We often get confused or overwhelmed when we have intense emotions, or we just flat out don't want to feel or experience any negative emotions.
With my clients, I have often heard them say that they don't ever want to experience any "negative" emotions anymore and that is why they come to therapy. My reply is always this: "I hate to be the barer of bad news, you will always have "bad" feelings". I use quote on quotes because we perceive emotions to either be positive or negative. Joy and excitement tend to have pleasant feelings within us, while anger, disgust, sadness and fear bring up unpleasant feelings, yet it is our perception of these emotions where we judge them as good or bad.
So here is the thing, we have 5 core emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, excitement and sexual excitement (as shown in the diagram below). Our core emotions allow us to have a full human experience. If we only experience these 5 emotions, we will adapt and solve any and all problems. For instance we need fear to tell us to be on alert or prepared, we need anger to tell us when someone has crossed a boundary and we need to be assertive, sadness (or grief) tells us that someone or something important is gone. We NEED these emotions and these emotions needs to be felt. (Thinking about them won't do you any good aside from making them more work.
Yet what stands in the way is when we live defensively or experience primarily inhibitory emotions (anxiety, shame, guilt). If we live defensively, we aren't allowing ourselves to experience the core emotions, we are doing everything in our power to not feel. This looks like avoidance, codependence, depression, addiction, perfectionism, dissociation, depression, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, when we experience anxiety, shame and guilt, our emotions are based on other people. OTHER PEOPLE. If we weren't afraid of other people's reactions or judgments, we wouldn't feel any of these emotions.
When we experience our core emotions - we are able to live authentically
Once we are more aware of our patterns in managing emotions, we can take action, which is shown in the diagram below:
If you want a more in depth look at this, I highly recommend the book It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Core Self ~ Hilary Jacobs Hendel and of course, if you have any questions or need supporting in managing your emotions, I am always here: info@erinjohnsoncounselling.com
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