How To Benefit From Negative Emotions?

I mentioned most recently in a social group that I was experiencing fear and some other mixed emotions while approaching a new project that I was about to start. Some people in the group were concerned to say the least. I was offered help in the form of counsel, and the general feedback seemed to indicate that what I was experiencing was a bad thing; something that should not happen; something like a disease; something like an anomaly.  This set me thinking. Is what I am experiencing really bad or are there other phenomena at play here that hinder the view of the trees from the forest? I aim to dive into this question with this article, and clarify a few things about negative emotions.

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Could Aristotelian Propositions Help Answer the Question?

Aristotelian propositions are useful in logical analyses. They are propositions that can only have two possible outcomes: ‘true’ or ‘false’. Below, the problem statement is split into two statements: A and B:

A: Person X is feeling negative emotions.

B: Negative emotions are bad for person X.

Logically speaking, A and B have two possible outcomes each: ‘true’ or ‘false’, and they are not necessarily dependent on each other. In other words, it is not a given that the occurrence of negative emotions are bad for the person X (that’s a partial answer to the original question). This might sound like stating the obvious, but think again! We as human beings have the strong habit of associating ‘negative’ with ‘bad’, and ‘positive’ with ‘good’. This habit of ours simplifies our thinking process, and is partly to blame for oversimplifications of situations that lead to incorrect conclusions ‘sometimes’.

Why And When Do Negative Emotions Occur?

The first thing to note before answering this question is that, evolutionarily speaking, negative emotions exist for a reason. They are there to help us survive and self-propagate, in some sense. They occur when we are exposed to either unknown circumstances or known circumstances associated with bad historical outcome(s). They are not necessarily meant to stop us from experiencing the uncomfortable circumstance ahead, but to encourage us to apply caution ahead. The application of caution need not necessarily be a function of the conscious mind. Fear, for instance, in its purest form leads to a binary (akin to an Aristotelian) outcome: fight or flight. The outcome, in this case, is not driven by the conscious mind. As a secondary effect of either fight or flight, physiological attention and reactive capacity to threat significantly increases, as the body regulates hormones like adrenaline. Again, to drive home the point, all of this is happening for evolutionary reasons.

When Are Negative Emotions Bad For You?

Thankfully, we have a wealth of psychologists, whose works answer this question quite extensively. From my research into this topic, I could choose to crudely summarise it as follows: whenever the negative emotion being experienced is not ‘sufficiently’ synchronised with the empirical phenomenon being observed, it leads to a ‘sub-optimal’ outcome. The term ‘sufficient’ here is highly subjective, and the interpretation of the term ‘sub-optimal’ could range from anywhere between limiting to outright bad or dangerous. Since the interpretation here is highly subjective, a cruder classifier may be employed. Let’s say Person X is experiencing a negative emotion in a particular circumstance. Let’ say that the majority of people from a sample population, when exposed to the same circumstance, does not experience the negative emotion experienced by person X.  In this case, it could be concluded that there is something not configured properly in person X that might benefit from counsel. Now ask yourself, how often is this the case in day to day life? Are you sure that if put under the same circumstance, you would not experience the same negative emotion? Usually such a disparity in emotional synchronization to empirical reality requires psychiatric help. In other words, this does not happen in the vast majority of human beings.

The Sick Side of Personal Development, Positive Thinking, and Self Help

The personal development and positive thinking movement started in the early 1900s, as religion was losing its grip on the western societies. In other words, what people lost in religion, they hoped to seek elsewhere. This led to a sprawling industry of sorts. Wallace Wattles came up with “The Science of Getting Rich” in 1910, followed by Napolen Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich”. Earl Nightingale whipped the American radio to the point that he came to be known as the “Dean of Personal Development”. Fast forward many years, newer ‘gurus’ have popped up in the form of Jim Rohn, Bob Proctor, Brian Tracy, and Tony Robbins.

This industry hinges on selling a positive lifestyle and continuous personal improvement to people who wish to do better in life. While the industry has its merits, the dark side is that it has managed to glorify positive thinking and stigmatise negative emotions to the point that a good chunk of the modern western society associates ‘negative’ emotions with ‘bad’ outcomes. The application of Aristotelian propositions in this context seldom works, because this does not appeal to the logical side of people, but the irrational side. Some of the most established contemporary philosophers and psychologists alike have warned against the ill effects of this movement. These include Friedrich Nietzsche, Erich Fromm, and most recently, Jordon B. Peterson. While we are at it, check out this sobering documentary produced by a colleague of mine:

Conclusion

Let’s not be afraid of fear (oh the irony), or any other so labeled negative emotion. They are there for not only cautioning us, but to communicate (to us) our lack of knowledge or information in our lives. If embraced and leveraged properly, they serve as useful tools in solving the complex problems we face in day-to-day life. In short, negative emotions are not bad for us, they are essential for our growth and sustenance. It doesn’t make sense for me to run out to a counselor or coach as soon as I start feeling uncomfortable about something (expressed via negative emotions). There is a time and place for counsel, but the vast majority of human beings do not need it. In fact, by seeking counsel or therapy for fundamental issues, people are running the risk of conditioning themselves on being dependent on external factors and external triggers to solve intrinsic problems. This could lead to some dark pathological systemic consequences that have already been predicted by profound thinkers such as Nietzsche.

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