Can we change our reactions?

Prompted by the response (privately) to my last entry, I offer a proposition rather than a statement:

"It is nigh on impossible to change how we react to negative conditions"

Source: Personal experience plus numerous similar reports from others.
The phone rings, we answer it. Someone's died. How do we react? How can we change that reaction? Should we change that reaction? Are we designed to have a choice in reactions? This can be extended to every acute shock or chronic situation and these reactions, both of their nature and duration are automatic.

There are some tricks applicable in a few known areas, like anger management, but those based on thought can only work where we interpret the shock to be worse than it is. That isn't changing the reaction but the information that caused it. Yoga and hypnosis will usually calm us generally over time, but doesn't work all the time or make us immune, it just reduces the reactions like turning down the volume.

I expected this to make a few pages but seems more or less how it is- no need for many examples as we all know what makes us feel bad and how, and if persistent then often have to resort to chemical drugs to manage them. That's the best we currently have to work quickly, but are addictive in many cases and only a last resort that again just turns down the volume and not the nature. And there are case histories where professionals have admitted in some that is how you react and all my treatment doesn't seem to help. Such patients do exist, and unless a way can be found to help them all then no known treatment is more than palliative and temporary.

So back to the phone call- why should anyone react differently to such news? Or any like it? Those who believe in a creator would have to accept these reactions were created for a reason, so aren't supposed to be user adjustable. Overall it does seem the good and bad feelings even out, which drives each individual to realise as long as they're hooked into the cycle of up and down for life, they'll never get any different and the only way out is looking for enlightenment. There are no alternatives in the known system out there. As only a handful get on that route and suffer nearly as much if not more in the process, besides the few who succeed (and I am aware of them or wouldn't keep at it myself) everyone else is stuck with their design.

I have found there are a few methods as described to lessen the peaks, and that's it. Knowledge can change the unwarranted reactions, but when based on a real bad situation we're fucked. Next?