Understanding Negative Emotions

There is this belief that negative emotions or feelings are bad. But in reality and in general, we should be grateful for having them. In this talk, we explore negative emotions from a scientific perspective to understand why we feel them if they are so painful. If we tend to struggle with these emotions, maybe, understanding them will help us to have a more compassionate approach when we interact with them and if we are able to do that, this can radically change our lives. Some tips at the end.

Transcript

Hi there,

This is Ogaluciar from IKUNES and today I would like to talk about emotions.

We recognize the classification of positive and negative emotions.

And although positive emotions have been very important during our evolution and definitely are essential for our well-being,

I will focus today on negative emotions because understanding them is also fundamental for our mental and emotional health.

I often find quotes going against negative emotions,

Talking about how horrible they are and how you should get rid of them or eliminate them on the spot.

Anger,

Jealousy,

Sadness,

They are all bad.

But there is a big misunderstanding here because these emotions are really important in our lives.

First of all,

Let's clarify something.

Positive emotions are classified as negative because they cause discomfort,

Not because they are bad.

And in the same way,

Positive emotions refer to those emotions that make us feel good.

Then when these negative emotions appear,

We feel very uncomfortable.

And this happens because it's the way nature is telling us,

Hey,

Change something.

This something will be completely related to the particular emotion we are feeling.

If it is anger,

Then it may mean remove the obstacle in front of you.

Remove this thing that is not allowing you to achieve this thing you want or you need.

If it is fear,

It may indicate that we should be ready to protect ourselves.

On the contrary,

Positive emotions such as happiness,

Interest,

Contentment,

Feel good,

And they are an invitation to continue doing something.

All negative emotions are important because this is the way nature protects us from threats.

These threats can come from external sources or internal sources,

From ourselves.

Our ancestors were able to survive thanks to the presence of these emotions.

It is said that the emotion is a cue,

A mechanism that one is triggered,

Put into action a series of behaviors.

If these are negative,

Then most likely they will help us to overcome obstacles and reach safety,

Whatever it is,

Physical or social.

And if they are positive,

They will prompt us to recognize an opportunity,

Something that is good for us.

They signal a behavior that we should keep repeating.

If you are unable to experience negative emotions,

Such as fear,

Anger,

Jealousy,

Boredom,

Envy,

For example,

You may think that this is good because you will not feel the discomfort and the pain that they cause.

But in reality,

This is highly undecidable because this will mean that your biological system has a malfunction.

If you think about a toddler that doesn't become fearful of fire,

What will be the consequences?

Similarly happens to us.

Then keep in mind,

Neither feeling a painful emotion in excess nor not experiencing it at all is desirable.

A healthy individual will be able to experience all types of emotions as part of their natural repertoire.

When we reject or resist an emotion because it feels bad,

It shows our lack of understanding of the emotion and the situation we are in because every emotion is giving you information about you and about the situation.

It is important to have a good emotional vocabulary,

Which means we know the name of the emotion and why we feel it,

And we also know what this emotion is indicating and in which occasions this emotion appears.

Knowing only the name is not enough.

And knowing that we feel something is also not enough because if we don't know what we are feeling and we don't know what it means,

It will be very hard to regulate,

To help the situation to evolve.

Then this sensation will stay during a long time because we don't know how to help it.

We don't understand what we feel,

So we don't know what we can do to make it better.

Then increasing our emotional vocabulary and understanding the emotion is a requirement to become emotionally intelligent and to increase our wellbeing.

Sometimes negative emotions are felt really really strong,

Even outweighing our capacity to think and reason.

In the past,

For our ancestors,

This was an important feature to have because imagine the consequences of taking their time to consider if they should be fearful or not of the tiger in front of them.

That would have been fatal,

So it was important that in occasions the negative emotions were able to override the cognitive system.

Of course,

Now times have changed and it is important to learn to regulate these types of responses.

Then in principle,

The presence of the emotion is not a problem,

The issue is the way we respond to it.

When our emotional responses are not regulated correctly,

You suppose you allow your emotions to overtake your cognitive response very often,

Then they can become pathological,

But as we have seen,

They are caused by abnormal regulation mechanism.

But the emotion and the function of the emotion is not abnormal in itself.

According to an evolutionary approach,

Our emotions have been shaped by natural selection.

And from an evolutionary perspective,

We respond to a situation emotionally in three different ways.

One,

In which the situation elicits an emotion and the emotion is adequate,

The emotional response is adequate,

And also not only adequate but useful,

But we feel pain.

A second situation in which the emotion appears but it is a false alarm,

Our emotional response is of no use but we feel pain.

And a third situation in which an emotion appears but the emotion is inadequate,

The emotional response is inadequate,

Is abnormal,

And of course is of no use but we feel pain.

Very likely we have experienced these three situations,

Right?

One in which we felt certain emotions and we responded to a situation and then we see that the consequences of our response was adequate,

That it brings something positive.

Although it caused pain,

Our response was adequate and we could overcome that situation.

And we have had also situations in which we have responded and it was a false alarm.

And a third situation,

Surely we all have had a situation in which we misunderstood the situation and we responded in an abnormal,

Inadequate way.

The three of them caused pain but the difference is in the consequences of our response.

Was it good for us or not?

The emotion has a function of protecting us,

Of helping us to overcome challenges.

So the fact that we feel bad doesn't mean that things are going to go wrong.

On the contrary,

The idea is to help us to make things right.

Why do we have false alarms?

There could be several reasons.

One of them is because the current modern environment is very different from the environment in which the emotional system evolved.

And another reason could be because we learned to respond to certain situations in an inadequate way.

It could be a cultural thing,

It could be a family thing.

According to the physician and scientist Randolph Nesse,

An expert in evolutionary medicine,

This false alarm system is part of the smoke detector principle in which our biological system gives us warnings of something happening when actually this is not the case.

And this happens because for our ancestors,

The price they had to pay for not reacting appropriately and quickly to a real threat was higher than reacting to a false alarm.

Let's remember that emotions give information not only to us but people around us.

We are able to recognize emotions in people because these emotions usually have physical expressions.

It can be that you notice something in their faces or how they breathe or how they move the body.

Then,

If you see someone who looks furious coming towards you,

Most likely you will try to avoid near contact with this person.

In the same way,

When you recognize that a friend or family member is sad,

You try to give them support and encouragement.

If you see people going out with fearful expressions from a place you want to get in,

Most likely you will think twice before going in.

Then,

As you can see,

Negative emotions help us in many ways to adapt to situations and overcome challenges.

I really like a phrase by Randolph Nesse,

Which I find really,

Really appropriate.

He said,

We have bad feelings for good reasons.

And I even think he has a book with this name.

OK.

But,

Yeah,

So this is good to feel negative emotions.

But what can we do to regulate them?

Let's see some tips to get along with these unavoidable,

Difficult negative emotions to see how we can learn to better encounter them and better treat them when they appear in us.

The first tip is stop wanting to get rid of the emotion.

OK.

I am sure you already knew this one.

And probably you have heard this hundreds of times.

As we already know,

Negative emotions are fundamental in our lives,

Whether it is to survive in the jungle or to have a satisfying family,

Social,

Or work life.

Basically and generally,

When these negative emotions appear,

Their aim is to give us information about things that we should not do or things that are not going well or things that we should do.

It's not only about what we are doing,

But also about what we are not doing.

So the pain is an encouragement to make positive changes as soon as possible.

The second thing we need to do is to embrace the emotion.

I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new here.

But anyways,

I have to say this because it's required.

It is not enough with not wanting to get rid of the emotion.

We also need to embrace it.

To do this,

We need to develop our emotional awareness.

That is the equivalent of mindfulness in emotional intelligence,

Or so I said.

It is important to understand the emotion when it happens and not to bother it.

You let it be as it is.

But what you want to know is why it happened,

When it happened,

If there were other people involved in this process when the emotion appeared,

Or if it was due to your own cues.

What is the meaning of the emotion?

What is it telling you?

For example,

You talk to your supervisor about a project you need to present,

And the feedback you receive makes you angry.

But then why are you angry?

It is because you feel inadequate and insecure,

Or it is because it adds more work and delays your schedule,

And you have very limited time.

You see,

The emotion you feel is the same,

But the reasons why you felt the emotions are completely different.

One is more related to your own value,

Your self-esteem,

And the other has to do with time's constraints.

So the reasons and the effect in yourself is completely different.

It is very important to know what is causing it,

Because if it is a self-esteem thing,

So you need to work on that.

If it is a time thing,

So you might need to work on your organization.

Furthermore,

To gather more information and in a more precise manner,

It is important to evaluate your current life situation.

Is everything stressful and chaotic around,

Or are you going through a major change in your life,

Or things are as usual,

And this is just your normal self?

This will help you get the full picture,

Because sometimes when we are under stress,

Our reactions could be stronger than when we are in a normal situation.

So this is also important to consider when we are trying to learn about our emotions and our interactions with them.

The third tip is to learn tools to regulate your emotion.

Obviously,

To be able to do this,

To apply these tools,

You need to have worked on the previous point,

Building your emotional awareness.

Once you are able to understand the interaction between situation,

Emotion,

Thoughts,

And behavior,

It will be easier for you to notice that the problem is not the emotion itself,

But how you are responding to it.

And from there,

You will be able to modify your behaviors with techniques that probably you will need to learn from an expert,

From someone else.

Normally,

When we feel anger,

Sadness,

Anxiety,

Rather than calming ourselves down,

We continue adding fuel to the fire.

And this process,

We have done it so many times that it has become automatic,

And it is very difficult to stop.

For this reason,

It is very important to learn techniques that will help you calm down during the emotional event.

It is not only important to learn these techniques,

But also work on your inner resources before anything happens.

It could be meditation,

It could be breathing exercises,

It could be self-compassionate practices,

Going to nature,

Doing exercise.

The idea is to lower your reactivity levels,

So that your baseline is at good level and that you are not ready to respond each time a situation takes place.

There are many methods to regulate our emotions when we are in an emotional situation.

One of them,

I want to mention it here for you to hear about it and maybe search a little bit more and practice it because it is a good technique.

This technique is called STOP.

This is a technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy,

And it can help you regulate difficult emotions or disturbing thoughts.

The idea is that you learn to connect with that small space that exists between the stimulus,

That thing that causes the emotion,

And your response to this situation and the appearance of the emotion.

We all have heard this quote that between stimulus and response,

There is a space and this space is our freedom.

It is to regain that freedom so that we don't do things that we later regret.

STOP is an acronym that stands for S,

Stop and step back,

T,

Take a breath,

O,

Observe,

And P,

Proceed with more awareness.

It's very simple to use,

But definitely you need to practice it daily many times so that you become very skilled to using this technique and you're able to apply it whenever the situation requires this type of tool.

Let's see an example of how this technique works in case you are not familiar with it.

Imagine that you are in the middle of a difficult emotion,

You can't stop feeling that way or you have this thought that is negative and is bothering you.

When you are in the middle of it,

In an assertive way,

You say stop.

When saying stop,

Feel,

Imagine that small pause,

Your inner voice saying wait,

Time out,

Just wait.

Then take a deep slow breath,

Feel the air going through your body,

Follow it with your mind's eye,

Really connect with it,

And then let the air out,

Feeling how the body relaxes.

Immediately start to observe the situation as a third person,

Observe your body,

Your thoughts,

Your feelings,

Your emotions.

Notice if there are physical sensations,

Everything in a mindful way,

Without judgments.

You don't want to change them,

You don't have the intention to reduce the emotion,

The intensity of the thoughts or the feelings,

Just you want to let them be as they are,

Without engaging with them,

Just noticing them.

If you are able to do this,

The intensity of those difficult emotions or negative thoughts will stop growing,

Will decrease automatically,

Because once you stop feeding them with this elaboration and further thoughts,

They will start to calm down.

For the emotion and the thought to remain there,

For the emotion to stay there with this high intensity,

There is need of you acting on it,

Thinking about this emotion,

Thinking about how bad it is,

But once you stop thinking,

It will stop growing.

Then proceed with awareness,

Now you are calmer and you can see things clearer.

Decide what actions are good to take based on what is best for you.

Take a moment to think about the consequences of those actions.

Think if it is worth it,

If it is needed to act right there or if you want to give yourself more time to respond.

Remember that not acting is also an action in many occasions and it can be a powerful action.

As you can see,

This technique is very simple to use,

But it is very important that you practice and practice,

The more you practice,

The better effects you will have because it will become second nature to you.

You don't have to wait for the moment when you are experiencing distressing thoughts and feelings,

You can practice with a situation that often happens to you and you rehearse your behavior,

How you will do it,

How you want to proceed with this new technique.

Next time that you feel struggling due to a negative emotion,

Remember that this is nature inviting you to start a conversation with yourself in which you should be asking,

What are you trying to tell me?

How can I help?

And it is not the end of a conversation with you saying,

Go away,

I don't want you near me.

Okay that's all for now,

I hope this talk has been helpful for you.

Thank you.