Dear Andre:

You enjoy sometimes acting according to your strong emotions, it makes life interesting and sometimes you should do just that, when it will make your life interesting and at the same time will not hurt yourself or someone else. You can be a bit crazy (your word) but not harmful- crazy.

Here is an equation for you:

Wise Mind = Emotional Mind + Logical Mind.

To operate effectively in life, to get good results, we need to use our logic and to understand the messages behind our emotions. We need both. We can’t make life works for us using logic alone because we are not robots. And if we use only emotions to guide us, that doesn’t work either. We need the guidance of both: logic and emotions.

anita

Hi Andre,

Your post has piqued my interest and perhaps the replies you get might help me as well. I’ve been in a similar spot before. I’ve faced the same problem during my worst years, except that I wasn’t very conscious about it. I didn’t believe that was the way I should live my life, but rather I thought I had no choice, my unquietness was too strong so I kept acting impulsively and making awful mistakes. I remember walking in the rain (I was sick and supposed to be in bed) to a telephone booth just to call my ex because of something he had done. While I was there, a friend who I did not particularly like showed up and because I was hurt for something she had done I-don’t-know-how-many-months-prior I cried profusely and told her to leave me alone. I didn’t think I could control a thing. That kind of behavior created so much drama in my life that I now have no friends from my childhood up to my teenage hood. It’d be very awkward to see them in the streets.
So, here are my 2 cents. Your ideology that life should be lived to the limit and that emotions makes us feel alive is slanted in a way that won’t do you any good. You can still believe in your emotions and be kind to yourself. There’s a whole rainbow of emotions and you’re only paying attention to only one specific color. Maybe because it’s a crazy rush of emotions and it feels so much more intense. Personally, ’emotional overdoses’ never helped me and they also seemed to never have helped you. It is just not a good mental state to make major decisions. If you find yourself thinking whether or not you should do something that just seems ‘too much’, remember that the feelings are not going to stay forever (it may feel like they will, but they won’t) and do something to clear your mind and distance yourself from the issue. It’s proven that walking/exercising helps clear the mind. You can also simply go to sleep, that also works. Appreciating more positive, soothing emotions. Or focus on the simplest pleasures, your favorite icecream flavor, the feeling of a freshly-laundered recently-ironed soft blanket during a cold day, anything goes. Maybe finding a way to express your emotions would help greatly, e.g. music, journaling.