How is it that people come from similar situations yet feel completely different emotions?

Genetics, upbringing, culture, self-control…aren’t you basically asking what makes people different from one another? The similar situation you’re citing is only one factor among many that affect how people react to things.

Take those children of alcoholics: yes, being the child of an alcoholic is going to have a profound effect of some kind. But children’s personalities and life-shaping experiences are different. Children of nonalcoholics also include some who are responsible and some who are completely irresponsible, so the alcoholism isn’t the controlling factor.

Everyone has to cope in their own way. The situation may be similar, but the rest of their lives aren’t the same.
When my best friend left I cried once. Then I didn’t cry. I yelled, and I punched things. I wrote, and I sang. I even cut myself. I would have tried anything to stop the hurt. But I didn’t cry. Most people would cry…
Everyone is different. We come from a different background, and our minds don’t work the same, so of course we don’t react the same.

it comes from self-discovery and experience.

I have been wondering the same thing this week as a friend died. One of us has been really mad….while most have been bonding together and seeing her best.

As @Jeruba said, these events aren’t the overwhelming “controlling factor”. I should think that this very true statement could be regarded as an encouraging thought. Each person decides on their own how to react, grow, and continue on in their lives. The smart and the mentally tough ones go on to lead great lives, having used their experience to bolster themselves instead of letting it crush them. The weaker and emotionally fragile ones may go through hell on earth, having been set back in their development or just plain crushed by them.

Because people are different. Their experiences are run through the paradigm of who they are, their personality, their feelings, their other experiences. So of course the results are different.

Dr. Victor Frankl of Nazi concentration camp experience said that the one power we have is the power to choose how we will respond to what we have been subjected to. That was a life changing awakening to me. Years later after going through the test of my lifetime in terms of mental strength I have made it and gone on. Emotional factors have left a rut in my heart that may take the rest of my time to ongoingly adapt to. But the effort and vision of finishing well stay with me, that is the thing that most honours life .. to keep pursuing the experience of it in gladness, sorrow, setback and help someone else be strong. Millions of people inspire me since this is a universal conondrum.

Stressful situations can bring the “best” or the “worst” in people, because the stress goes straight to the person’s emotions.

They felt differently to the situation.

Perspective.

My sis and I were born into the exact same family with the same parents…what’s different? Our perspective on life.

I had the same answer as @SpatzieLover . My sister and I are so close in age as to be nearly twins, yet our reactions to the same situations are completely different.

She loves practical jokes and teasing, where I always felt humiliated when I realized people were playing jokes on me. This difference showed up at a very early age.She also has a highly active libido, and I am the opposite.

How to account for the differences in actions and reactions?

As everyone has said,
Jeruba “genetics, upbringing, culture, self control…”
marinelife “the paradigm of who they are, their personality, their feelings, their other experiences…”
Tropical Willie “Stressful situations can bring the “best” or the “worst” in people, because the stress goes straight to the person’s emotions.”

Can I add anything to this? Not sure but Ill try.

There are many kinds of influences working on each person. Depending on the world view, personal philosophy and morality of the person they react differently to the same trigger event.

One of the basic things in the person’s approach to life is their sense of responsibility. Are they going to take responsibility for themselves and how they respond or do they want to find someone to blame?

Often this basic orientation of blaming vs. responsibility affects motivation to overcome obstacles. The person with an internal vs. external locus of control will feel more problem solving needs to come from them to make their life work vs. a person who feels powerless and blames external conditions for their situation. They have no sense of control because of their feeling of powerlessness so when pushed to the brink they lash out at anything and everything they think is causing their distress, unhappiness or failure. It may be nonconstructive and damaging but they feel it’s their only choice. In general the person with an internal locus of control will show more fortitude and perseverance in the face of negative life events. (They are also more difficult to brainwash.)

Part of the aspect of world view is level of the person’s social conditioning. Social conditioning can be a positive or negative influence. Aggression needs to be focused and molded towards pro social causes. If aggression is leveled in an anti social mode it becomes destructive. Moral teachings serve to more or less mold positive behavior and rein in negative impulses

Positive influences such as love of self, love of mankind and a sense of civil responsibility work to move a person toward actions that are prosocial and self affirming.

Negative influences such as displaced anger and mental illness can be triggered by negative and traumatic life experiences such as child abuse, war, poverty etc.

In short, the individual confronted with a defining moment, calling for a decision on how to act, is enmeshed within a whole constellation of forces: externally- social pressure, group loyalties, physical realities and limitations, degree of intelligence and education and differing degrees of freedom from want and freedom to choose and internally-moral sense and conscience, self love or self hatred, internalized belief system (vengeance vs. forgiveness?, selfishness vs. altruism?)

Given your example of two people in the same situation choosing radically different paths? Not so hard to believe or fathom give the complexity of human beings. Haven’t you wondered about something you said or did if on a different day you would have responded or acted differently? If a single person varies according to his own moods, development and life course it’s easy to understand similar people reacting differently to the same situation. Sometimes it’s just a matter of the straw that broke the camel’s back. Other times it’s a matter of having the inner strength or resolve to rise to the occasion.

@YARNLADY and @SpatzieLover—I instantly thought of my sister, too!

We look very similar and are relatively close in age and were both born into the same family (same mom & dad)..yet we are SO different.
As adults we’ve recounted stories from our childhood and it’s always remarkable to me when our memories are different. Not about the facts of what happened per se..but our perceptions and how we understood things or what we took away from events in our life that we shared. Especially events from our late childhood/early teens involving our parents’ infidelities and divorce..our interpretations of events differ quite a bit..and even as recently as last year, me at age 38 and she at age 36, she told me things I’d never known about that she experienced/did/saw back when we were kids.

So I think that we’re all (even those of us that shared the same parents/upbringing/moral training) individuals and there are nuances to how we each understand things that happen in life..and therefore we won’t always react the same. There are just…degrees of gray…where it comes to emotions and reactions.

I guess its because everyone is different. The only situation that I have experienced out of the ones you have listed is divorce and, because it was an amicable break up, it didn’t effect me.