10 Truths about Emotions That We Misunderstand

You can't selectively suppress emotions. When you drown your insults, you drown joy, you drown gratitude, you drown happiness.

Here's why:

1. The long-term effects of emotional abuse can have the same or even greater impact on you than the effects of physical violence

Emotional violence is often not taken seriously because it is not always possible to "see" it, but the severity of the long-term consequences of all forms of violence is not so different.

Emotional violence, such as physical violence, systematically destroys a person's self-confidence, values, and ideas. Emotional violence can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including control, threats, humiliation, derogation, criticism, screaming, and so on.

2. Emotions live longer than the memories that gave birth to them

You have the emotions you experienced in the past and you project them into the situations you live in the present. This means that if you fail to recover from what has happened in the past, you will always be under his control.

In addition, if you want to get rid of your irrational fears and the torment of daily worries, you need to understand and then eliminate the causes of their occurrence.

3. Creative people get depressed for a reason

The expression and experience of negative emotions correlate with activation in the right frontal cortex (as well as in other brain structures, such as the amygdala) or, in other words, in the same areas that are activated when you devote all your time to creativity and meaning. abstract in the specific reality of your current experience.

4. Fear does not mean a desire to run away. That means you're interested

You want it - believe it or not - but the strongest emotion associated with fear is interest. I say that fear has two sides: one who wants to run away and the other who wants to do research.

This means that there is nothing "scary" about you, only a part of you does not want to understand it, does not understand that it is of special importance to you, and does not consider it to be a valuable experience.

5. Feelings other than happiness are not a sign of something wrong. The presence of a whole range of emotions is a sure sign of psychological health

It also benefits from negative emotions. The constant experience of "happiness" or any other unique emotion can be considered a sign of mental illness. This contradicts the structure of your mind and body as a whole. In other words, you don't have to be happy all the time.

Listen to your body. Negative thoughts tell us that something is wrong. In this case, it is necessary to focus not on this emotion, but on what is trying to attract your attention.

6. Emotions can "predict the future" or, in other words, your inner feelings are real.

A study conducted at Columbia University dubbed the "emotional oracle effect," showed that people who are confident in their emotions can predict the future outcome of events. They are connected to this field of information through a "window" in their subconscious, which is a source of unconscious information.

7. You can experience social pain more often than physical pain, and this is another reason why researchers consider it in some ways more destructive.

When there are no psychological factors that affect the physical pain, or rather, there is no innate instinct that you need to process or rebuild to survive, then allow your memory to relax. However, your brain cannot forget the rejection, humiliation, and other social emotions experienced, because you have to stay inside your "tribe" to survive.

8. Stress can be the most dangerous emotion (especially when you experience it constantly), and yet you pay less attention to it than other feelings.

Relaxation is not just something you can afford from time to time - it is necessary. Stress weakens every particle, and this condition is somehow linked to the leading causes of death worldwide.

9. Social media makes you more emotionally disconnected.

Constant contact with certain parts of people's lives leads to the fact that, with their help, you begin to form a certain idea of ​​reality - one that is far from the truth.

The use of social networks develops such a strong alarm inside you (whether you manage to meet the expected standards or not), that you begin to give preference to the screen of a phone or computer over real communication.

You are the creature that needs human intimacy (romantic or not) to survive, so social media is becoming more and more destructive forces in your culture.

10. You can't selectively suppress emotions. When you drown out insults, you drown joy, you drown gratitude, you drown happiness.

Writer Brande Brown, an expert on vulnerability and shame, argues that you can't survive a feeling without surviving everyone else. You can't ignore sadness unless you're immune to happiness. This means that the healthiest reaction is to experience all the emotions - both good and bad.