Feelings are like horses

I found this blog post of some interest. Lizzie has 5 children, 4 of which are girls. She writes

But girls are different, and sometimes that difference can leave a person completely bewildered. When it comes to little girls and their emotions, “A”  does not necessarily cause “B.” But, when “B” is what needs to be disciplined, it can feel frustrating to have no clues as to what member of the alphabet actually caused it.

...Say it is someone else’s birthday. Say your child wants a present too. Say they start fussing about it. Imagine then that then you say, “Don’t do that. That is bad. Don’t be a fusser. Deal with it.” How did that help anyone? The child is taught that if the feeling comes over them, they have already failed. That is bad! But what am I supposed to do with it? It doesn’t just go away by itself. Little girls need help sorting out their emotions – not so that they can wallow in them, but so they can learn to control them.

Her post reminded me of similar sentiments from Dennis Prager on a source of unhappiness for women: the lack of teaching on how to control emotions. His take on the current situation

Societies and parents also always knew that it was imperative to teach girls to control their natures – in particular their predilection to be ruled by their emotions. Women who allowed their emotions to rule them not only became destructive (to members of their families first and foremost), they became unhappy women.

However, with the advent of contemporary feminism and other social trends that coincided with the rise of feminism – among them the elevation of compassion over standards, the great emphasis placed on feelings, the rejection of patriarchy and the devaluation of traditional masculine virtues (like subdued emotional expression) – female nature came to be seen as far less in need of discipline than male nature.

I am even more inclined to view Prager's thesis with merit. But the main problem in not that girls have these feelings, nor for that matter that boys are more likely to struggle with aggressive feelings; the problem comes when we deny that girls have to subdue their emotions to their wills, or if we admit this but fail to teach it. We need to acknowledge the emotion, though we can identify it as sin when it is, then encourage them to bring such feelings under the dominion of their will. They are to make sure they choose the right path regardless of what they feel like doing.

Lizzie's solution is to tell the girls that their emotions are like horses,

We tell our girls that their feelings are like horses—beautiful, spirited horses. But they are the riders. We tell them that God gave them this horse when they were born, and they will ride it their whole life. God also set us on a path on the top of a mountain together and told us to follow it. We can see for a long way—there are beautiful flowers, lakes, trees, and rainbows. (We are little girls after all!) This is how we “walk in the light as He is in the light, and have fellowship with one another.”

When our emotions act up, it is like the horse trying to jump the fence and run down into a yucky place full of spiders to get lost in the dark. A good rider knows what to do when the horse tries to bolt – you pull on the reigns! Turn the horse’s head! Get back on the path! We also tell them that God told us that if we see one of our little girls with her horse down in the mud puddle spitting at people who walk by, it is our job to haul them up, willing or unwilling, back to the path.

I think this is a useful analogy to use for girls. But whatever analogy we use, we need to realise that behaviour responding to emotion is detrimental to both the person and to others. Though allowing our will to be modelled by our emotions is the easier path in the short term, it makes life more difficult in the long term. And realise that submitting our emotions to our will can eventually modify our emotions. A broken-in horse is less likely to want to jump the fences. As Elizabeth Goudge wrote

Feeling can be compelled by action not quite as easily as action by feeling, but far more lastingly.

Happiness and self-control

Dennis Prager is a Jewish columnist who writes on several topics. Some of his recurring interests include:

• The superiority of the Judeo-Christian ethic
• The immorality of the (politically) left
• Happiness

He has written a book on this last one.

In a recent commentary Prager talks about why he thinks so many (Western) women are depressed.

Societies and parents also always knew that it was imperative to teach girls to control their natures – in particular their predilection to be ruled by their emotions. Women who allowed their emotions to rule them not only became destructive (to members of their families first and foremost), they became unhappy women.

However, with the advent of contemporary feminism and other social trends that coincided with the rise of feminism – among them the elevation of compassion over standards, the great emphasis placed on feelings, the rejection of patriarchy and the devaluation of traditional masculine virtues (like subdued emotional expression) – female nature came to be seen as far less in need of discipline than male nature.

So, while society continued to teach boys to control themselves, it stopped teaching girls to do so. Girls' emotions and feelings were inherently valuable. And denying this was attacked as sexist, if not misogynistic.

Consequently, the women many of these girls grew into lacked the ability to control their natures, to control their emotions or their moods, and therefore lacked the facility to engage in the self-control necessary for happiness and the avoidance of depression.

I don't know if this is true but it seems somewhat reasonable on the face of it. I know that males (in general) deal more with aggression and that control of this aggression is important, though focusing it to do good is legitimate. It seems that focusing is now frowned upon and it should be suppressed rather than controlled. I do not think society sees an uncontrolled emotional disposition as a vice (which it is). Rather that emotions are and the expectation that other people submit emotion to the will is now the vice.

In an earlier article on the same topic Prager said,

As I wrote in my book on happiness ("Happiness Is a Serious Problem," HarperCollins), much unhappiness comes from having expectations. When our expectations are not fulfilled – and most are not – we can become unhappy and even bitter. And when our expectations are fulfilled, we are no happier because fulfilled expectations undermine gratitude (we are not grateful when we get what assume we will get), and gratitude is indispensable to happiness.

Feminism raised women's expectations beyond what life can deliver to the vast majority of them. It was hard enough for women in the past to realize their far fewer expectations of marrying a good man and making a happy family. But feminism told a generation of women that they can not only expect to have that but, perhaps even more important to feminism, they could also expect to have a fulfilling, financially rewarding, society-honoring career.

On a more fundamental level, the issue is what philosophy we subscribe to and does that philosophy reflect reality. I think the self-expectations one has of reality is important. False expectations can lead to disappointment. We live in a fallen world so even having true expectations can lead to disappointment. But better to think rightly about the world and deal with the issues as they come. Thinking wrongly may lead to more unhappiness for you because the world fails to be how you want it to be or it may lead to wrong behaviour which may create unhappiness for you or for others.