Reality Check: Can We Choose Our Feelings?

Do you remember grammar lessons? For most of us, I suspect it’s been a while since we’ve thought much about nouns and verbs and the rest of it. However, anyone whose livelihood depends on selling products, telling stories or influencing in some way would be well aware of the importance of choosing their words carefully.
In some cases, people choose words and phrases to evoke specific emotions. A sales person might paint a verbal picture of serenity in an effort to sell a house. A political figure may attempt to rouse pride, patriotism, envy or even anger with their slogans.
The rest of us use words to communicate emotions too.
Sometimes it’s love, appreciation, and joy. Other times, it’s displeasure, sadness, or disgust. Clearly, our words affect our interactions with others. But they can have another powerful effect that might be less obvious. What’s that?
The words we choose can influence the way we think about ourselves: our outlook, our possibilities, and ultimately, our satisfaction.
In his book “Choice Theory,” Dr. Glasser writes about choices (big surprise, eh?) However, what you might find surprising is that he includes some brief comments about grammar.
Think about the words we typically use to discuss emotions. For example, we might say, “I’m depressed,” or “I’m anxious,” or “I’m angry.” Those words imply that we don’t have a lot of choice; feelings just happen. We can’t help it. The emotion is in charge. We’re the victim here.
According to Glasser, traditional descriptions for emotions use passive words rather than active words. And passive words can lead us to believe that our distressing emotions, those feelings that are contributing to our misery, are beyond our control.
Instead, Glasser recommends that we choose active words as they can help us realize that we do have choices. What words and phrases? Instead of saying, for example, “I’m anxious,” Glasser suggests that we say, “I am anxietying,” or “I’m choosing to be anxious.”
Those active words such as anxietying, depressing, angering, are not exactly familiar, are they? Even Glasser admits that this alternative language sounds cumbersome. In fact, I’d be surprised if you ever heard words of this sort outside of a group of Choice Theory aficionados.
Familiar or not, this interesting question remains. Does “choosing anger” or “choosing anxiety” actually reflect reality more accurately than “I’m angry,” or “I’m anxious”? When you’re feeling miserable, it may not feel like you are “choosing misery.” Yet expressing it as a choice could help us realize that we do, in fact, have other options.
For example, when I say, “I am choosing to be anxious,” I’m also opening up other possibilities, such as “But I could choose differently. I could choose to be courageous. I could choose to be optimistic. I could choose to be confident.”
As Glasser writes, “To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it.” If that’s the message we’re sending to ourselves, then it follows that we would believe that we can’t do anything.
However, Choice Theory is fundamentally about choice. We don’t have freedom of choice in everything, but sometimes we have more opportunities to choose than we previously believed.
Glasser associates “to choose” with a very basic idea: If you can choose one thing, then you can choose something else, something better. As he says, “A choice theory world is a tough, responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.”
What do you think? Can we choose our feelings? If so, would we want to?