This Is A Sign That You Are Emotionally Balanced

Over-emotional, sappy, melodramatic - you’ve probably heard it all. Maybe you identify as an empath - someone who feels other’s emotions as strongly as they do (among other traits).

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably cried at one too many happy movies, and have even at times been made fun of for it.

Whereas some people may see your powerful displays of emotion as an extreme case of sensitivity, what you are actually displaying is something called dimorphous expression. Dimorphous expression is essentially, when you experience two opposing emotions in response to the same stimuli.

Dimorphous expression can crop up in a number of ways such as crying during traditionally happy times - weddings, the birth of babies, or winning the lottery. You can also see it in people who display nervous laughter, or laughing when angry (kinda spooky tbh) - but my favorite way to dimorphously express myself is through cute aggression.

Cute aggression occurs when you see something so cute (i.e. a kitten, a puppy, a baby) that you want to squeeze it, bite it, or my go-to is always wanting to swallow something whole (???) for some reason. Now while this may seem strange to some people, us emotionally balanced folks experience this as a way of regulating our powerful and deeply-felt feelings.

A study conducted by researchers at Yale University suggests that this aggressive response is a way for our brains to regulate the sort of “high” we experience when we see something really cute. The cute thing elicits such a intense feeling in us highly sensitive folks that in order for us to come down from the extreme positive emotion, our brain throws a wild card into the situation and says, “What’s the opposite of this feeling? Aggression? Sure, let’s try that,” and suddenly you’re mock chomping on the ears of your cat and pinching babies’ chubby legs.

Katherine Stavropoulos, a psychologist in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside, and self proclaimed cute aggressor says, "When people feel this way, it's with no desire to cause harm,” so even though you may feel like you could squeeze a puppy to death, you won’t - so no need to worry that you’re sending out Dahmer vibes to anyone who sees you in an aggressive state over photos of ducklings.

The fact of the matter is that this cute aggression, along with other forms of dimorphous expression, is really a sign that you’re emotionally balanced. You may be the cry-baby of your friend group for getting teary eyed when you receive a gift you really like, but the reality of it is that you are just regulating your emotions. Not only are you someone who feels things on such a deep level, but your brain is doing such a great job of making sure you don’t feel things so hard that you spontaneously combust (even thought it may feel like that sometimes.)

So, save this article, show it to your friends, and prove to them that you’re actually one of the more emotionally stable people they know and they should appreciate this newfound fact about you.

Here’s some cuteness for the road:

I hope understanding a little more about why you respond to cute things like this may help you appreciate your inner workings a little more. Not everyone experiences this flood of emotion, and I have to say, I like feeling so head over heels for something so cute, and I like enjoying a rom-com happy ending so much it makes me smile and cry at the same time. Life is too short to feel things half-assed, we go all the way - and then some.

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