By the time we're adults we have developed many conditioned inhibitions of emotional display which are largely motoric and automatic. These can lead you to feel misunderstood and to misunderstand others, especially if you or your therapist focuses on your feelings apart from their social context. But sometimes conditioned inhibition occurs with the emotion itself and not merely its display. In that case, other emotions, rather than motor reflexes, serve the inhibitory function.

The primary inhibitory emotions are fear and shame. Once these become conditioned to occur with other emotions, enjoyment can cause shame of unworthiness, love can smack of fear, interest can scare us, sadness can depress us.

Now here's where it gets really confusing for those who focus on feelings or the presumed "origins" of habits. In addition to feeling awful, fear and shame signal vulnerability and make us exaggerate perceptions of threat. The amphetamine and analgesic effects of the many forms of anger temporarily relieve vulnerability and increase confidence of overcoming threat. Fear and shame disempower; anger temporarily empowers. Hence the inhibitory function of fear and shame increase the likelihood that they will stimulate anger in an extended conditioned sequence. Of course, anger itself is the most socially controlled emotion, so it is likely to develop its own inhibitions. Conditioning streams (or algorithms) occur in milliseconds and increase with repetition over time. By adulthood, your conditioned stream can look like: