How to Use Emotions as Pawns (By Mr. Omar Ting)

(Philosocom's Directory On Emotions)

(Disclaimer: The guest posts do not necessarily align with Philosocom's manager, Mr. Tomasio Rubinshtein's beliefs, thoughts, or feelings. The point of guest posts is to allow a wide range of narratives from a wide range of people. To apply for a guest post of your own, please send your request to mrtomasio@philosocom.com)

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Mr. Tomasio introduced me to a new concept: Viewing your emotions as pawns. He said that emotions can either be good for you or bad for you. It has only been a few days, but I think his teachings it has been working well. I want to talk a little bit about how to employ this strategy for yourself and why it’s working for me.

It is worth noting that I have been meditating daily for the past nine months as I write this article. Also, both Tomasio and I are autistic; therefore, while we may have our own issues with emotions and empathy, we may also have massive strengths in managing our own emotions.

I tend to see autistic people having both intense reactions to things in their environment (i.e., triggers, as some might say), yet also adaptability and resilience in adjusting to these triggers. Maybe it is obvious in hindsight — we simply must adapt or die.

This adaptation, in my opinion and experience, is a survival mechanism. We autists, or at least a large number of us (because not all autistic people are the same), appear to share a general hypersensitivity, though these sensitivities can span all senses, including sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, as well as possibly other non-traditional senses, such as the spiritual?

Not all of us adapt well. In terms of leading a normal, functional life, the most successful autistics tend to mask better than others, sometimes so well that it becomes instinctive, subconscious. This leads to a general sense of "forgetting who we really are."

I know I am not the only one who experiences life this way from reading other anecdotal accounts as well as generalized stereotypes, both professional and unprofessional.

I refer to all this as a lead-in to "Emotions as Pawns" because it may be easier for an autistic person to do this. I cannot know for sure until I spread this analogy to others and ask them how it goes for them. Right now, I can just make assumptions based on what I know.

While I personally feel like I am very sensitive and tend to take things more personally than the average person, I also have an above-average ability to divorce myself from emotions when I consciously try. It does seem like a weird dynamic, but it is what it is.

Visualization

I think the actual "visualization" of one’s emotions as actual pawns on a chessboard is very helpful. Even in real-time, as your emotions are occurring, assigning "sadness," or "rage" to a particular piece on the chessboard is key for this analogy to work.

If you feel like this emotion is not helping you towards your life goals (anger generally is never useful), then you can simply "sacrifice" this pawn in your visualization and knock it off of your chessboard. Sure, this is much easier said than done, but I think it is a powerful tactic to manage one’s emotions.

Why? I recently encountered visualization in another form: qigong. Qigong is an ancient form of energy and breathing practice passed down over centuries through China, used in modern traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts, with a plethora of health and other applications.

I can attest that it is a real thing through my own practice, yet science is far behind in playing catch-up in understanding how it works. I must note that one rarely needs to understand how something works to be able to use it effectively.

As a simple example, you know how to drive a car, but you do not necessarily need to know how all the inner workings function. I turn the steering wheel, press the gas pedal, and the car goes. I press the brake, and the car stops. It’s not required to understand the mechanical and electrical systems, combustion, to become a race car driver.

You could know, but you could also not know and be the best race car driver in the world. I mention this because it applies to meditation too.

I don’t particularly need to know exactly how meditation works to practice it and reap the benefits, a few of which include reducing anxiety, depression, helping to mitigate and cure addiction symptoms, among many other researched and purported benefits.

Back to visualization. Since managing one’s own body functions can be very complex, sometimes it is far easier to use a visualization than to actively try to control each and every body part. For example, when a professional baseball player is up to bat, the batter probably is not thinking about every single joint in his body, or every single muscle twitch.

No, we wouldn’t be able to live that way. Instead, perhaps the batter is visualizing what he wants to happen—"knocking the ball out of the park"—and then, when the ball comes barrelling down at him at 90+ miles per hour, the body just magically moves.

In qigong, one of the visualizations is that you have this ball of energy in your "lower dan tian," which is the area a few inches behind and below your belly button.

Without going into more detail about qigong, utilizing this single visualization is better than reminding oneself of all the many different muscles we need to be contracting in order to breathe, sit up straight, etc.

I took a long time to simply say, I recently found the power of visualization. I’m probably late to the game, but better late than never!

So, in applying visualization to emotional management, thanks to Mr. Tomasio, we have the concept of "Emotions as Pawns."

These things are mine! They do not control me! They are mine, and they do as I wish and as I please. If my pawn rebels or puts me in danger, I can simply sacrifice him off the board!

To our friends reading this, I hope this will help you on your life journey.

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You can view more of Omar’s writings by following him on Quora.