Managing Emotions
"Care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves." -Socrates
Positive & Negative Emotions
What Are They?
Emotions are biologically encoded responses that occur before "feelings" arise in the body. They are a more general category of reactions that nearly all humans experience and were developed for our survival. Emotions and feelings are not the same. Feelings are produced by one's relationship and perception of emotions, often causing one to label emotions as "good" or "bad" or as wanted and unwanted. In actuality, there are two categories of emotions -- positive and negative -- and neither is inherently good nor bad.
Positive emotions include emotions such as joy, gratitude, interest, hope, awe, altruism, satisfaction, confidence, surprise, happiness, optimism, and love. Positive emotions are more than the quick, external pleasures we "chase" in pursuit of happiness. We must learn to internally cultivate these emotions and consistently practice them in our lives to improve our well-being. They help set the foundations for our capacity to survive, find meaning, and connect more deeply with ourselves and others.
Negative emotions include emotions such as anger, annoyance, jealousy, envy, fear, anxiety, sadness, shame, guilt, apathy, and despair. Although these emotions are labeled as "negative,” they are as beneficial to our quality of life as positive emotions -- that is if we use them appropriately. Nobody wants to feel fear more than love, but fear can be a powerful teacher (like love) if we choose to see fear as an old wound in need of tending rather than an enemy to fight or run away from.
Why and How We Need to Manage Them
There are three new understandings that can help us learn how to better manage our emotions:
The first new understanding is to recognize the antiquated belief that positive emotions are inherently good and negative emotions are inherently bad. With this false mentality, we often fall into the "happiness trap" where we can run away from or suppress negative emotions to "chase" positive ones in external objects, people, or experiences. There is little wrong with eating sweets that bring you joy on a bad day. But this is a hedonic pleasure that can be disappointing when happiness does not stay for as long as we expected. Recognizing positive and negative emotions as neutral allows us to accept ourselves when feeling negative emotions, to be curious about why they arise, and to trust that our emotions may be teachers looking out for underlying harms.
The second new understanding is learning that we are not victims of our emotions. We have a choice. Most of us were erroneously taught that we cannot control emotions, thus empowering unprocessed emotions to control us. This constant behavior of reacting to events rather than patiently responding can heighten our susceptibility to high psychological and physiological stress and lower our quality of life. When we learn that we can, in fact, manage emotions, we must reframe our feelings (perception) towards them to feelings that are more accurate with reality (such as feelings of anxiety often try to help, not hurt us).
The third new understanding is learning that although emotions are psychological events, they also exist as physiological cycles. Emotions trigger important systems in the body, therefore cannot be solely "thought" away by our minds. This means that they require us to take certain steps in transferring them into positive tools of growth for our bodies and minds. Steps to complete emotion cycles include being aware of and labeling emotions through mindfulness practices, such as meditation, talk therapy, or practicing CBT or EMDR. Other practices involve crying and doing physical and creative exercises you enjoy, such as yoga, running, dancing, painting, journaling, playing or listening to music, etc.
Articles & More
Videos
This could be why you're depressed or anxious | Johann Hari
How to cope with anxiety | Olivia Remes
What is depression? - Helen M. Farrell
How to master your emotions | emotional intelligence
Feelings: Handle them before they handle you | Mandy Saligari
Podcasts