Are there “negative Emotions”?
Sometimes we confuse "unpleasant" feelings with "bad" feelings. As soon as we feel anxious, insecure or tense, we have the feeling that something is "wrong" with either us or the situation - or both. And that we would feel better if we could get rid of this feeling. How can we deal with these seemingly "negative emotions" that seemingly make our lives difficult?
Sometimes I notice the thought, "Oh, I wish I wasn't so tense right now!" even before I notice the actual feeling I'm wishing away. Do you know what that's like? That you catch yourself thinking, "Why can't I be less anxious right now?" or "Why do I always have to worry so much?" I think a lot of people know thoughts like that. We all want to be happy and it's a very natural reaction to want to avoid or change what is unpleasant. Wanting to avoid unpleasant conditions and doing something about them is often wise: drinking when the body signals it needs water or taking our hand off a hot stove top when we realize it hurts. It is our innate survival instinct that keeps telling us what we should and should not do to ensure our survival. When dealing with external dangers, these behaviors make sense; when dealing with our feelings, they are less helpful: The fact that we don't want to allow negative feelings, don't want to feel them, but fight against them or try to suppress them in other ways doesn't really help us to cope with them. Many people develop strategies to avoid feeling what is unpleasant: This ranges from permanent eating to 60 hours of work per week to drugs and alcohol, which often provide short-term relief but of course do not work in the long term. Other people grow further and further apart from their feelings and actually no longer perceive what is going on inside them...
However, it is a misconception that we think we feel better when we run away from inner tension, emptiness or heaviness and manage to perceive only the pleasant feelings. I believe that if we only want to perceive the pleasant feelings and try to suppress the others, we deprive ourselves of a deep human experience and ultimately of the possibility of authentic happiness and deep satisfaction. Because it is only half of life. When we repress our unpleasant feelings such as anger, guilt, disappointment, shame, or sadness as soon as they arise, we too quickly overlook how valuable all of our emotions are: Emotions are functional and informative. Whenever feelings arise, they have something important to tell us. So if we ignore our emotions, on the other hand, it's a bit like someone coming to us, knocking on the door with an important message, and we would then yell at that person to get out before they could even say a word. What I'm saying is: I think it's really not wise to push away feelings even before we listen to them. The fact that some feelings feel uncomfortable doesn't make them "bad."
What can be a different way of dealing with our own emotions that we experience as unpleasant and distressing?
Perhaps with curiosity, openness and acceptance. When "negative feelings" are repressed or battled, they grow over time and become even more difficult to bear. Noticing and accepting them transforms these feelings and also the influence they have on us. So sadness or dejection already feels a little easier when we accept it and "just let it be there". Eventually, we notice over time that we are more than these feelings. Of course, this is not easy; especially if we are used to dealing with our emotions in a different way. For all people, mindful noticing and accepting emotions is challenging and does not happen automatically. What tends to work automatically are the repression and avoidance mechanisms that people have become accustomed to over the years...
Many people think that just letting them be there is a kind of resignation to one's feelings. I believe the opposite is true. I know that noticing, accepting and exploring one's feelings is always the first step to change. Only when we really let feelings be there we can deal with them meaningfully in the next step. Otherwise it remains a shadow fight that can become endless. Sure, we all want to be happy, preferably always. But if we therefore try to banish all feelings that are sad, sorrowful and difficult from our lives without dealing with them more closely, then we hinder ourselves in being happy so much more than we think. It is important, above all, to also give the difficult and heavy a place in life. No matter how strong one's own negative emotional states are now, being able to perceive and accept them is an important basis for mental health and paves the way for genuine well-being away from "toxic positivity". It takes courage to engage in this, and I believe it is a lifelong task for all of us to keep opening ourselves to the full spectrum of our human experience. Yet, the reward is richer than every day sunshine.
Here are my ideas for you to dare a mindful approach to your feelings:
"Where the sun always shines, there is desert below." For many, the Arabic proverb works well for embracing one's emotional experience when it gets uncomfortable.... The rain is easier to bear when we know it is as important as the sun for there to be life and growth. We all rejoice to find ourselves on the sunny side of life - and sometimes forget the value of the rainy season.
Make space for your feelings. If you find that something is keeping you busy and you are not light-hearted: If anything, shift down a gear and give the feeling space. Even before you want to understand it, just let everything be there, what is right now. Without evaluation. Perhaps Jon Kabat-Zinn's words will help you explore your feelings.
Feel your emotions physically. Even before we feel emotions, we perceive them physically. However, this is not always easy to detect and sometimes we only notice this when it is already "too late" and stress, worry and tension manifest as physical pain. Fear in particular often settles as tension in our entire body: we then notice this as neck pain or as grinding of the teeth at night. Releasing these tensions on a physical level also has an effect on "mental tensions": Treat your body to massages, Tai Chi or Yoga. Craniosacral therapy or Shiatsu are also very suitable for learning to feel yourself better again.
Breathe. Besides body therapy, breathing exercises are also very helpful to experience your feelings in a mindful way. A combination of diaphragmatic breathing and body scan is particularly suitable here: only this deep and free breathing allows you to perceive the feelings already stored in the body.
Take ACTion. I often work with approaches and ideas from Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT for short), which defines mindful experiencing as the cornerstone of mental health. The book "A Liberated Mind. The Essential Guide to ACT" by Dr. Steven Hayes gives an easy to read insight into this form of therapy, if you want to delve a little deeper here.
Movie Night. Another impetus for further examination of the power of emotions could be the film "The Work". The documentary is about four men who volunteer to experience four days of group therapy along with some prison inmates at Folsom Prison. The goal is to help the participants regain access to their own feelings, which they may have buried throughout their lives: That they relive what they've repressed and learn to access emotions like fear and sadness. The documentary is powerful, very touching and has impressed me extremely. If you ever have a free evening in the near future: watch this film.
Writing about feelings here is different than experiencing them personally, living through them and finding a way to deal with them that lets us live well with them. Describing emotions on the outside is a very different thing compared to experiencing them from the inside. How it feels to be afraid or to be really sad is quite difficult to express in words. Nevertheless, often nothing helps more than talking about it. Some feelings we would rather not face alone. It is wonderful if you have people in your close environment whom you can trust and who can support you in talking about fears, stress and worries. Counseling can also be such a place where these feelings can be fully given space and you can get the support you need to deal with your feelings constructively: By listening carefully and trying to use the wisdom of your uncomfortable feelings for your own development. I can promise you: Never have I experienced that these unpleasant feelings were "bad". On the contrary, they are often signposts with very important messages to us that want to be heard. I look forward to meeting you and your "negative feelings".