hances are you
are labeling
emotions as
negative or positive. Anger, sadness, fear, envy, disgust are likely viewed as negative. And joy, happiness, excitement, gratitude are positive. This is a problem, because as soon as you label emotions as negative you are fighting them. Part of you is saying “it’s not ok to feel this, this is bad, I shouldn’t feel this way.”
You cannot fight your emotions. Fighting them is like hitting your head against the wall hoping to cure a headache. Fighting creates resistance - physically, mentally, and emotionally. As the great psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “what you resist persists.” The more we resist, the stronger the emotion gets. You can suppress it for a while, but it always comes back.
Luckily, you have the power to change this, and it starts with one fundamental perspective shift. If you understand this principle, you are well on the road to emotional freedom.
ALL emotion is adaptive, all emotion is there for a reason, all emotion has a signaling or communication function. But wait, you’ll say, anger, fear, anxiety, sadness suck. Yes, that is exactly it! When we categorize emotions into pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral ones, with varying intensity, we take the judgment and resistance out. This principle has been practiced in Buddhism for centuries and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett has written an amazing, research-based book about this (How Emotions Are Made.
With this categorization anger might be unpleasant and range from low intensity (“I am miffed”) to very high intensity (“I am livid!”).
Fear is mildly unpleasant in the case of apprehension and highly unpleasant in the case of terror.
Joy is mildly pleasant when expressed as contentment and highly pleasant when we experience exuberance.
C