Narratives keep the feeling going

Our feelings (anger, shame, delight) appear almost instantly, and, left alone, they don’t last very long.

But if we invent a narrative around an event or a person, we can keep the feeling going for a very long time.

Pavlov (ring a bell?) helped us see that a dog could learn to associate one thing with another. Humans are way better than this than dogs.

If you’re not happy with the feeling, try dropping the narrative. After all, it’s your narrative, the story you have to keep telling yourself again and again, that’s causing the feeling to return.