause you so much pain that you can’t just walk out from it, then there’s a sense in which it’s correct to say that you do care more than if you could just choose to give up whenever.
Sometimes when I talk to friends about building emotional strength/resilience, they respond with “Well I don’t want to become a robot that doesn’t feel anything!” to paraphrase them uncharitably.
I think wolverine is a great physical analog for how I think about emotional resilience. Every time wolverine gets shot/stabbed/clubbed it absolutely still hurts, but there is an important way in which these attacks “don’t really do anything”. On the emotional side, the aim is not that you never feel a twinge of hurt/sorrow/jealousy etc. but that said pain is felt, and nothing more happens besides that twinge of pain (unless those emotions held information that would be useful to update on).
Likewise, though I’m not really a marvel buff, I’m assuming wolverine can still die. Though he can heal crazy fast, it’s still conceivable that he could be physically assaulted in such a way that he can’t recover. Same for the emotions side. I’m sure that for most emotionally resilient people there is some conceivable, very specific idiosyncratic scenario that could “break them”.
That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a motherfucking bad-ass with regenerative powers and can take on most threats in the multiverse.
Maybe emotional resilience is bad for some forms of signaling. The more you react emotionally, the stronger you signal that you care about something. Keeping calm despite feeling strong emotions can be misinterpreted by others as not caring.
Misunderstandings created this way could possibly cause enough harm to outweigh the benefits of emotional resilience. Or perhaps the balance depends on some circumstances, e.g. if you are physically strong, people will be naturally afraid to hurt you, so then it is okay to develop emotional resilience about physical pain, because it won’t result in them hurting you more simply because “you don’t mind it anyway”.
That problem should be addressed by better mastery over one’s presentation, not by relinquishing mastery over one’s emotions.
To some extent, the interpretation is arguably correct; if you personally suffer from something not working out, then you have a much greater incentive to actually ensure that it does work out. If a situation going bad would cause you so much pain that you can’t just walk out from it, then there’s a sense in which it’s correct to say that you do care more than if you could just choose to give up whenever.