It’s all the fault of that goddamned override switch.

See, studies have shown that one of the starkest provable differences between the brains of smart people and those of people of average intelligence is that the smart people have a much stronger “override” switch for their emotions. There is a particular region of the brain that is responsible for suppressing our emotions and letting us think clearly, and smart people have one that is very good at its job.

And make no mistake, this region of the brain is extremely important to what it means to be human. Without it, we would have no choice but to act purely from emotion, and not only would that render a lot of our lovely big brains utterly useless, but civilization would crumble if we all acted on our emotions all the time.

Essentially, this part of the brain^[1] is entirely responsible for impulse control. Imagine a world where nobody had any. The horror.

I also think there is a strong possibility that this part of the brain has to be strong in order for complex symbolic abstract reasoning to develop in the first place. To me, it is entirely possible that a strong override switch causes intelligence and not the other way around. It may be that the defining feature of the intellectual class is the ability to silence emotion and listen to our reasoning minds without all that “noise”.

But that doesn’t mean that intellectuals have better self-control than anyone else. Why not? Because of neurosis.

See, this override switch doesn’t come with a manual. So intellectuals start using it for all emotions they don’t want to feel. Or even emotions that they want to feel, but not right now. This override switch can totally override the emotion of the moment…. but the emotion is still there. It’s only frozen in time.

This is the basis for neurosis. Unprocessed emotion. Freezing the moment becomes a way to avoid dealing with all unwanted emotion, with absolutely no plans made to ever thaw it out again, and on the surface, this seems to work.

But the reality is that each set of frozen emotions takes up room in the mind and places a burden on your mental resources that will impair your ability to cope until the day you go back and unfreeze them. The more emotionally charged a moment is, the more mental energy and space it takes to suppress it and keep it suppressed. That override switch gets tasked with maintaining the status quo.

Of course, this mental impairment due to unprocessed emotion makes it harder to cope with reality, and leads to escapism, wherein the individual can escape into a mental construct (usually but not always incorporating material from media, like books or video games) and, for a time at least, be “safe” from all those emotions they are afraid to face.

Sadly, this tendency can turn into a dependency which makes the person even less able to cope. And that leads to more negative life experiences… which are, of course, also suppressed.

Thus, the individual becomes increasingly heavy with unprocessed emotion that takes up more and more of their mental resources, displacing their conscious mind and creating neurotic responses to common situations. If this goes far enough, it turns into depression, draining the person of motivation and energy because so much of it is going to keeping the long list of suppressed emotion suppressed.

But because the consciousness has shaped itself almost entirely around keeping the emotions out of the conscious mind, the neurotic depressive can’t consciously perceive this burden. The neurotic depressive can feel that something is wrong, but without a significant shift in consciousness towards unleashing what has been suppressed for so long, little progress can be made against the condition.

That’s the therapist’s real job. Not just helping the person unlock and deal with specific memories (which is extremely helpful) but helping them to see that doing that is the deal. This is pretty hard to do, because intellectuals are highly adept at intellectualizing and justifying their emotional responses. They will resist with all the might of their mighty minds, and it must be frustrating for therapists to have to make their way through our defenses to get even close to making us realize that.

I am lucky in that, perhaps because of the very mental detachment that got me in this mess in the first place, I am willing and able to accept that this is the gig. Unlocking suppressed memories and emotions and finishing the experience. And I am willing to get down to work and do it, with help from my therapist.

My therapist often remarks about how sober and sensible I am about the matter. That I make connections and accept the truth of situations far faster that most of his patients. That I regularly make realizations that it takes others years to get to.

No big surprise. I’n a fast learner who was always ahead of my class in school. Guess I am a precocious patient too.

I take a certain amount of pride in my self-honesty and clarity of thought. I strive to know the truth without any regard to my own safety, which has its pluses and minuses, but it does lead to an ability to surrender to the truth when I find it that a lot of people could use.

Not sure if that is good for me personally or not. There is something to be said for having mercy on yourself. But I have this overpowering need to understand. And to that end, I will follow the thread of truth wherever it might lead, no matter what.

Maybe that’s just my overactive superego talking, I don’t know. But it does mean that my mental muscles for accepting the truth of the situation, warts and all, are well developed.

Just another function of that darn override switch.

I will talk to you fabulous people again tomorrow.