I totally agree that your experience is dictated by you and your reactions to it (both conscious and unconscious responses), and that thinking the world dictates your emotions takes the power away from you and gives it to the world, which causes suffering. However, I think some of your post can be misunderstood as being about controlling emotions. In a way, it is, as it's about learning to properly deal with them and become more resilient and peaceful so they don't control you, but the word "control" could cause some misconceptions, which I'll describe here.

As my mind developed and I tried to get a grasp on it, to resolve some of my traumas and feel at peace, I found myself wondering: are emotions something to be controlled? Are they something that should be conquered and escaped?

In my life, and the lives of many others, we tend to react to our emotions in one of two ways (depending on the feeling and the situation):

1. Suppress and bottle up an emotion. Deny its existence, and avoid it as much as possible. Resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drinking, smoking, abuse of other drugs, overeating, excessive exercise, TV, video games, etc. When you suppress an emotion, it grows stronger, it vibrates inside its cage relentlessly, causing mental and physical health problems, until one day it can break free and consume you, being much more powerful than the original feeling was at the beginning, when you could have released it with much less discomfort.
2. Amplify the emotion. This is most common with anger. Ever get pissed off at someone or something and rant to yourself in your head, musing about it endlessly? That perpetuates the anger by giving it a voice, rather than if you were to just sit with the feeling, consciously observe it, and not let your mind waste all your energy reacting to it. You're only hurting yourself by holding onto the feeling. It feels like the right thing to do, the natural thing, but incessantly ranting about why you are angry doesn't solve anything, and it makes you feel worse for longer than necessary.

i.e., this is the "fight or flight" response - do you run from your feelings or do you fight them? Neither way is helpful and both are harmful to you.

I also tried to control my emotions using logic and reason, which didn't work either. I felt like I was bipolar, with my emotional and logical mind constantly battling each other, one side saying "something doesn't feel right!" and the other arguing "no, that's unreasonable because ... ". I was spinning in circles and never made any progress. I could feel good sometimes, but the negativity would always take over eventually, and both sides of my brain were wasting way too much energy actively trying to quiet the other side, causing a lot of mental fatigue.

It's a vicious self-defeating cycle, like the couple that always argues, and never comes to a peaceful resolution, because when one person gets worked up about something, they react wildly, then their partner reacts to them, and they react to their partner's reaction, and no one ever stops to think and realize how insignificant and minor the original stimulus was that sparked the whole thing. Doing the laundry isn't worth ruining everyone's mood for the day, is it?

Eventually, after that, I learned that the best thing to do when overwhelmed by an emotion is to let it be as it is. Accept its presence. Remember that you didn't choose the feeling on a conscious level, and you can't control it right now, so you can't blame yourself. You can't blame the external stimulus that caused your reaction either, because the way you feel is a result of your own mind on a level you are not yet fully aware of. So once you let go, observe, and let the emotion be as it is without fighting it, you allow the feeling to pass through you and fade away on its own. This is the quickest and least painful way to deal with an emotion, and return to your center of peace. Depending on how good you are at this observing practice, the feeling can still leave an imprint in your mind, an echo in your nervous system - a samskara -, but nowhere near as strong or harmful as it would if you had used one of the fight or flight responses.

Meditation, as well as yoga, making art, writing, or whatever your passion is, are good ways of releasing these samskaras and healing yourself. But don't confuse addictive coping mechanisms with passions. Something that makes you feel good in the short term can be harmful in the long term, and that's not a healthy practice. In my opinion and experience, meditation is probably the best way. With a consistent and dedicated meditation practice, everything else falls into place naturally.

Over time, this practice of being aware but not reactive makes you more and more resilient. You still have emotions, because they are meant to be a part of us, but you aren't controlled by them, they are not out of control, and you feel better. The negative feelings aren't as overwhelming and don't last as long. Situations no longer bother you as much. Stress gradually fades away. But this process takes time and some determination, so it's important to not feel hopeless and give up in the early stages.

There might have been something else I wanted to say, but I don't remember, and this comment is already longer than your post (I'm too verbose but I want to be as clear as possible). My point is that while our emotions should not be at the mercy of our external experience, neither can we simply decide what our emotional response will be in the moment. The brain will continue using the patterns it has always used, and it takes time and mindfulness to release those patterns and reset. Trying to "control" emotions is just as harmful as other ways of coping.