I wish I could say that I had such self-mastery as to control when I will permit myself to feel a given emotion, but I don't. I have come to believe, as a result of personal experience, that it is generally better to deal with a given emotion as it arises. To me, the key to self-mastery is in feeling the feeling, but make the right choices and decisions, to respond rather than react. Some emotional experiences, like grief, have a significant physical component to them as well, which is just another reason to work through the emotion and experience as it happens.

So, I still feel fear, but have used it to improve performance, like in a public speaking situation. I have used it to spur me to face a situation head on rather than to avoid it. I have also paid attention to when I need to act to avoid danger or not stay in an unsafe place, situation, or around an unsafe person.

Anger can alert me to stand up against an injustice, to right a wrong. It can also alert me to step back and NOT act, because I might be reacting rather than responding. It might spur me to act for less than my best reasons, motives, and actions. That's when self-mastery and control says not to act, but wait and reflect.

It is human to feel. Pelar brings the biological processes behind emotional expression. To me, personally, to act without emotion, to suppress or repress it is not human. I don't think it is necessary for anyone, of any aspect, to deny one of the most basic parts of the human experience. It is how we choose to act that is by far more important. Otherwise, I suspect we can easily repeat the failures and limitations any kind of dogmatic thinking on this can create, as it has for our fictional brethen, the heroes who inspire our path in the first place.

Best regards