Imagine in your head there is a steering wheel directing your life.  Your emotional Guidance System is one pair of hands trying to steer you.  That pair of hands is telling you what?  “Just get out this anxiety, don’t think of the future costs! Do whatever you have to do to get rid of anxiety now. The other set of hands, your Thinking Guidance System, has wider choices–but who has the strength to listen?

More needs to be said clarifying how the Emotional Guidance System (if this is new, go back a few posts) sneaks aboard, takes charge of our functioning, and keeps our life a mess. Now, some people mistake this statement as saying “emotions are bad.” Of course not. Feelings are some of the juiciest elements of life. Memories are made up of feelings. Sometimes our emotions give us motivation. Feelings make watching a basketball game fun. Unless our feelings “carry us away,” we get into a shouting match and end up in jail.

Feelings of love are wonderful, too. Unless, chasing “in love” feelings results in making our “special other” responsible for the way we feel. (“If you loved me you would ___”) Unless, slave to our “in love” feelings we end up not having much of a life. Unless our “love” cripples someone else’s functioning. Unless what we’re calling love- is neediness. “When is it Love and when is it Neediness?” is an upcoming entry.

Absurdity Break: What’s happened to reality? The National Geographic Channel is showing some explorer types deep in Africa. Makes sense. Except the narrator is doing voice over for the ”video” showing himself and his female companion on the trip. He now has dirt on his face and a wild look. The lady is stumbling, sure to not make it. Then the native helpers turn on them, one threating with a knife. The guy is saying how “it could be all over for them,” rushes to help the gal. There’s not enough food. The guy and the gal all alone in the jungle don’t know if… they will survive!… I’m so confused. Why doesn’t one of them ask one of the dozen camera men (maybe the one doing the zoom shots from overhead or the one doing closeups) or one the men on the lighting and costume truck FOR SOME HELP? The caterer’s maybe? Reality’s done this weird thing. Reality is staged. Reality is not reality. And this is the National Geographic Channel.

Back to emotions. There are four factors contributing to the likelihood that your Emotional Guidance System will be in charge of your actions.

1) Your physical functioning.

2) The events in your life, including history.

3) Your basic leveling of functioning.

4) The Emotional System of which you are a part.

Before we go on to the Thinking Guidance System, we need to get familiar with how these factors affect our actions.