Negative Emotions Have Their Positive Side

We have been brought up to believe that negative emotions can only cause us pain, frustration, anxiety, fear, stress, tears and a whole series of equally negative feelings.

But what is true in all this? Are negative emotions as negative as they seem?

Do we always have to be happy?

We believe that to be happy we must always be happy, but this is not something natural. Can someone really always be happy? Why is it not possible to think about negative emotions in happiness?

Within happiness are negative emotions, something that we consider to be a bad thing, but that is not really the case. Negative emotions are necessary. 

Can you imagine if we were all always very happy? So there would be times when we would not know if we are doing things right or wrong.

We do not have to always be happy, we have to know how to accept our emotions, both negative and positive. Our problem is that we tend to reject those negative emotions that we don’t know how to deal with because we are afraid, because we tend to run away from them.

Never reject your negative emotions because, as we will see, they also have their positive side. The problem is that negative emotions make us feel bad and we consider that this is not good!

What we are not aware of is that this is precisely what makes us human.

The true negative emotions

Going deep into negative emotions, it is important that we know how to distinguish those emotions that are “normal”, but that end up resulting in a true negative emotion.

This happens because,  sometimes, we get carried away by an emotion that we consider negative and that, inadvertently, gets out of hand. Now we are going to see a series of “negative” but normal emotions that lead to other more worrying and serious ones.

Worry and anxiety

Worry is a normal emotion, not at all negative.

It is a feeling that arises when something matters to us, when something happens that is marking our life or when we have to make a decision and we do not know if we are going to choose it well or badly.

The problem is when that worry gets out of hand and goes to the other level, anxiety.

When anxiety appears it means that we are not putting a solution to what worries us so much, we are doing something wrong. We must change the way we act and react.

Maybe we are worrying about something that we should not and that is causing us great anxiety.

Sadness and depression

Being sad is normal, since we can have a somewhat melancholic day or be more sensitive.

But what happens when that sadness lasts for a long period of time? What happens when something has affected us so much that it causes us a great lack of self-esteem and makes us devalue ourselves? Depression appears.

Anger at yourself and guilt

Many times we get angry with ourselves because we have wanted to do things differently but it has not come out, or we have said something that we should not. However, it is very different to be angry with yourself than to blame yourself.

Guilt is a very negative thing. While we learn from anger, from guilt we become more insecure and begin to lose value. We must never go to the extreme of guilt because this does not bring us anything.

Anger and rage

Anger is something totally normal, a natural reaction to something we don’t like.

When we go to anger we are already in a different scenario. With anger we devalue the other person and, while anger can cause us to release tension, anger causes us a lot of emotional and mental tension.

Many normal emotions end up turning negative because we do not know how to manage them in the correct way. Despite this, it also happens that we often confuse anger with anger or sadness with depression.

The emotions that we consider negative, sometimes, are completely normal and necessary. Imagine if we did not worry or if we did not feel sad. Would we care about the others or the rest?

It is time to change our perception and start accepting all kinds of emotions.