An analogy I've heard in the past is that emotions are like a button fixed in a box with a ball in it. When you're younger the box is smaller so the ball hits the buttons more often as there is less free space. As you grow, your box grows too, so your ball has more space in the box and more empty space on the walls for the ball the bounce off of, making the buttons less likely to be pushed.
That analogy seems a bit contrived, but the "button pushing" reminds me of something.
At a recent dentist visit the Lidocaine local anaesthetic was accidentally injected into a (small) artery. That's when I discovered that it's a mixture that includes adrenaline, which contracts peripheral blood vessels, preventing it from dispersing too fast. Unless.. it goes directly into an artery, sending it straight into circulation.
To this day I can't come up for a better explanation of what happened, other than it felt like someone had simply pressed a button in my brain labelled "panic".
The dentist explained what had happened, I fully understood everything, I'm not at all afraid of dentistry, and I'm not easily frightened. None of that mattered. The button had been pressed, and now I was panicking for no discernible cause. Just... naked panic. Panic, panic, panic.
I had to cancel the appointment and walk home, slowly, listening to calming music the whole way and trying not to sprint down the sidewalk to escape whatever I felt like was chasing after me.
Thinking about it… yes, I suppose it did change my perspective.
It made me feel a lot more empathy for the “lone woman in a dark parking lot” scenario.
It made me realise I’m a meat computer running on chemicals and I’m not as in control of my emotions as I previously liked to think.
I realised that strong feelings can occur without an apparent matching cause. Feeling good without a success, feeling bad without hurt, etc… Emotions exist in and of themselves and can be directly triggered.
Etc… probably too much to write here, and things that are probably obvious to most readers but wasn’t obvious to me until that incident.
PS: It reminds me of instinct: we humans don’t have many that can override our conscious minds, but we do have some. The feeling of drowning for example can trigger completely involuntary actions. Unless you’ve experienced something like this, you just don’t know what it’s like to have biology overrule your thoughts.
This "ball and button in a box" analogy is precisely the one that people told me about when I was processing grief.
Right after the traumatic event, the "ball" hit the "button" nearly continuously, but as the months and years progressed, it's gotten farther and farther apart.
