With regard to negative emotion, many people have such a view that it is not good and that efforts should be made to avoid it. To be honest, this is also my view of negative emotions for a long time, but later, with the deepening of my understanding of emotions, I gradually found that this view is not only inaccurate, but also has a negative impact on us.
Why would you say that? The reason is very simple, first of all, negative emotions cannot be eliminated, because emotion is an evolved survival mechanism, it is a physical and psychological response that inevitably occurs under specific external stimuli, and emotions precede our awareness at the level of consciousness, that is to say, when we are aware of emotions, it has already been produced, so we have no way to prevent negative emotions from appearing. It must exist in our lives.
Secondly, if we think that negative emotions are bad, then when we are aware of negative emotions, we will have a kind of resistance, unwilling to face up to and admit its existence, so we can only choose to ignore or suppress these emotions. This will lead to two results: first, the accumulation of too many negative emotions in our hearts will be bad for our physical and mental health; second, we cannot use this emotional signal to understand ourselves more deeply, or to solve some potential problems. And achieve corresponding growth, so that we will still deal with similar situations in the future in the same way.
In fact, negative emotions themselves are not negative. The so-called positive and negative emotions are only a kind of judgment on emotions from the perspective of individual feelings. However, emotions are evolved not to make us happy, but to help us survive, develop and reproduce better. From this point of view, all emotions have positive meaning. The nature of emotion is actually a non-verbal signal about one's internal needs. Positive emotions mean that needs are met, while negative emotions mean that certain needs are not met. If we can learn to think of emotions as signals, we will no longer look at them with tinted glasses, but will focus on how to interpret and understand them.
Therefore, in the face of negative emotion, what we really need to do is not to ignore, avoid or suppress it, but to understand it and use it as a basis to find out what our inner needs are. Only when we understand what we want, will we know how to act, and then let our hearts be satisfied through action, otherwise, we will always live in anxiety and discontent.
Next, let's take a look at the specific methods. For convenience, I summarized the coping methods of negative emotions into three steps: 1) to identify and accept and express emotions without criticism; 2) to understand and analyze the needs and beliefs behind emotions; and 3) to transcend the use of emotions to achieve self-correction and growth.
Accept and express emotions without criticism
The first step is to identify emotions. Emotion recognition should include two levels of perception and expression. Awareness refers to the ability to be aware of your emotions, which is actually the self-awareness I've been talking about before. One thing about emotional awareness is very important, that is, when we are aware of our emotions, we must not criticize them. For example, if we realize that we are angry, then tell ourselves that we are angry. But do not make any subjective judgment on the matter of anger. Do not feel that you should not be angry. Angry is angry, there is no good or bad, there is nothing should or should not, it is a fact that already exists. This is important because accepting emotion is a prerequisite for expressing and understanding emotion. if we do not accept our own emotion and feel that we should not have it, then we will have resistance to it. We are unwilling to face it or want to suppress it. If we do not face it, we will not be able to understand what is behind the emotion, let alone use it to serve ourselves.
After we are aware of emotions, we also need to express them in the form of feelings. Expressing emotions sounds easy, but it's actually not as simple as we think. This is because the brain area that produces emotion is the limbic system below the neocortex, which has no language function, and our language function area is in the neocortex. In addition, the human emotional system is very complex and rich. The emotions we feel are often the product of a mixture of basic emotions, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of expression. That's why most of the time we can feel our inner feelings, but we can't express them well. From this point of view, the process of expressing emotion is actually the process of bringing emotion from the subconscious level to the conscious level, which requires us to carefully experience and feel the emotion, and then match it with the appropriate words.
There is another thing to note about the expression of emotions, that is, we should learn to distinguish between feelings and opinions. Feeling is a truthful description of inner feelings, while opinions tend to be conclusive or judgmental. For example, if I don't play the piano well, it belongs to opinion rather than feeling, and it is a negative evaluation of myself. And I feel depressed, I feel upset belong to the feeling, is the description of the inner feelings at this time, for example, you always do not care about me is also a view rather than a feeling. It is a kind of complaining conclusion about others. I feel very sad. I feel a little lonely.
In fact, expression itself can ease emotions to a certain extent, because emotional expression needs to activate the neocortex, which is the area of reason. This is why when we express our emotions, we feel relaxed and feel much more comfortable inside. On the contrary, the view itself often carries some kind of negative emotion, which not only does not ease the emotion, but strengthens it. Therefore, when we express, we must try our best to avoid those negative concluding language.
Understand the needs and beliefs behind emotions
If an emotion is caused by something trivial, it usually disappears quickly as long as it is expressed. But if an emotion is repeated or lasts for a long time, for example, we always feel anxious, then we have to understand that there is an important need in our heart that has not been met. we need to think through the emotion and understand the need signal behind it.
I believe many people have the feeling that we often don't know what we want. What causes it? The reason is simple, because our internal needs are all in the form of emotion, but the problem is that emotion is non-verbal, and in order to understand it accurately, we need to translate emotion into language, which is the emotional expression we mentioned above, and then explore the cause of emotion and what needs are behind it by constantly asking yourself why.
To be honest, it is far more difficult to understand the needs behind emotions than to express them, because there are so many possible reasons, but if we can have a certain understanding of people's basic needs and the relationship between needs and emotions, then the process of understanding emotion will be much easier. With regard to people's basic needs, Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory can be said to give a good summary, so then we take Maslow's theory as the framework to briefly analyze the relationship between people's needs and emotions.
Maslow divides human needs into five levels from low to high, namely: physiological needs, security needs, love and sense of belonging needs, self-esteem needs, self-realization. Generally speaking, the lower the level of demand, the easier it is to understand the emotions associated with it. For example, people's lowest needs are physical needs. When the body sends out signals such as food, water or sleep, the brain can immediately understand what it needs. Participation without thinking at all. For example, security needs also belong to the underlying needs, when security is threatened. We will have emotions such as fear, fear or anger, which do not require further rational interpretation.
With the improvement of the level of demand, the emotions and emotions related to it become more and more complex, and the interpretation becomes more and more difficult. The need for security is the need for love and a sense of belonging, which in turn includes the need for intimacy, trust, acceptance, and concern for others. These needs make us particularly afraid of losing love, being abandoned, being isolated, or being betrayed. Although everyone has a need for love and a sense of belonging, their emotions may be expressed in different ways. For example, there is a hate called hate because of love, which is a kind of hatred on the surface, but behind it is the desire for love, and for example, when our partner becomes indifferent to ourselves, we will feel sad, angry, and even a little anxious, which also reflects the need for love. When these emotions arise, we usually do not understand that they actually represent a desire for love, but choose to vent directly or take extreme actions that not only fail to meet our needs, but also often make the relationship worse.
Above the need for love and belonging is the need for self-esteem, which is essentially the need for status and recognition. Self-esteem includes two aspects, on the one hand, self-recognition, which is a sense of self-good caused by one's own ability, character, or achievement; on the other hand, the recognition of others and society, which means to be accepted, respected and treated fairly. In addition, socio-economic status is also an important part of social recognition, so most of the time, we want to have more money, better cars and bigger houses, not to meet the needs of survival and security, but more to meet the needs of self-esteem. There is a certain relationship between self-recognition and social recognition. Generally, people with strong ability or certain achievements will be recognized by others and society at the same time, and the recognition of others and society will in turn affect a person's self-recognition.
In contrast, the emotions related to the need for self-esteem are more complicated. for example, when others criticize or criticize us, we instinctively develop anger and an impulse to fight back. this is actually because our self-esteem is threatened, and emotions represent the need for self-esteem. For example, when we compare ourselves with others and find that we are inferior to others, we do not have any skills. When there is no achievement to be proud of, there will be feelings of inferiority and anxiety, and when we want to change ourselves but stay where we are, we will become disappointed, anxious, negative, and even begin to hate ourselves. without exception, these emotions are caused by the lack of self-esteem.
The last need is the need for self-realization, which is actually a pursuit of self-excellence and self-improvement, which often needs to be based on sufficient self-recognition. because if a person's self-esteem is not met, then he may pay more attention to the pursuit of others and social recognition. People who have reached the need level of self-realization generally have sufficient ability and self-confidence, and there is no lack of recognition from others. At this time, they no longer do something to get external recognition, but to pursue excellence. It is precisely because of this level of demand that those who are good and successful enough will still work so hard, and their motivation to move forward is not for recognition, but for self-realization.
Of course, this is just some very simple and crude analysis, and human emotions and needs are much more complex, but at least it allows us to see the relationship between emotions and needs, and gives us a new perspective on needs. To look at your emotions. It is no exaggeration to say that understanding emotions is the beginning of self-understanding.
However, it is not enough to understand our own internal needs, we need to continue to dig deeper. Digging for what? Dig into our subconscious beliefs about how this need should be met. For example, a girl did not receive her boyfriend's roses on Valentine's Day, so she was very angry and sad, why would she be angry and sad? The reason is very simple, she thinks that sending roses on Valentine's Day is an expression of love, and that her boyfriend does not send flowers means that he does not love her enough. Therefore, behind her anger and sadness is the need for love, and she needs to know that her boyfriend loves her very much. There is nothing wrong with this in itself. the problem is that she believes that this kind of love must be expressed by sending flowers on Valentine's Day. It can be seen that what really makes her angry and sad is not her boyfriend's behavior, but her beliefs. In fact, there are many ways to meet the need to be loved. Sending roses may not be a way for her boyfriend to express his love, and his love may be reflected in some details of life, such as whether he cares about whether she eats on time and whether she eats well or not. will ask for leave to accompany her when she is sick, will encourage her to pursue her dream, and so on. If she can see and cherish these details, then she won't feel that her boyfriend doesn't love herself because he didn't send flowers on Valentine's Day.
If we can reach this level of understanding of our emotions, we will find that there are all kinds of beliefs in our minds about how needs should be met. These beliefs usually lurk in our subconscious mind in the form of a necessary XXX, affecting us all the time, and only through this in-depth exploration can they finally emerge and then examine them.
Using emotion to achieve self-correction and growth
After digging out these internal needs and beliefs, we can move on to the third step of transcending emotions, that is, using emotions to achieve self-growth. The self-growth here consists of two parts, the first part is to correct unreasonable and irrational beliefs, and the second part is to set reasonable goals for yourself and take action to meet internal needs.
First of all, let's understand what unreasonable beliefs are. Unreasonable beliefs usually have several characteristics: first, the results and goals involved are beyond our direct control. What kind of results are uncontrollable? For example, if this belief is about what other people must do, or what the outside world must do, then this belief is unreasonable and irrational, such as the example mentioned above that boyfriends must send flowers on Valentine's Day. The result of this belief is that we cannot directly control it, because we cannot control and determine the behavior of others. If we are too obsessed with this belief, we can only suffer. Second, it is some unrealistic ideas that are beyond the scope of our previous abilities, such as some people often overestimate their abilities, set too many goals for themselves, and assign too many tasks to themselves. and the belief that only in this way can we become a good self, is it possible to succeed, this belief will only make people anxious and exhausted for a long time. Unreasonable beliefs can be said to be the culprit of anxiety, because we are anxious when we want a result but cannot achieve it through our own actions.
Very often, after we delete these unreasonable and bad beliefs, we will no longer have a bad mood when similar incidents happen again, which in itself is a very important growth. However, sometimes we do have certain needs to be met, and deleting and correcting beliefs does not mean that needs are met. For example, when we set a lot of goals and assign a lot of tasks to ourselves because of growth anxiety, behind this is actually the need for self-esteem, we are not satisfied with ourselves at this time, we want to be better, this need is essentially good. We need to be satisfied, and at this time, we should give ourselves a more reasonable goal. The reasonable key is that the goal is possible, and the realization of the goal is within our control, and then, based on this goal, make an effective plan and take action.
At this point, we should be able to understand the emotion of the title of the article, which is actually the meaning of your best growth mentor. Emotion itself actually carries a wealth of information. If we can really read this information, we can see through it the unmet needs of our hearts, as well as a variety of unreasonable beliefs in our minds. And on this basis to achieve self-growth and breakthrough.
This ability is actually what we mentioned earlier as emotional intelligence (or EQ). However, this is only part of emotional intelligence, which belongs to introspective intelligence. In addition, emotional intelligence also includes another important ability, that is, external interpersonal intelligence, its function is to identify and understand other people's emotions, and then, on this basis, indirectly influence other people's attitudes, behaviors or decisions through communication. in order to meet each other's needs, achieve win-win, and maintain good interpersonal relationships. This is what we will discuss in our next article, "learn to communicate, you will have less trouble."
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