Do our emotions control us or do we control our emotions?

[mecamylamine]

Our emotions control us:
Sometimes we can't help feeling the way we feel. The classic example would be someone loving someone they're not supposed to love. No matter how hard they try to control their emotions, they can't. In a lot of cases we can't tell ourselves what emotions to feel, especially strong emotions. When we're feeling depressed, we can't cheer up just by ourselves to.

We control our emotions:
We're taught how to feel about certain things. When we've done something wrong, we're told to feel remorseful, therefore we do(I don't know if I'm making much sense here....) When emotions are not very strong, we can change them easily. If we're upset about failing a Math test, sometimes it's really easy to tell ourselves to be happy, and that the next test will be better. This is controlling our emotions, but if emotions are too strong, such as after a close relative passes away, it's our emotions that control us.

tell me if what I'm saying doesn't make sense haha. And it'd be nice to hear your opinions too, I just thought that this was an interesting question.

[Vvi]

Out TOK teacher told us that guilt and shame are two difficult emotions, because of trying to figure out whether they are instinctual or not. I mean, way back when people weren't ashamed of being naked, no one cared. At some point (if you're Christian, when Adam and Eve got thrown out of heaven), people started covering themselves up.

I think guilt is a learned emotion, because people feeling guilty about stealing is taught. The same with lying. Apparently there's some people group somewhere in the world where they lie to each other all the time. Forgot where.
So honesty is basically a cultural thing that is prized by us.

Love is definitely instinctual in some cases, or maybe it's lust. Or chemical attraction? I have no idea what the word for it is.

An interesting example of emotions is Japanese culture, because it's not polite to have every emotion show on your face. Whereas in the Middle East, people are very loud and aggressive sounding, even though they are just discussing the weather. Same thing with Italians and their passionate discussions. I really think emotions are learned.

But we discussed the differences between emotion and feeling in class. Emotion= sadness. Feeling= hungry. Or whatever you want. So I think feelings are instinctual, and emotions learned.

And if I ever wrote that on a TOK essay, I would get almost no points because that would be an "overgeneralization". So do we all really have to say "It's a combination of both?", the way every TOK essay ends?