Contents
How negative emotions help us
Psychology
It is important to learn to accept them, since all emotions have a necessary function
We live in a context in which it sometimes seems that being happy is an obligation. Around us constant positive messages, we see through the screen of our mobile phone how everyone lives the perfect life and it seems that not being happy is the greatest scourge imagined. But, although many try to banish sadness, anger or melancholy from their day to day, these sometimes “uncomfortable” feelings are also necessary to live in an “emotionally healthy” way.
“All emotions, positive, negative and neutral, have a value for the survival of the human being, they have a purpose and that is why they exist”, points out Aída Rubio, psychologist and coordinator of the TherapyChat team of psychologists. Comment that many times we have a hard time understanding the importance of negative emotions, since “the society we live in is conceptualized around an image of success and positivity.”
What are negative emotions for?
Even so, the functions of these types of emotions are essential. The psychologist Rafael San Román, from the ifeel platform, lists some of the purposes these feelings have: “Fear, for example, indicates that there is a danger in order to make decisions that protect us from it; rage gives us the necessary activation to defend ourselves from an attack; the sadness promotes introspection; guilt gives us the feeling of distinguishing good from evil; Shame helps us avoid exposing ourselves to public scorn; disgust is essential to detect toxic agents that enter our body or could do so and thus avoid getting sick ».
It is important to learn to manage these types of emotions well. Aída Rubio comments that the first step is to pay attention to the feeling, not reject it, and then try to understand where it comes from and how it is useful to us. «One of the ways is to ‘sweep’ through our body to see what we feel: Do I feel tension in my arms? Do I have a shrunken stomach? Do I feel heat on my cheeks? ”, Says the professional.
Accept or fix
«Once the cause of the problem is located, we must ask ourselves if emotion is being the appropriate response. Also, we must look for a way of solving the emotion and the problem that causes it, and this entails making decisions “, says the psychologist, and continues:” If I can’t really do anything to change the situation that makes me angry, it is better accept discomfort that causes and not fight against it by increasing the discomfort. Try to clear the mind and dedicate ourselves to positive activities. If, on the other hand, I can do something to change the situation that causes me anger, I will have to take actions that lead me to put a solution to it in an assertive way ».
Although these steps would be the optimal way to manage these types of emotions, Rafael San Román points out that many times we tend to avoid them when they arise. «We avoid them because they are unpleasant, because they are not always well understood and because we have learned that it is not appropriate or healthy to feel bad»Says the psychologist. For this reason, he explains that this avoidance hurts us, since it is useless to try to always evade our discomfort. “It is important to understand that we cannot get rid of feeling bad; we must learn to live with our negative emotions in a more fluid and mature way, “he says.
Start point
For her part, Aída Rubio explains that negative emotions are “the tip of the iceberg, but underneath there are other factors that originate it, such as a problematic situation or poor emotion management skills. “If we do not look at emotion in the face, it is impossible for us to be aware of all this and make the necessary changes in our lives to maintain emotional well-being,” he says.
“In summary, it is important to understand that, like positive emotions, negative emotions are natural, necessary and useful as long as they are experienced and expressed in their proper measure, according to the circumstances,” Rafael San Román recalls.