Without emotions and feelings life would be pretty bland.
Even if there are times when emotions overwhelm your ability to think straight.
If you are well rested and have plenty of cognitive reserves, you can apply executive function to your thought process. (Remember how we discussed the art of reframing back in Lesson 8).
If you can’t access executive function, processing and interpreting events is less constructive and your memories as well as your future responses are dependent on your more primitive brain circuits.
For example, if you were scared by a snake as a child, that memory and emotion will be recalled with the same emotional intensity as an adult.
Of course, your ability to remember isn’t perfect. While your thinking brain works hard to put memory and emotion into context, it’s your context.
We all tell stories to ourselves. And our own interpretation of events may or may not be reality.
