How to be emotionless?

Question

I want to know how to be emotionless about bad things in life and when people are being cruel to you. Can humans be just as emotionless as robots? i know this sounds silly, but right now i need to know how can we not let other things affect our peace of mind? ...please don give rude answers coz i am not in the state of mind to bear another blow.

Answer 1

Philosophy does not have the answers to emotions, that is the relm of psychology. However, emotional intelligence is a very useful skill. I suggest you look at NLP.

Answer 2

why would you want to be emotionless? life can be hard or painful at times but if u are choosing the route to wanting to be emotionless than you should seek spiritual help, otherwise it means you are giving up in urself and in the world and you wont be very happy if thats wat u want to do. Face what ur going through head on and know that even bad things dont last long, conquer the negatives by praying ( i mean this) and u WILL see a difference.

Answer 3

You can take anti-depressants. My experience with them was exactly that, a constant feeling of "blah". Of course, they might lessen the enjoyment of good things, too. That's why I didn't like them. But seriously, there are other things you can do. Can you stay away from the people who are cruel? You can't totally isolate yourself from the world & it can be cruel, but you can look for ways to deal with it.  Focus on yourself... your health, your special talents, your passions. Try not to let others ruin life for you because there are those that will if you empower them to do so.  I hope things get better for you soon.

Answer 4

It is hard to disregard the ills of the world. I see cruelties thrust upon innocent animals and I cringe. I see the children of foreign lands bloated and thin for hunger. I read of women painfully hurt by outdated traditions and masses of peoples laid waste by ignorant religions of pagan gods and I cringe.

How do you remain emotionless to that? It's a hard question to answer.

Turning away from the news I see and read, walking away from the pain in a dogs eyes knowing full well I can't do a thing about it. And what I can do just isn't enough. It's hard to turn your emotions off of that. So I don't.

I don't because it will offend my other senses and my well being because to turn off your emotions is to turn away from your heart, to release any hold you have on compassions and love.

The cruelty you speak of is an ignorant or a planned cruelty and there is little you can do to change the ones responsible for it. But, you can change your attitude towards their actions.

Cruelty comes in a thousand forms and what is put upon your back is unknown by those who seek to help you here. However I would advise you not to turn your emotions off. Do not go down that road; because your emotions can dictate your health and to bind them could bind you to a sorry state of body and mind.

How do you deal with those people? I don't know. I do know how I deal with them. If they are in close contact with me daily I let them know what they are doing to me and then I treat them the way I want to be treated regardless of whether they hear me or not. Regardless of their action towards me I try (and I do mean I try, that doesn't mean I am successful) but I try to do right by them. I have to, as I am in close quarters with them I have to live with them and so I have to keep the peace for my own welfare. This means taking a shellacking at times for no good reason but sooner or later the ones who are cruel come around to respect me an as long as I am consistent in my treatment of them they will regard me in a better light. However long it takes they will see me with more respect and the cruelty will subside or dissapate.

As for the ones who do not live in my sphere I leave them alone. Period.

I walk away from them and I do not keep company with them because if they are a cruel one with me? Then winning their company by hook or by crook so that they will not be cruel to me means...... that sooner or later I will be as cruel as they are. Association is a strong and heady drink. If you run with theives then you will become a thief.

So I walk away from those type of people and go seek the comany of men and women who deserve my friendship.

Do not become emotionless. It will hurt you in the long run.

Embrace your stronger side of good emotions and go searching for those who will live as you do, and keep thier company.

Do not turn your being into a rock. It is too brittle a life to live.

Answer 5

I know how it feels, and I hated being emotionless. I was hurt so badly (physically and emotionally) when I was in grade school, that I made myself numb. It was a bad life to live. I cried when I was a kindergartener because my heart was stone and i wanted to feel, but even the tears were meaningless and induced. I finally, in seventh grade broke out of it, and hated living life, just like before. I cut myself, and didn't want to live. I ended up telling my parents no, im not ok, and getting put on pills, which help me with the pain. If you empty the emotions, when they come back eventually, you'll hate yourself for it.

Answer 6

Is there a way to be emotionless, not by choice, under severe condition and trauma can you make someone emotionless. I don't think true emotionless is what you are looking for. You want to know how to deal with people who are just negative. You should fear being emotionless, there is a danger in that conditioning, its what makes military personnel, clearly cold logic doesn't bring about peace. So yes robots do exist, the truth is with what you know you can't go back, think of Cyrus in the Matrix, he makes a deal with Agent Smith and he wants to be plugged back into the matrix, and he says at the end "Ignorance is Bliss". As much as you would like to be emotionless, it will never happen. So forget the idea of being emotionless and focus on how to have peace of mind.

Lets break down a cruel person's interaction in an ABC format. So A is you work/live with the cruel person, B is the comment/act of cruelty they do, and C is how bad you feel. Now my first suggestion to anyone is change A. Many people who have peace of mind live and work in situations that allow them to have it. They seek locations which give it to them. The con of this is that you can't always change your situation, and in the ascension of having true peace of mind, it doesn't hold to character, i.e. I can take that person and throw them in a bad situation and they will be broken. So now you look at B, you can't change the way people treat you, you CAN change the way you treat others. You might be like why is that important, and my simple basic answer, is you are only accountable for your actions. Many people will be cruel in order to get you to react in a negative way, its a game to them. When you recognize the game, you don't have to play it. So you can't control A and B so easily, the question is can you control C, most math/logic tells you A + B= C, but its wrong. Why do you have to be hurt? "Well he did something cruel to me" Okay the action itself could not be avoided, but can't you choose your reaction to it? Isn't there a choice in whether you are insulted or not. I think a robot is someone who makes the A+B=C equation true, and thats your fault with the emotion, is that when they happen you feel hurt, but I am telling you, C is whatever you want to feel. I wish I could say I realized this by divine experience, but I didn't. A man named Viktor Frankl did. Frankl lived in a concentration camp in WW2. He was subject to all sorts of intolerances and cruelty, he noticed so many people lost hope and gave up, and they died. He however came to the conclusion "the last of the human freedom, the one they cannot take away, is the freedom to Choose Your Attitude in Any Situation." A guy who woke up at the crack of dawn, sent to dig trenches until noon, and then to fill them back up again, while being starved and suffering the cold harsh winters, given no purpose except to die. Now ask yourself, is your situation worse than his? How would he react to a cruel person?

You might not be him, but one paradox is true, the greater you suffer, the more compassion you develop, the question is do you want to utilize your suffering, or do you want to be a victim of it?

Answer 7

You cant do that unless you are highly medicated.

Answer 8

well. if u really want this it takes a lot of work. but no. sorry but it would be maybe impossible.

Answer 9

I don't think that you can be emotionless and still human.

However, the Stoics had the idea that you could avoid emotional responses to things.

This was to be achieved mostly through an understanding that some things are outside of your control. Given that you can't control them there is no point getting upset (or excited) about them. You can't control certain situations but you can control your reactions to them.

I think they also made a point about remembering that nothing happens forever. For example- a wasp stings me and it hurts but there is no point getting upset about it because it will stop hurting in a few minutes.

It's been a while since I've read any Stoics so this answer may not be entirely right. I have a feeling that I'm getting some Epicurus mixed into it.

Answer 10

that's what buddhism is about.  The idea is that there is one good state of mind that you can keep all the time - kind of peaceful and calm - not excited, not depressed, not overtly happy or unhappy - in the middle.  If you try to turn the emotion off it doesn't work, but if you just stay calm and don't pay too much attention to the emotion it goes away by itself.

Things come, things go, i just watch them come and go.

Of course you have to practice.  It doesn't come easily - that is what buddhist meditation is about.

Answer 11

Why not simply put your attention on reinforcing the positive emotions so they are not overcome by the negative? it's never useful to numb oneself, because it throws your coping mechanisms and responsiveness off.