Are emotions bad or good?

Let’s talk about emotions for a moment.

Often, when I work with clients, I hear the words ‘negative emotions’ or ‘positive emotions’.

Do we really have positive and negative emotions? I personally don’t think so.

I think that we have emotions and that’s it.

Let me explain. I personally believe that what we think is negative or positive is not the emotion, but the behaviour that the emotion leads to. In my view, anger is negative only if someone starts bashing the whole room in a moment of rage. But if I was angry and I just sat in a corner processing and trying to regulate, would my anger be seen as a bad emotion?

Thanks to society, we have learnt to judge our emotions. Constantly!

Men cannot cry or they will be labelled weak, women should suffer in silence because good girls don’t make a fuss and so on.

But what if we could turn our judgment into curiosity?

What if we could just welcome whatever we feel and let it sit with us with love?

You see, emotions are telling us something about our story.

They happen in our body, and they show up every time we experience something vaguely like what our body experienced the first time that we felt that emotion.

If you look at the Polyvagal Theory, you will know that every emotion, thought and body feeling lives in a particular state. So, emotions are just a cue that your body is keeping you safe. It is the language that your body has of letting you know in which state you are and a little reminder to pause and give yourself permission to do what you need in that moment to regulate.

If you look at the Internal Family System therapy, each emotion brings out a part of you that is stuck in the past and that is showing up to protect you. If we resist that part, it will show up even louder. But when we welcome it with love and compassion, while asking what It needs, the story will slowly change.

I always say that emotions are like a pot of boiling water: if you put a lid on, what happens? The water overflows and you will have a mess on the stove. But if you leave a little bit of air, the water will just bubble up until the heat will lower down, without overflowing.

While working on my emotions, I realised that I actually struggle to name my emotions outside of the basic anger, sadness, happiness and fear. Maybe it is my autism, who knows. Maybe it is because I only clearly recognise anger and happiness and prominent emotions as the others like to hide from me.

I have done all the anger management courses under the sun, and my anger never got better. Until I understood how my nervous system works and bought myself an emotional wheel pillow to look at every time I felt a deep intense anger.

To my surprise, it was never just anger.

But I guess that part would show up to protect me and put me in a state of fight every time my unconscious felt I was not listened to or not seen.

Since I can pick up that pillow, name what I feel and welcome those parts with love and give myself space to regulate the way my body needs, I have made huge changes in my personal life.

Even my therapy sessions feel different now.