The greatest battle of the 21stC is the one with our painful emotions

PRESSURE FROM SOCIETY

We have been inundated with the notion that the antidote to negative emotions are positive thoughts, with the promise that positivity

will lead us up the path to success.

Negative emotions are seen as an obstacle to positive thinking, and so must be avoided, yet ironically it is only when we respond

appropriately to negative emotions, can we genuinely think positively!

There is an alternative path to happiness and success, which involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty--the very

things we spend our lives trying to avoid.

Emotions underpin our subjective values, and it’s essential that we have an understanding of them, if we are to reach our fullest human potential

12 Benefits of Negative Emotions

1. Help in evaluating your experiences.

2. Alert you to when you are out of alignment with your values.

3. Emotions play a crucial role in ensuring your needs are met

4. Negative emotions also most likely aid in our survival

5. Reach your goals.

6. Make better decisions.

7. Pin point exactly where attention is needed

8. Build Resilience.

9. Develop E.Q.

10. Learn about yourself.

11. Less FEAR (side effects of which are- less anxiety and less depression!)

12. Feel more freedom.

An added bonus of feeling a negative emotion/s is that it allows you to enjoy and appreciate the pleasant feelings more. You can’t recognize and

appreciate pleasure unless you’ve experienced pain!

Anger and sadness are an important part of life, and new research shows that experiencing and accepting such emotions

are vital to our mental health.

Supressing Negative Emotions: Feel-out of control, broken, crazy, unsuccessful, weak, vulnerable.

Symptoms-MENTAL-anger, depression, hatred, greed, withdrawal, cynicism, envy, loneliness, apathy, judgmental attitude

Expressed as-acts of violence, abuse, withdrawal, bullying, neglect, crime and anti-social behaviours, addictions, chronic Illnesses.

Symptoms-PHYSICAL. Both animals and humans show physical symptoms when their emotional state is out of balance. It’s all to do with neuro peptides. Negative emotions cause a physiological reaction with the release of some pretty potent chemicals. 1) You could end up getting addicted to the drama. 2)They could end up manifesting as physical ailments/illnesses.

Expressed as- pain or ailments. Emotions like anger, hate, rage and frustration stored here lead to gastritis, ulcers and other stomach conditions. Many of us hold emotions like anger and resentment in our gut.

It impedes creativity. Granted there have been some for whom dark emotions have inspired some great works, but the vast majority find it difficult to do any meaningful work with a head full of torment and rage.

Focus is on feeling bad, so lose sight of everything else that’s going on around you. Will perpetuate neg. feelings.

Emotions that are repressed or denied, manifest in the body as physical symptoms

The Way Emotions Work in our Bodies.

Suppose you got involved in an argument which made you angry. Here’s what happened in your brain:

The first ¼ second: You begin to pay attention and notice something happened.

Second ¼ second: Your brain decides this is a problem, and produces a bunch of new chemicals.

Next ½ second: The chemicals go flowing into your brain and start going into your blood. These chemicals are messengers causing a whole bunch of different reactions in you (such as, tightening certain muscles, focusing your attention, making you tear up, changing the way you’re breathing).

Next 5 seconds: The chemicals continue to flow through your blood.The emotion messenger chemicals cause different cells in your body to produce new chemicals — so they ripple through you expanding their effect.

After 6 seconds, the original chemicals are almost all gone. Your reaction depends on how you’ve learned to deal with this flood of chemicals.

If you continue to feel sad/mad/afraid/hurt — whatever — you are actually choosing to re-create more and more of the feeling chemicals. You don’t HAVE to keep reacting. If you remain in the mood, the thoughts you generate can trip the emotions again and again leaving you going around in circles, never quite able to break free.

How to Manage Negative Emotions Safely

Accept -Face not Fear

Acknowledge don’t deny. Receive their message if they have one, then bid them farewell.

Express-respond not react

No emotion is inherently good or bad, but it can become destructive if overly indulged in. Only when they become habitual and destructive do they lose their positive power and become an obstacle to our well-being and then they demand greater exploration to determine the source.

Following this process allows emotions to be released rather than stored.