What is the Purpose of Negative Emotions?
Emotions are an integral part of being human and negative emotions are more so. Although we also experience positive emotions, such as joy, excitement, love, gratitude etc. but we feel negative emotions too often and even too strongly and it is impossible to not have them. Psychologists are of the view that human brain has a natural tendency to give weight to negative experiences or interactions more than positive ones. Regardless, negative emotions can be described as any feeling which causes you to be miserable and sad.
Humans are not machines (although machines also react because of overuse or abuse when they start malfunctioning or stop working) and thus it’s natural to experience not only joy and excitement but also anger, hate, jealousy, hurt, frustration — even though you know that “a frown is never beautiful and a smile is always better than a frown!” But it is not only you who experience these emotions and thus struggle to overcome them. Everyone does. And as some sages are of the view when we’re in the grip of an emotion — say, anger — there is nothing we can do to snap ourselves out of it. We are lost to the emotion, and all we can do is wait for it to pass and till then experience and learn from it.
However emotions are not just spontaneous reactions to certain stimuli, they also serve some purpose and if we know the purpose of these negative emotion, we can find it easier to cope with them. They may be difficult, but we can learn to handle them.
But before ascertaining the purpose of negative emotions, we must first try to discover what are emotions and how some of them are negative or undesirable.
Emotions are defined by some dictionaries as under:
- Strong feelings deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
- A conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body or “just a state of feeling.”
But, according to psychology experts, feeling should not be confused with emotions. Feelings arise from an emotional experience and thus are not emotions in themselves.
However according to Seneca (a stoic philosopher of the Roman Imperial Period) these are ‘first movements’ in reaction to certain events or happenings that occur in the outer world. We might feel shocked, excited, jubilant, scared. These are all natural physiological reactions that simply happen to us, and that we have no control over.
In short, these are inside upheavals that occur as a reaction to some outside events or happenings.
But for stoics these are not emotions: they are initial reactions, ‘first movements’.
In simple words, emotions are what happens if — via poor judgment — we let these first movements run away from us.
Regardless, given how destructive the emotions like anger, hate or jealousy can be, it is no wonder some (not all) Stoics have a reputation for seeking to repress them.
However, though commonly thought of as a philosophy that tells us to repress our feelings or emotions in this way — grit your teeth! have a stiff upper lip! — the truly Stoic view is subtly but importantly different.
Thus what many Stoic recommend is not to repress or resist our emotions, but simply not to have them in the first place.
This might seem like a bizarre recommendation. We are human: how can we not have emotions?
In fact, our heart is like our house. Our house also becomes filthy as dirt, dust and other refuse/garbage keeps gathering in the house on daily basis. There are windows and doors in every house for the purpose of letting the light and air in (like joy and other positive feelings in our heart), but they also allow dirt and dust (negative emotions) to enter the house and make it dirty.
Thus when we have heart we will also have both emotions: positive as well as negative.
However, instead of looking other way or trying to ignore the dirt, we clean and declutter our house on daily basis. We don’t try to sweep the dirt or dust under the carpet. Sweeping things under the carpet may look like an easy solution or a favoured option but it could come back to haunt us as dust will keep gathering there and a day will come when the dust starts to come out from underneath the carpet and it is never a good outcome. Damage looks much worse.
In the similar vein we also try to hide our negative emotions, such as hurt, shame, resentments, disappointments, self-doubt, fears etc. to feel accepted, loved, and approved of. As our lives have unfolded, this habit (whether it’s served us well or not) still often feels safer, easier, and less messy in the moment than any alternative. Instead, we have to clean our heart of these negative emotions on daily basis as we do with our house.
Thus suppressing negative emotions is wrong strategy. A better approach is to manage them without denying them. For instance, when we have a junk drawer or sweep things under the rug, our issues become bottled up and we pretend. Pretending is not resolving. It doesn’t work. Instead of resisting, we have to face our issues. When we resist them, they accumulate and can, ultimately, burst or explode in a violent way harming our own selves well as others around. And as the saying goes, what we resist, persists.
Now the question is: why we hide our negative emotions or resist them?
Answer. Because we don’t understand purpose behind negative emotions. No emotion is without purpose. Thus we must try to explore and understand the purpose behind these emotions, so that we are able to learn new ways to respond which supports our emotional growth and sense of being. In a culture where we are brainwashed 24/7 (especially through bombardment of ads of consumer products) that feeling happy and/or positive all of the time is our optimal state or only purpose in life, negative emotions or feelings are abhorred as being the root cause of our problems. But the reality is different.
Negative emotions are indicators
If we are able to learn about them and thus act (not react) in a sensible way we will become wise and strong. And as some psychologists point out they can even be the key to our overall well-being. However, reacting without any control makes us weak and stupid.
Many sages/psychologists believe that they are a sort of warning system, letting us know that there is something we need to address. We may think of these emotions like the “check engine” light on a car. We can also take the example of “traffic lights.” Red means you stop; yellow means you can get ready to go, and green means you can go peacefully. If you don’t follow the signals then there is danger that you will get in trouble. For instance not following a red light might result in a horrible traffic accident. Moreover, breaking a signal can make you feel like carrying the emotional pain of continuing to drive and it would be difficult to drive peacefully.
Moreover, a life without problems, challenges, or miseries is not a model life as meaning of our existence can only be discovered when we are confronting adversity. Thus unpleasant or painful feelings/emotions are just as crucial as the enjoyable ones in helping us make sense of life’s ups and downs.
As an analogy, paying attention to our emotions is like paying attention to traffic lights when we are on the road. When we feel good (green light) about something, it is a sign that road is smooth and we should continue driving. When we feel clueless or confused (yellow), it is time to slow down. And when we are feeling terrible, anxious, or overwhelmed (red light), it is time to pause, be careful, wait and watch.
In other words, anger is the indication to fight against the problem but not with the problem; fear warns us to remain alert against any potential danger (but not to the extent that it becomes phobia), sadness is telling us that we should socialize and/or connect with the people who love us until we learn how to be strong even when we are lonely.
Moreover, negative emotions are believed to have some evolutionary purposes. In simple words, they encourage us to act in ways that boost our chances of survival and help us grow and develop as people. A good example can be that of a hurdle race and the more hurdles you cross, the higher you are able to jump and ultimately win the race.
Thus as unpleasant as they may be, it can’t be denied that negative emotions serve important purposes in our lives. Overcoming them helps us become stronger as well as wiser.
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References:
i) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emotion
iii) https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=what+is+the+purpose+of+negative+emotions
iv) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/negative-emotions-key-well-being/
