Removing the Negative from Negative Emotions
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Our emotions are always with us, rising seemingly out of nowhere like a giant sea serpent, at other times existing like a still ocean, always there but not causing any trouble. Unfortunately, emotions often get a bad reputation, particularly when placed next to rationality, as if the two are diametrically opposed, with emotions, therefore, being irrational.
Directly leading from that is the notion that emotions can be labeled as good or bad, perhaps not necessarily in an ethical way, but certainly being qualified as positive or negative. The popular movie “Inside Out” is only the latest iteration of portraying emotions as if they come fully formed with stories and personalities, lending itself to common phrasings like “I don’t know what came over me” or “I saw red” or “My emotions got away from me.” As a metaphorical way of reflecting on the many versions of ourselves that inhabit this perceived duality of flesh/environment, it can be quite helpful; as science, it’s pretty terrible.
Emotions are, therefore, described as whole beings. Combined with the human predilection for summary judgments, it’s easy to consider emotions through the simplistic lens of negative and positive. And, in the last few decades of increasingly viewing identities in a similarly summary and singular way, emotions and their charge of positive or negative are written upon the whole of our social expressions. "Don't be negative" has become the mantra of the newest iteration of mind-over-matter, particularly in relation to cancer and other illnesses (see Barbara Ehrenreich’s spectacular book “Bright Sided” for a history of this). Emotions, like identities, have become objects to label and control, to be placed into neat little boxes or shuffled away for their utility.
This way of viewing emotions in positive or negative judgments can be detrimental to how we live our lives. Who determines which emotions are good or bad? Is that person speaking only for themselves or everyone, and if the latter, why? Can an emotion be good in one situation but bad in another? Let's take anger. The person declaring anger as bad is often in a position of power, where labeling it as such is more about diminishing the legitimacy of anger's cause. How anger is labeled goes a long way toward keeping the hierarchy of power in place. If you're "just being emotional" or "acting out" or "being aggressive," then the focus is shifted from considering what the anger may be about and onto why you need to know your place.
Emotions Support Your Life
Starting to question the utility perspective on emotions points to why labeling emotions in themselves as good or bad is, at best, unhelpful. Emotions don't simply appear, no matter how that may feel at times. Calling emotions spontaneous means noting the speed of the reaction, not that they happen without connection to experience. Picture that quiet ocean again, this time seeing how the water reflects the colors of the rainbow in the light. Some colors may be seen more often, and others may rise up with passing waves and then dip down again. Like the waves themselves, emotions are automatic and rise from forces unseen from the beach.
You can no more choose which emotion you’ll experience next than you can the next thought that pops up in conscious awareness. Our brains' bodily sensations, environmental influences, and predictive processing are always active, always moving beneath the surface of perceived experience. Emotions are an immediate reflection of the world in which we live.
Now place a moving object, a small boat or a large ship, cutting through the water and making it roil and splash around. That object is your current felt experience in how we normally consider our relationship to our emotional world. Some things in experience are outside of perceptual control, that is, the world itself, our biology, social structure, and cultural standards. Our rational appraisal gets all the praise because it's our conscious, reflective self and, therefore, seems to happen after all the messy things are done. That the description requires words, as opposed to the supposedly more simplistic quality of mere emotions, contributes to the notion that reason is deliberate, a choice, and, therefore, a higher or better expression of who we are.
Seeing ourselves as objects on the ocean is far more humbling and, thus, more helpful in slowing down our judgments, both of ourselves and of others. Where's the easy cause and effect? Such simple connections are difficult to follow in this picture. In fact, they're practically impossible. We can't stop living in the ocean of our emotions, constantly and quietly assessing our situations from below conscious awareness. Neither can we stop the "I" of our conscious lives requiring verbal description and, therefore, the creation of narratives to explain our experiences. What is cause and what is effect, therefore, get lost because either can be substituted for the other depending on the place in experience a person is looking from.
The result of seeing our emotions this way helps by slowing down judgment and providing the space for flexible responses to develop. Rather than getting caught up in habituated patterns of behavior that contribute to a passive way of living, our emotions are no longer something to be feared or mocked, replaced, or removed, but part of ourselves to actively engage with. Getting rid of judgment means being able to focus on our stories, the structure that scythes through our still waters and provides the path for meaning and values to manifest. Acceptance is letting the waves come and moving forward with how we live, humanely and in dialogue.
