To further expand on the not-always-trustworthy nature of our feelings, I'd like briefly to talk about the nature of dreams. It's possible to have a dream so vivid that upon awakening we can't help but regard as real the emotions we experienced while asleep. If the dream was fearful, we can return to consciousness with an almost palpable sense of danger, literally trembling with anxiety. But again, despite the "cogency" of our feelings, they yet have no basis in reality. Just as the dream itself, strictly speaking, was a series of visual hallucinations, the emotion so intimately connected to these stark images is similarly illusory. Still, the emotion may feel to us just as "real" as the real thing.
It can hardly be over-emphasized that in such circumstances, however acutely we may have felt the emotion, it is still without substance and hardly worthy of factoring into any subsequent behavior. Although I don't mean to imply here that dreams can't ever be prophetic, in my abundant experience working with them (both personally and professionally) almost all of them appear related to an individual's emotionally unresolved issues. Moreover, what is frequently referred to in the literature as "dream work" refers specifically to the circumstance that, in general, dreams focus on problematic material that our unconscious mind is endeavoring to "get its head around."
One final example of needing to be careful about "running" with our emotions relates to the blissful experience of falling in love. Which is to say that our falling "madly" in love with someone doesn't necessarily mean that the person we're so enamored of is right for us--i.e., the one. Certainly, in the moment it almost always feels this way. But since falling in love can be more chemical than cognitive, we need to be extremely careful about making an instant commitment because of the fervency of our feelings. Falling "head over heels" may mean just that: our ardor, our passion, has thrown us seriously off balance--and we therefore need to proceed with considerable caution. In some ways it's almost as easy to fall in love with the wrong person as the right one, especially if we're just so ready for the experience, or the other person is just so attractive to us. In the same vein, becoming "infatuated" with another literally means "to be made fatuous or foolish."
So we need to remind ourselves that a romantic, emotionally laden, attraction may be far more physical than spiritual, and that it may not be grounded in our ability to accurately access the other's deeper nature or personality traits--traits that, finally, we might come to view either as lovable and endearing; or as loathsome, revolting or contemptible (consider, for example, the movie, "The War of the Roses"--or, for that matter, this country's frighteningly high divorce rate). As in dreams, we may fall in love with an illusion that in our ecstatically altered state of consciousness is easily confused with reality. As the old, but once very popular, song put it: "Falling in love with love is falling for make believe." Once we fully "awaken" from our possibly idealized imaginings, we may well recognize that the fond illusions we so earnestly cultivated contrast sharply with the newly perceptible--and far more mundane--reality.
One final note here. Despite all my cautionary words, I have no doubt whatsoever that our emotions are one of our most valuable assets. Without them all enthusiasm, excitement and joy would disappear. Life would be dull and colorless. Besides, if we were really emotionless we could never make decisions (apologies to Mr. Spock). One choice would "feel" no better, or worse, than any other.
Nonetheless, whenever our emotions start operating independent of our rational faculties--or literally "take us over" (as in catapulting us into the throes of a negative transference reaction or a bad panic attack)--we need to learn how to calm ourselves down and reconnect with the more evolved parts of our brain. We must learn how to hit the brakes when our feelings become exaggerated or start careening out of control. We simply can't afford to uncritically allow our emotions to speed us in a direction that we may later come to regret.
P.S. I invite readers to follow my psychological musings on Twitter. http://twitter.com/drlee1
