Emotions and navigation lights

Anger, fear, and guilt are navigation lights. They're not emotion. They're emotion-blockers.

Anger is a light telling me 'something has happened that should not have happened.'

Fear is a light telling me 'something might happen that should not happen.'

Guilt is a light telling me 'I have done something that I should not have.'

They are invitations to assessment of the situation and possibly correction (though not everything can and should be corrected, and sometimes there are false alarms).

Once the navigation light has performed its role, namely to draw my attention to a navigational issue, it can be safely turned off.

Swiftly moving past stabs of anger, fear, and guilt is not dissociation, denial, or lack of feeling. These three are not emotions in any valuable or interesting sense, beyond their navigational function. They're not nuanced; they're brute. What is more, they block real feeling. When I'm angry, I feel nothing else (except maybe concomitant fear and guilt). When I'm frightened or guilty, it's the same. It's not a painting; its a daub of a single colour of paint. When I'm angry, frightened, or guilty, I'm not really engaging in the world or with myself or responding authentically to what is going on around me: I've singled out a point of focus, and the raucous klaxon has drowned out all else. These are not feelings. They're anti-feelings.

Equating anger, fear, and guilt with real emotion is like equating a fire alarm to an orchestra playing. Sure, they both involve sounds, but there the resemblance stops.

Listen to a whole symphony by Mahler or Beethoven. Read some Bulgakov. Watch a play. Walk in a park. Hang out with a cat. Take note of the constantly shifting kaleidoscope of unnamable emotions. That's feeling. That's what you experience when anger, fear, and guilt are eliminated.

'Honouring' anger, fear, and guilt is like foregoing a trip to the concert hall so you can listen to the fire alarm you don't know how to turn off.

If there is a fire alarm going off, turn off the fire alarm first (because it will only distract you and make you dumb), and go and deal with the problem.

Then you can back to actually living.