Many people struggle with negative, even destructive feelings—about themselves, about others; about emotions aroused in their careers or relationships. Feelings such as sadness, frustration, even grief. Trying to stifle negative emotions—or feeling bad about having them to begin with—is pretty common. It causes much distress and struggle.
The irony, however, is that resisting or trying to push away your “bad” feelings actually intensifies them. Recent research provides empirical evidence for the exact opposite: Psychological health and well-being both grow from embracing these very “bad” feelings. In essence, it shows that you can feel better by allowing yourself to feel bad.
In a recent study of more than 1,300 adults, researchers found that people who regularly try to resist negative emotions may be more likely to experience symptoms of mood disorders months later, compared with subjects who accept such emotions.
Such findings underscore that meditative practices enhance your capacity for tolerating the flow of emotions and preoccupations; rather than clinging or attaching oneself to them, which pulls you in their direction. As that capacity builds, you become more able to stay focused and centered internally, in the face of the rise and fall of emotional turmoil, including needs, fears, frustrations, and longings—all of which are part of the ups and downs of life. Meditative practices and yoga diminish the tendencies toward anxiety and depression—as evidenced by studies of brain activity as well as conscious experience among meditators.
Our thoughts and our emotions help us to thrive in an increasingly complex and fraught world. How? Because how we deal with our inner world drives everything. Every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional flexibility for true resilience and thriving.
Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility. We are young until we see the wrinkles. We believe we are beautiful until one day we realize that we are unseen. We nag our children and one day realize that there is silence where that child once was. We are healthy until a diagnosis brings us to our knees. The only constant is change, and yet, clearly, we are not navigating the changes and challenges of life either successfully or sustainably. The World Health Organization tells us that depression is now the single leading cause of disability globally — outstripping cancer, outstripping heart disease. And at a time of greater complexity and immense technological, economic and social change, we are seeing how people’s tendency is more and more to lock down into rigid responses to their emotions.
On the one hand we might obsessively brood on our feelings. Getting stuck inside our heads and hooked on being right. On the other, we might bottle our emotions, pushing them aside and permitting only those emotions deemed legitimate in a world now governed by social media.
Roughly about a third of us, maybe even more– either judge ourselves for having so-called “bad emotions,” like sadness, anger or even grief. Or actively try to push aside these feelings. We do this not only to ourselves, but also to people we love, we may inadvertently shame our loved ones out of emotions seen as negative (why are you feeling bad about such-and -such thing?), jump to a solution (buck up and do this-or-that; I think you should….) , and fail to help them to see these emotions as inherently valuable.
Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad. And being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. Happiness and positivity are overrated. People with cancer are automatically told to just stay positive. With Depression or anxiety, to just cheer up. Someone dealing with a loss is told to ‘just move on”. And so on. It’s a tyranny. And it’s cruel and unkind, and ridiculous, besides being ineffective. And we do it all the time to ourselves, as well as to others.
As I mentioned earlier, research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. In psychological terms this is called amplification. Like that delicious dessert when you’re trying to lose weight –the more you try to ignore it …the greater its hold is on you. You might think you’re in control of unwanted emotions when you ignore them, but in fact they control you. Internal pain always comes out. And who pays the price? We do. Our families, our colleagues, our spouses and children.
When we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. I’ve had many, many people tell me what they don’t want to feel. They say things like, “I don’t want to feel disappointed.”Or, “I just want this feeling to go away.” I find this strange and unrealistic, because only dead people never get unwanted emotions or inconvenienced by their feelings.
Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience the disappointment that comes with failure. Tough emotions are a part of our contract with life. One cannot get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without experiencing stress and discomfort. That, my friends, is the price of admission to a meaningful life.
So, how do we begin to break this rigidity of “only positive emotions” and embrace emotional flexibility instead? Enough evidence is there now to say that the radical acceptance of all of our emotions — even the difficult ones — is the cornerstone to resilience, and to authentic happiness. But emotional agility is more than just an acceptance of emotions. Accuracy of the feelings matters. Words used to express the emotions are essential. We often use quick and easy labels to describe our feelings. “I’m stressed” is the most common one I hear. But there’s a world of difference between stress and disappointment or stress and frustration of being in the wrong career. When we label our emotions accurately, we are more able to ascertain the underlying cause of our feelings. And what scientists call the readiness potential in our brain is activated, allowing us to take concrete steps.
But not just any steps — the right steps for us.
Because our emotions are the information that contain flashing lights to things that we care about. We don’t usually feel strong emotion to stuff that doesn’t mean anything in our worlds. For example, if you feel rage when you read the news about someone being treated in an unfair manner, that rage is a signal, perhaps, that you value equity and fairness — and an opportunity to take active steps to shape your life in that direction. When we are open to the difficult emotions, we are able to generate responses that are values-aligned.
But there’s an important caveat. Emotions are data, they are not directives. We own our emotions, they don’t own us. We can and must try to align ourselves and our actions to our value system and be able to differentiate it from simply how we are feeling, thereby generating the pathway to our best selves via our emotions.
Conclusion
So, what does this look like in practice? When you feel a strong, tough emotion, don’t look for the emotional exits. Don’t find ways to avoid the situation/person that generates the emotion in you. Try to understand what the emotion is telling you. And try not to say “I am,” as in, “I’m angry” or “I’m sad.” When you say “I am” it makes you sound as if you are the emotion. Whereas you are you, the person, the individual who is only experiencing the particular emotion in that particular space, time and context; and the emotion is a data source. Instead, try to notice the feeling for what it is: “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad” or “I realise that I’m feeling angry.” And then try to figure out why you are experiencing the particular emotion and to make your change. These are essential skills for us, our families, our communities. They’re equally critical in our professional life.
Acceptance of the entire myriad of human emotions, our own as well as others’ is the key to bringing out the best in people. Diversity isn’t just people, it’s also what’s inside people. Including diversity of emotion. The most resilient individuals, organizations, families, and communities are built on an openness to the normal human emotions. Emotional agility is the ability to connect with your all of your emotions with curiosity, compassion, and courage, so as to enable you to make values-aligned changes.