On controlling impulses and understanding emotions
Why do humans feel the emotions we do? Why does it feel like our emotions are at the whim of the world around us?
Countless times I have heard people say “No one can make you feel anything”. For so long this made no sense to me. It sure seemed like they did something then I felt a certain way, which pointed towards them causing this feeling. If it wasn’t them, I had no idea what else would’ve caused it.
When I say “No one can make you feel anything”, I truly believe it now. I’ve learned to understand my emotions and their impulses on a much deeper level. Doing so has allowed me to gain control over both.
When I look back at the process over the past year, I see a clear pattern. There was a step by step path I took to get to where I am now. Even now, when an emotion arises, I follow the same path but on a smaller scale. This process took place in four main steps and in order to find a simple acronym to help remember it, I titled each step to spell FREE.
To regain control of my emotions and impulses, I had to feel, recognize, eradicate, and explore. In this blog, I’ll share each step of the process.
As always, I don’t have all the answers but I hope my expedition to try finding them in my life inspires you to start the search in your own.
If you enjoy this blog and would like to support, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Feel
The first step in the process of overcoming impulses and being more in control of my emotions was to feel. The ability to feel emotions is something I believe comes naturally, from the moment a person is born. But what exactly am I feeling?
Here’s the view the biologist in me takes: emotions are nothing but a chemical reaction within the body. These chemical reactions are designed to protect us from harm and keep us alive. When a baby is born, the brain immediately begins building neural pathways and forming complex systems throughout the body. Using the senses, the brain takes in the information from the environment, interprets it, and produces a chemical reaction if it needs to alter the state of the body.
An altered state would be increasing the heart rate, changing breathing patterns, muscle twitches, dilated pupils, and many more. The brain takes in its surroundings and determines if the body is in need of protection or if it’s safe as it is.
As a baby, all the chemical reactions formed in response to stimuli are unconscious. A baby has no clue what they’re feeling and they don’t need to. The brain creates a proper response – or what it believes is proper – to the environment. This is the exact same process you’d observe in an animal.
An animal uses its senses, detects safety or danger, alters its body’s state if necessary, and acts instinctively. If a cat sees a mouse, the brain increases blood flow, heart rate, dilates the pupils, engages the proper muscles for movement, and the cat pounces. A stimulus leads to a chemical reaction (a feeling) and that chemical reaction creates an impulse response.
A human simply has different impulse responses to their environment. Loud noises lead to flinching and/or crying. The feeling of an empty stomach leads to crying. A quiet space with their mom signals safety and triggers sleep. These responses were written in the genetic code and as the baby continues instinctively responding to their environment, the brain learns which impulses help or hinder the baby’s well-being, and adjusts accordingly.
This process never goes away. As a child grows, they continue developing instinctual responses to environmental stimuli. Instincts change as the child develops speech and more control over their movements, but the chemical reactions are no different.
Even right now, as I write this, the process continues. I am constantly experiencing these chemical reactions and feeling them in different spaces throughout my body. Becoming aware of that feeling was the first step towards freedom. Any time my body experienced a change in state, I focused on where I was feeling it – that’s it. Depending on the stimulus, the chemical reaction would be different, the body’s response would arise, and I’d notice what that response was.
The tightness in my chest, the heart rate, the lightheadedness, the tremors, the shallow breathing, the upset stomach, etc. My goal was to locate the feeling and nothing more.
Recognize
The burden of being human is the ability to assign meaning to a chemical reaction.
As a child grows, so too does their vocabulary. Now these feelings are given a name or to start, an impression. Some feelings are bad and others are good. Some hurt and some don’t. They make us cry, laugh, scream, or jump. They’re no longer just feelings, now they hold value.
With more time, we learn words like scared, hungry, happy, worried, mad, tired, etc. Then comes anxiety, stress, pleasure, bliss, loneliness, depression…
The thing is, the chemical reactions don’t change much if at all. The change in the body’s state is also similar to old patterns. The instinct or impulse in response to each feeling changes with time as the brain learns how to return to a baseline state. You learn certain reactions encourage different responses in the people around you. For instance, if the parent screams, the baby cries impulsively. The toddler may also cry or they may learn apologizing helps calm the parent. The teenager may lock themselves away in their room until things cool down. The impulse of the body in response to a feeling evolves until it finds one that works more often than not.
The second step in the process of healing is recognition of the feeling. Since we are given rational thought, we should at least use it. So after determining where the feeling resides in the body, a simple label can be placed upon the feeling. I think of this as a way to shed light on the emotions instead of letting them operate unnoticed.
Eradicate
This step was the most difficult for me. I don’t say that to discourage you, but to prepare you. The eradication of impulses took a significant amount of patience and self compassion. The process required a lot of my energy to stay as aware and vigilant of my actions as possible. It was challenging, but the results have been well worth it.
Once I felt the emotions and gave them a name, I needed to see what these chemical reactions wanted me to do. I sought my knee-jerk reaction to the various stimuli in my day to day life. The most apparent impulses came in response to the chemical reaction I label as anger. To understand the impulse, I often had to reflect on it after the fact. When I sat down with myself after a hard day of work, I’d recall the moments I felt anger, then I’d remember the actions that followed. I saw each time I threw something, slammed a door, spoke rudely, and swore under my breath.
Doing this gave me a list of impulses to expect when experiencing anger. As I continued building this list and seeing the patterns, I then needed to stop them from happening. Each time I felt it in my body, l labeled it as anger, then I paused, almost as if I was observing myself as a third person and asking “What are you going to do now?” I was waiting to see which impulse from the list my body wanted to express.
I’d feel the tension in my arm, preparing to throw the milk in the fridge. I felt the muscle in my face grow heavy and form a frown. The sharp intake in my breath and a curse on the tip of my tongue.
Each time, I had to catch myself before the action or sometimes in the midst of it. If I caught it in time, I simply had to not do whatever it is my body aimed to do. All the tension and preparation had to be released and the “right” thing had to be done.
This process was done with every emotion I regularly felt. I would pay attention to what I was feeling throughout the day, I’d reflect on the actions I performed, then I’d start catching the impulse before it happened. The habit was built just like any other. It was a slow process with a lot of mistakes. At first, I could only catch myself once in every fifty impulses. Then it was one in ten. Then almost every time.
There are still times when I’m not in a state of presence and an impulse slips through. When this happens, my body and mind never fail to let me know I acted counter to my ideal self. Immediately after or shortly after, I see my error and I vow to be more aware and in control.
Explore
This step has been the metaphorical cutting of the thread that ties me to my past. For so long, a stimulus would trigger something in me and I’d act with no thought. When I learned to control my impulses, I wanted to know why I had them in the first place. So I started the search for answers.
After a series of asking “why?” I’d find a starting point to every emotion and every impulse. From the reason I’d grow anxious if I didn’t receive a text back, to why being upset causes me to self-isolate. When I caught an impulse, I’d look at what emotion I was feeling and do everything I could to understand why this moment led to this.
Stoicism, specifically Discourses by Epictetus became a go-to resource. The passages helped me see my false impressions and opinions I was placing on externals. I was reminded of how little was in my control and how freeing it was to accept that fact. Once I could see events for what they were without placing a value on them, then I could determine why I added value in the first place.
Anger during a rush at work comes from my childhood desire to control my environment when chaos ensued. Aloofness comes from my inability to express my emotions as a kid. Worry when she doesn’t text back developed from growing up with a family who likes regular check-ins.
Most, if not all impulses and emotions stemmed from something that happened in my childhood. Once I understood that, I was able to see the emotion more clearly and realize it was an old pattern playing out. The impulses I needed as a child no longer serve me.
Now, my actions were no longer instinct, but a conscious choice to be better.
Final Thoughts
Between every feeling and impulse, there’s a gap. In this space there is a choice to act as you always have or choose differently.
Rational thought is what separates humans from animals. While this ability is incredibly useful, it also forces us to find meaning within the chemical reactions of our body. Unfortunately, the meanings we place upon these emotions only scratch the surface of the true essence of the feeling.
All the emotions you feel were your brain’s way of keeping you safe as you grew up. Before you had a conscious choice in the matter, your brain developed responses to every stimulus in your environment.
The emotions you feel today are no different than the ones you felt back then, they only have a different name and different impulses.
If you want to free yourself from the impulses of the body and regain control and understanding of your emotions, feel everything, recognize it for what it is, eradicate its impulses, and explore the underlying meaning.
June 14, 2026
