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Why do emotions feel like they “just happen”? And what can we do about it?

By Duff McDuffee on January 15th, 2018

The Persistent Illusion of Passivity

I’ve decided to focus my coaching practice on helping people transform anxiety and stress into calm and courage.

Anxiety is of course, an emotion. All emotions feel like they are “just happening” to us, because they are generated by automatic and unconscious processes.

I call this The Persistent Illusion of Passivity. It always feels like the emotion we are feeling is inevitable, that we are not creating it, that it is happening to us.
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