Why People Love to Hate Negative Emotions
We are often told that “Thou shall not feel” Or “Stop being so emotional”.
People don’t exhibit emotion “because we are taught that it is weak to do so”
Nearly everyone hides their feeling from time to time. You’re upset and embarrassed, but you pretend everything’s fine. Because you think that showing emotion can put you in a vulnerable place, and it’s pretty normal to want to avoid exposing vulnerabilities to others. You might worry expressing certain emotions will lead others to judge you and believe you can’t manage your feelings. As a result, you hide your sadness, fear, frustration, and other so-called negative emotions. Because it’s basically universally unpleasant for us to experience negative emotions. There are also an increase in the number of people who also feel ashamed to feel emotions that are perceive as negativity. Such reactions undoubtedly stem from our culture’s overriding bias toward positive thinking. Although positive emotions are worth cultivating, problems arise when people start believing they must be upbeat all the time.
People generally learn to suppress emotions from a very young age. This often happens because in your early ages your parents and caregivers judge or criticize you for expressing your emotions. This judgment isn’t limited to negative emotions, either. And if you grow up receiving the message that your opinions and feelings don’t matter, you’ll likely learn to hide your feelings from an early age. You could also have some concerns around others using these feelings against you, especially if that’s happened to you before This may lead a desire to avoid pain and often stems by an underlying lack of trust in yourself and others. If people have manipulated your emotions in the past, you might fear trusting someone new with your feelings. You can feel isolated, scared, and intimidated and believe that something is very wrong with you. And then try to hide your emotions, or squash or repress them, and as a result, you can get moody. You might also lack faith in your own ability to handle conflict in a positive and productive way.
Masking emotions can have some pretty significant effects on physical and emotional health. Think of emotions as an invisible force moving through the body. People tend to think that just because they cannot see or feel their feelings, when they refuse to feel them, they simply go away. Unfortunately, that just isn’t true…When emotions are held back, such as swallowing or holding back tears, the emotional energy gets congested in the body. Rather than having that flow of emotional force circulating and completing its cycle, it gets stopped up. Suppressing thoughts and feelings can even be harmful Pretending you don’t have certain feelings might help you avoid expressing them publicly, but it doesn’t make them go away. In fact, holding back your emotions can actually intensify them. Sometimes you can also feel guilty or ashamed for feeling emotions that are seen as negative. Such reactions undoubtedly stem from our culture’s overriding bias toward positive thinking. Although positive emotions are worth cultivating, problems arise when people start believing they must be upbeat all the time.
But the fact is Negative emotions are key to well-being. Negative emotions exist to keep us safe. The primary negative emotions include sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. We experience them in an involuntary way in response to environmental stimuli. You never say to yourself, Hey, I think I’ll feel afraid now — you just feel it and react with fight or flight, which can save your life. Disgust similarly alerts us involuntarily to potential pathogens. Of course, your system can be hyperactive — you can have an anger-management problem or be excessively fearful — but the broader point is: Although they aren’t fun, bad feelings are supremely important.
Negative emotions can also make us more effective in our day-to-day activities. In an influential 2009 article in the journal Psychological Review, the evolutionary psychologists Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson argue that sadness — and even depression — have persisted in the face of evolution because they bring cognitive benefits. There is evidence that sadness makes us better at assessing reality in social situations. As Sadness happens when we are dissatisfied with ourselves, our achievements or the behavior of someone else around us. Sadness can be good to experience as it indicates to us that you passionate about something. It can be a great catalyst to pursue change. So sadness can even make you more productive at work by enhancing focus and helping us learn from mistakes. This is how failure, via the resulting negative emotions, can help lead to later success.
Feeling guilt is a complex emotion. It is the emotion we feel when we believe we’ve caused harm or distress to someone whose relationship we value. We can also feel guilty in relation to ourselves and our past behaviors and experience that we wish didn’t happened, but also in relation to how our behavior impacts those around us. Research shows that inducing guilt in one’s partner is often an effective strategy in reasserting one’s rightful place in a relationship. Seeing how common it is, perhaps you’ve done it too. (Just don’t overuse it!) Guilt is often referred to as a ‘moral emotion’ and can be another strong catalyst to encourage us to make changes in our life and also make up for our misdeeds.
Psychologists have found that many of the most meaningful experiences in life are quite painful. In one 2018 study, for example, two psychologists at Western Illinois University asked a large group of college students to report the positive and negative emotions — as well as the meaningfulness — they associated with their education and with their relationships. The students reported that these things gave them tremendous meaning, but that the cost was high. As the researchers summarized their findings, “Meaning involves negative affect and worry about loss.”
So always remember negative emotions are an incredibly normal, healthy and helpful part of life. I think it’s really important not to fall into the ‘happiness trap’ of believing that these emotions are a sign of weakness or low emotional intelligence. I know from personal experience that trying to hide away from negative emotions, can lead to further emotional pain. As a human being, you will experience a full range of emotions throughout your lifetime in response to rapidly changing situations. No emotion is without purpose. It’s when we begin to further explore and understand the purpose behind each emotion, that we learn new ways to respond which supports our emotional growth and sense of well-being.
When exploring negative emotions, it’s also important to know that they are not the only source of information you have access to. So before you act upon any emotion you should also seek to explore your previous experiences, stored knowledge and memories, personal values and desired outcomes for any given scenario. Remember — emotions are a low-level reaction so you get to decide how you respond to them and not let them hijack your behavior.
So instead of backing away from negative emotions, accept them. Acknowledge how you are feeling without rushing to change your emotional state. It is impossible to avoid negative emotions altogether because to live is to experience setbacks and conflicts, learning how to cope with those emotions is the key. And exposure to negative emotions makes us stronger. Personally it took me a long time to understand that all emotions evolved for a purpose. And while the more positive ones open us up to life and build our inner resources, it’s the negative ones that often help us connect to our deepest values and remind us to step into our most authentic life.
