What your negative emotions are telling you!
Emotions are part of our experience as human beings. They are what makes us human.
All of us experience a myriad of emotions throughout the day and the tendency is to categorize them into negative and positive. Negative emotions are ‘bad’, something to be rejected or ignored. We tell our children to ignore the negative emotions and build or focus on the positive ones.
However, for practitioners of mental wellness & mindfulness, negative and positive emotions both serve important purposes in our lives. Negative emotions can provide us with valuable insight into our needs, wants, and values. Think of the negative emotions as fuel that you can burn on the path to creation, they might help you dig deeper into the problem which your happy self would never have uncovered.
A relentless focus on positive emotions fails to recognize the fact that all emotions can be smart, adaptive and helpful. As we put on a happy face and ask people: “how are you?”, we do not invite an honest and open dialogue rather expect the answer as ‘great’, ‘fine’, ‘awesome’. - Dr. David Caruso
Emotions are action signals for us, but how can we profit from them?
To change our focus on their meaning,
To bring power in our language,
To change the physiology of that particular emotion
Let us find out some negative emotions which can be used for a positive outcome: -
Fear is a negative emotion because it consists of three strong negative feelings stress, anxiety, and worry.
Firstly, we need to identify the action signal behind this emotion.
Action signal: Our mind is warning us that something unwanted is going to happen. and fear (the emotion itself) is the action signal.
What we can change: As soon as we recognize this, we start acting accordingly and as a result our physiology changes and fear, anxiety, and worry change into relief and determination. Ask yourself how you want to feel, if the answer is cool and calm then take the action - trust yourself.
Anger is another powerful negative emotion.
Action signal: Our brain tells us that something has happened, which is against our belief or value system.
What we can change: We change our focus on the meaning of this strong emotional outbreak: we need to tell ourselves that not everyone has the same values and beliefs as we have, so by changing our focus on the meaning we can convert this emotion into a powerful positive response. We can change our reaction into action by managing to control our anger and by this process, we can develop a new power of assertion.
Frustration is another powerful negative emotion. We experience this when we do something, and the result is not the expected one.
Action Signal: Here the brain starts signaling us that something lesser than our capabilities has happened.
What we can change: Our brain motivates us that we can change our approach or action plan to achieve the desired goal, or we need to put more efforts to reach our destination.
People experiencing frustration or anger are less likely to think in systematic ways and more likely to engage in flexible, unstructured thought processes because anger elicits a more energizing feeling it can be helpful to generate attention needed to solve problems more creatively.
So, we spend our entire life, musing that how are we feeling right now; but if we understand the action signal behind every negative emotion, we can alter them into positive responses by changing their physiology, our focus on their meaning, and most importantly the language of that particular emotion.
Let your emotions teach you the most important thing that is "to know about yourself, what you really want.” Feeling bad is not an indication of failure. When you turn your emotions inside out, you will realize that at the core, it is only love. Listen to them, learn from them, recognize them and bring something positive out of them. It's all you and about you!