Question:
I always thought that releasing your emotions is not a good thing, but the Rav has explained that it’s a good thing to do. What is the proper perspective about releasing emotions? Is it a good thing or not?
Answer:
: There is a mitzvah of the Torah of ahavas Hashem (to love Hashem) and yiras Hashem (to fear Hashem), which is a release of positive emotion. However, because there are also negative emotions, people are often cautious about releasing their emotions in general, out of concern that this will cause them to release their negative emotions. But this is a mistake. If a person tries to keep his negative emotions inside, he will stifle them, and at a certain point, they will explode outward. The proper perspective is to deal with these feelings, in the proper way. We should never completely release all of our negative feelings at once. Rather, we must deal with each of these negative feelings, slowly, and one by one. But we should never let negative emotions fester inside ourselves, because usually they will explode outward some time later.
Question:
The Rav explained a method of revealing the emotions by way of using the intellect. But we know that it is also possible to reveal the emotions by way of the emotions themselves. Is the approach explained here by the Rav the only way in which the emotions can be revealed from their potential state?
Answer:
There is never any one way in a person’s avodah, whether it concerns the work he must do with his own personal soul or whether it comes to man’s task in serving his Creator. There is certainly a way to reveal the emotions by way of the emotions themselves. However, the way we mentioned here is not just a way to reveal the emotions by way of the mind. It is rather a way to reveal the emotions from the existing emotions, by way of the mind. So it is not just using the mind, and it is rather like a middle path between the mind and emotions.
There is certainly a way to reveal the emotions by way of the emotions themselves, and there is an advantage as well as a disadvantage to this method. The advantage is that it is a more direct approach, going straight to the emotions, as opposed to dealing with the issues on an external and superficial level; it is an inward kind of approach. But the disadvantage of this method is that usually the person who reveals his emotions through becoming more emotional will become emotionally dysfunctional. The emotions will be off-base. A person then has to make use of his mind to stabilize his emotions, and indeed, this can work.
However, here we have presented an opposite approach: Instead of exposing the emotions in a way that will lead to problems and then taking care of them with the mind, the approach we explained here is to use the mind and emotions together, to release the emotions through the mind and emotions together. The emotions are being opened through the mind.
Practically speaking, however, if a person feels however that the approach of working with the emotions directly will work better - which is often the case with women, who have a stronger amount of emotion – then the way to go about this is as follows (briefly): Identify an emotion, and focus on it. This further reveals that emotion, with the more you concentrate and focus on it. However, even when using this approach, which uses the emotions directly, you will still need use your minds to carefully scrutinize your emotion, to make sure that the emotion isn’t going too far, to make sure the emotion doesn’t get thrown out of whack, and to maintain clear awareness to the emotion.
Question:
If one has emotions that are very strong, it probably won’t help to use the mind to maintain emotional regularity, since this kind of person has an intense experience of emotion, and he has only a superficial experience of his intellectual mind. Will such a person be helped by using his mind to direct his emotions (since this kind of person can only use his mind to deal with the external surface of his feelings, and not the depth of his feelings)?
Answer:
This is a subtle question and I will try to answer it as precisely as possible. If someone has a strongly emotional personality, he identifies his emotions as his “I”, whereas his intellectual abilities are deemed by him as external and superficial. When he uses his intellect to deal with his feelings, he will feel as if he is using an external, superficial ability to deal with his “I”, and therefore he will find his intellectual abilities of little value, when he tries to deal with his emotions. He will feel that he is not getting through to the depth of his emotions. But he can become deeper than this, and he can learn to identify his power of intellect as his “I”. When one has that self-perception towards himself, he will feel that using his intellect to deal with his emotions really does get to the depth of his emotions.
Question:
If a person has two different kinds of strong emotions and he wants to reveal these emotions, should he deliberately place himself into an emotionally charged situation which would reveal those emotions more?
Answer:
Certainly a person can have more strong emotions than one, but he has less awareness to the other emotions, and more awareness to a particularly strong emotion than he has for his other emotions. But there certainly exist other strong emotions in a person.
As for the question if a person should deliberately place himself into situations that would reveal his other emotions, it depends. If it is an extreme situation, the general response to this would be no. If it is not extreme, then sometimes, he may place himself into such situations. That is one way of avodah.
Another way of avodah is to begin to work with the strongest positive emotion that is already revealed, and then a person will become more aware of his emotions, and this will make him aware of his other emotions as well.
These are two options to take. To repeat, one should only place himself in normal situations which can reveal his emotions, and he should not place himself into abnormal, complicated situations in order to reveal his emotional side, because that is a dangerous path to take.
Question:
Can a person place himself into a situation which is not extreme, in order to reveal his emotions more?
Answer:
Anything which causes you to have a strong emotional experience is not something that is recommended. If Hashem has placed you into that situation, then you need to utilize that situation to its fullest, but in most cases (with some rare exceptions) it is not recommended to place one’s soul into a situation which would cause him to become strongly emotional. Only situations which cause you to have a subtle experience of your emotions, is recommended.
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