What are these pesky things called emotions anyway? Why do we have them?
It’s complicated
Isn’t it interesting that we, as humans, collectively kind of decided that there are different categories of emotions based on their perceived value.
For instance, there are “good” emotions that we openly encourage, celebrate, express, and socially validate. Think: happiness, excitement, surprise—even fear can be a fun experience (horror movies, scary rides). We like all those feelings! And honestly, if asked, we would all probably want to experience only those emotions—the ones that feel good. Duh.
…And then there are universally shunned emotions; those feelings that we’d rather not feel, and if we do feel them, we quickly try to stop feeling them, often through various numbing and distracting tactics like drinking, shopping, swiping, etc. Pick your poison. Can’t really blame anyone for turning to those things, after all, we are hardwired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Most sentient life forms are.
We humans just don’t like feelings of sadness, anger, jealousy, or disappointment. When you’re actively feeling any of these “negative” emotions, it is not an enjoyable experience. At all. In fact, they’re often very painful, or at the very least, uncomfortable.
But what if I told you that all emotions—yes, even the not-fun ones—are actually good?
What if the entire spectrum of emotions is necessary to fully experience your time on earth? That they serve an important purpose and shouldn’t be rejected outright? Let’s get into it.
Emotions are important.
All of them. Think about your body and all the various organs contained within it. (If you ever get a chance to check out Body World’s plastinated displays in your city, I highly recommend it! Definitely gives you a new appreciation for the biological machine you inhabit.)
Let’s take, for example, your large intestine.
Bowels might seem kind of gross because of what they do (and what comes out of them!), but they’re extremely important to your survival. It’s a dirty job digesting food for your body and ridding it of its waste, but somebody’s gotta do it! If your large intestine was gone you’d severely miss it and your quality of life would be drastically different. And that’s just one organ! They’re all so different and do so many different things, and every single one is important and useful to our survival.
Emotions are no different, except the vital function they’re performing is less obvious than our digestive track, because emotions are essentially just messengers.
That’s right.
Let’s look at a common, yet problematic emotion like anger. Anger’s message is usually about a boundary being violated. Anger wants to protect you physically and emotionally. If someone is yelling and acting aggressively towards you, a natural response would be to feel angry in return. You’d get a flood of adrenaline, your heart would beat faster, and blood would rush to your arms and legs so that you’re ready to fight, if needed. If nothing ends up happening, you’re left feeling agitated and on edge for a while.
Or let’s say your mom keeps coming by your home (unannounced) even after you’ve told her (multiple times) to call first. Your frustration is letting you know she’s not respecting your boundaries, and—this is often overlooked—it motivates you to do or say something about it. Anger is letting you know that there’s a problem and you need to address it ASAP.
Now, emotions—especially volatile ones like anger—can absolutely be used to do destructive things. But that’s not the anger’s fault. The anger is just a messenger alerting you to a threat.
It is up to each of us to accept personal responsibility with what we choose to do with that memo.
Another way anger might be protecting you is that it’s often a cover for pain. I see this a lot with male clients. Men, generally, have been conditioned to not express any strong emotion besides anger. In fact, anger has been successfully rebranded as Not An Emotion™. Everything else gets suppressed; all the pain, the sadness, the disappointment, the heartache, the joy, the vulnerability, the shame.
Here’s the kicker: suppressed emotions don’t go anywhere. More and more we’re realizing that the feelings we deny stay stuck inside our bodies and eventually cause health problems. Emotions have to be expressed. They are literally energy in motion: e-motion. And these powerful energies have to be moved out of the body, in one way or another.
People who suppress their emotional pain and shield it with anger will usually have unpredictable outbursts of rage. The tiniest little thing will set them off. They have created a volatile volcano within themselves that can erupt at any time, which ends up harming themselves and others. This is what happens when emotions are ignored.
And finally, it is important to discern that not all emotions are always a healthy response or appropriate to the situation—not to discount anyone’s lived experience. Let me explain.
Just because we are recognizing all emotions, even anger, as “good,” doesn’t mean we get a free pass to express them indiscriminately.
This is not an excuse to explode at anything that offends, like if your ego was bruised. How many people do you see get into a rage over some anonymous user’s comment or post on social media? Often that instance of rage is simply trying to let that person know their pride took a hit, which isn’t really a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Most stable people understand that, but this particular person feels like the victim of an actual threat or attack and reacts that way. Their reaction is disproportionately inappropriate to the offense given. If they had an iota of self-awareness they might recognize the rage for what it is, and respond accordingly. This is why I’m a big proponent of everyone getting some sort of therapy or coaching work to better understand why they do what they do and how break the cycle.
All emotions are good.
Or more accurately, all emotions are actually amoral—they just are. Neither good nor bad. It’s what we do with them that determines how beneficial they are (or aren’t).
Like our old friend Anger. Remember, anger is just letting you know that a boundary has been crossed. That’s it. You then get to choose whether you’re going to react violently in the moment, or respond in a measured way. Perhaps even expel the initial rage safely first, which we’ll cover in a separate article.
But, why are some emotional experiences so painful, if they’re “all good?” Sure doesn’t feel good—going through a breakup is no walk in the park. The grief of losing someone close can sometimes feel unbearable, as if your actual heart is being ripped out. (As an aside, scientists have recently discovered that during heartbreak, your physical heart can actually feel pain similar to a heart attack, called Broken Heart Syndrome. Taking an NSAID can help, believe it or not.)
I would say painful emotions like sorrow are still “good” because they can be a catalyst for growth.
Whenever someone goes through any kind of loss, once they come out of the initial grieving process, they are faced with the decision to stay stuck in the ashes where they are, or to rise up from it and move forward. Stagnate or grow.
Looking back on my own life, through the lens my own losses, I can see now how they were good for my personal growth. At the time I wouldn’t have said that.
Life’s challenges made me into who I am today. Stronger, wiser, more empathetic. As painful as they were, I can’t deny that I ultimately was the better for it. I’m choosing to trust that those hardships were the only way I could learn those particular lessons.
Another way to think about it is to compare difficult emotions and experiences to resistance training. It might not feel good while you’re in it, in fact your muscles will probably hurt like hell the next day, but you still do it, for your future self. Because you know that it’s actually beneficial for your health to go through this specific pain. While a broken heart is many more degrees of suffering, the result is the same. Like it or not, adversity breeds character.
As much as you can, try to see emotional pain as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to build resilience. We need resilience to survive and thrive in this harsh world.
A butterfly struggles massively to escape its cocoon. But the difficulty is important to its wing development. While the butterfly might, in the moment, appreciate a good Samaritan helping them out of their chrysalis, in actuality the helper is ensuring that the butterfly will not be able to fly, and thus, survive.
Our painful emotions offer us wisdom and depth, a way to tether the heights of our pleasure to the groundedness of reality. The constant interplay between bitter and sweet from which we derive meaning and inspiration. Yin and yang.
Humanity’s pain is often transmuted into great art, reflecting the truth that creation can only arise from the void of destruction.
Ever meet someone who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and never had any hardships? They are usually shallow, spoiled, and entitled. Pain is very humbling. Like everyone else, I’d rather not feel rage or sorrow. Certainly not more pain. But to deny these heavier emotions outright is to deny your own humanity.
Emotions are necessary.
All emotions are necessary to get the most bang for your buck as a human.
Imagine you’re a soul getting ready to board for earth. They give you a build-your-own-earth-experience menu, in which every single human emotion is presented on a spectrum, with all the “good” ones on the left, and all the “bad” ones on the right side.
Imagine you only circled the emotions on the left.
You’d essentially be getting only half the ride. And dare I say…you’d only be experiencing the shallow end of a dream. Now imagine returning from said trip and sharing your insights of that narrow version of human existence with your soul tribe. They might say, “Sure, it must’ve felt nice, but what did you learn?” “Wasn’t it one dimensional, kinda boring?” “What was the point of that trip?” It’d be like bowling with the bumpers on. Without risk there is no real reward. The victory feels hollow.
And then all your spirit buddies would flock to the entity who just got back from an Indiana-Jones-type adventure. Danger, excitement, highs and lows, but in the end they succeeded! You could make a movie out of their life.
Another way to look at it is through the frame of gratitude, and how the full variety of emotions ensures we remain fully present in the moment and enjoy all that we have, when we have it.
We humans are silly creatures: how often do we take things for granted when it’s all smooth sailing? But once those little luxuries and necessities are taken away, we feel the pain and longing of that loss. Often quite sharply. It’s a reminder to be grateful, no matter how small or insignificant something may seem.
Like a not-sore throat. You probably don’t even notice that you have a throat most days, right.
Until you catch a cold.
I’m still on the fence about which one’s worse—a sore throat or a congested sinus. Would you rather A) Can’t swallow or B) Can’t breathe.
Hmm…Afrin is a thing and it works. I have yet to find a lozenge that provides actual, lasting relief, so I think I have to go with sore throat being the worst. Because hotdamn, when that puppy goes out you KNOW about it…and it won’t let you forget it, either.
Suddenly, you are painfully aware that you have a throat, and that it’s very raw, and scratchy, and you would give anything to have it be not-sore again, just for a few minutes even.
That’s the power of painful experiences and emotions. Perspective.
Without these periodic heartbeats of loss, we’d probably all be cruising mindlessly through life, without appreciating all that we have.
We already do that a lot anyway, which is why it’s so important to strive to have a spirit of gratefulness. If you want less pain and hardship in your life, always be thankful. Appreciate everything to the fullest, even annoyances like traffic. It could always be worse. Instead of saying, “I have to pick up my kids,” say, “I get to pick up my kids.” Imagine if you were severely injured in a collision, and no longer had a car and couldn’t drive anymore, let alone walk.
You’d look back fondly on when you used to sit in traffic. You’d wish you could go back, and get up early, get dressed, and leave when it’s freezing cold out so your daughter’s not late to class.
This is why the pain of loss is sometimes necessary, to remind us. It’s a tough pill to swallow but it’s there for us.
Emotions, they’re all good—now what?
Now that you have an understanding (and appreciation) for all emotions in their many forms, what do you do with them? Because as we’ve already learned, an emotion is energy and it needs to move out from you. Keeping it in is not a healthy option, and doesn’t really work anyway. But how do you dispel a notoriously violent emotion like anger in a way that is not harmful? What do you do with overwhelming fear?
Find out in our follow up article, Emotions—They’re All Good: Part Two.