deepstash
Beta
Why we should say no to positivity — and yes to our negative emotions
You are not your emotions
Create space between you and what you’re feeling and act as an observer by naming all the aspects of your experience.
Don't identify with your emotions. Doing this puts you in charge rather than the emotion.
483 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
5
Key Ideas
Forced positivity
Suppressing or avoiding our difficult emotions is not healthy or helpful.
Doing this impairs our capacity to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. And this leads to lower levels of resilience, lower levels of wellbeing, and higher levels of depression and anxiety.
Labeling difficult emotions
An important way of dealing with a difficult emotion is to label it effectively.
Labeling your emotions more accurately helps you understand the cause of those emotions and triggers your ability to set goals and to make real concrete changes.
Emotions and compassion
Identify your emotions with compassion.
Compassion allows you to foster a safe space inside of you, a space in which you feel capable of taking more risks: you’re ready to analyze and explore the world and you know that if things don’t go right, everything is still ok.
You are not your emotions
Create space between you and what you’re feeling and act as an observer by naming all the aspects of your experience.
Don't identify with your emotions. Doing this puts you in charge rather than the emotion.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
6
Key Ideas
False positivity
We are caught up in a rigid culture that values positivity.
However, when we put aside our difficult emotions in order to embrace dishonest positivity, we fail to discover skills that can hel...
Tough emotions are essential for living
How we deal with our emotions affects how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead.
We should not view our emotions as good or bad, positive or negative. We need our emotions for real resilience.
Moving Beyond Emotional Rigidity
When we go through tough situations, we cannot ignore our negative emotions with the hope that they don't matter.
Write down what you are truly feeling in a personal notebook. Move beyond the rigidity of denial.
3 more ideas
7
Key Ideas
Self-compassion can work wonders
Self-compassion enables you to take risks while being positive about the fact that even if things do not turn out your way, everything will eventually be fine, as you are still the same person.
Self-compassion and its effect
The main difference between individuals who show a certain level of self-compassion and the ones who show none or lower is that the first ones have the strength to stand up after having made a mistake, learn something from this mistake and be successful next time.
Learning self-compassion
A sure way of practicing self-compassion is by actually trying to learn lessons from all your experiences, especially the negative ones.
You should stop judging these experiences as being good or bad, but rather look for the meaning of each and every one of them.
4 more ideas
9
Key Ideas
Emotions
They are basal responses that begin in the subcortical areas of the brain responsible for producing biochemical reactions to environmental stimuli that have a direct impact on our physical state.&n...
Feelings
Feelings are preceded by emotions and tend to be our reactions to them. Emotions are a more generalized experience across humans, but feelings are more subjective and influenced by our personal experiences and interpretations, thus they are harder to measure.
Negative Emotions
They can be defined as unpleasant or unhappy emotions evoked in individuals to express a negative effect towards something.
Although some are labeled negative, all emotions are normal to the human experience. And it’s important to understand when and why negative emotions might arise, and develop positive behaviors to address them.
6 more ideas
5
Key Ideas
Curiosity declines with age
Children are extremely curious. They keep asking, "why?" and explore new things just because they want to know.
But research shows that during the schooling years, curiosity steadily declines, and as adults, we fall into fixed and convenient thought patterns.
The mechanics of curiosity
Research around curiosity found that children at age 5 scored 98% on a creativity test. When the same children took the test at age 10, only 30% scored well on the test. By age 15, only 12% of the same children did well. Less than 2% of adults are defined as creative based on their answer to this standardised test.
Science suggests this decrease in curiosity could be caused when we feel there's no gap between what we know and what we want to know, so we just stop being curious.
2 more ideas
3
Key Ideas
Living through emotional reactions
Even in our most mundane moments. Our emotions aren’t always overwhelming us, but they are always affecting us, coloring our perceptions and opinions about ourselves and our world.
The “fish in water” effect
Because we are immersed in our emotions’ effects every moment of our lives, we tend to talk about them only when they’re exceptionally strong.
Emotions work like spectacles
It's a huge help to know which lens you’re seeing the world through, at any given moment. When we can identify the most prominent emotion right now, we’re less likely to project that emotion’s characteristics on the situation itself, or on the world at large.
4
Key Ideas
Eating Distract from Emotions
We often associate eating with relief or even excitement, and it’s only natural that we’d reach for those same feelings when we’re worried or sad.
Why we choose comfort food
Comfort foods don’t tend to be healthy. We want cake or pasta or chips when we’re emotionally eating. We have emotional memories around certain foods, which are more likely to involve your grandma’s lasagna than a salad.
But after we eat for emotional reasons, we’re replacing our original feelings with the emotions that arise out of eating.
Comfort food
We associate comfort food with positive memories.
Think about all the happy and comforting memories you have involving food. Maybe your family used to celebrate occasions with a trip to the ice cream shop, or maybe your mom or dad used to soften the blow of a bad day with macaroni and cheese. When you’re feeling rejected or anxious today, eating one of those foods is an instant connection to that soothing time.
one more idea
7
Key Ideas
Label your emotions
Use plain language. The more fluent you are with real emotional language, the more clearly you will be able to think about how you’re feeling.
Clarify your emotions
Get used to the idea of emotional complexity. When we feel upset, we're not feeling one single emotion. We are usually experiencing a blend of many emotions.
Training ourselves to look for and see this emotional complexity is key to better understanding ourselves when we’re upset and moving on in a healthy way.
4 more ideas
6
Key Ideas
Emotions During a Difficult Conversation
It’s hard not to get worked up emotionally when you’re in a tense conversation: a disagreement can feel like a threat.
But if your body goes into “fight or flight” mode, ...
Breathe
When you start noticing yourself getting tense, try to focus on breathing (on feeling the air coming in and out of your lungs).
This will take your attention off the physical signs of panic and keep you centered.
Focus on your body
Sitting still when you’re having a difficult conversation can make the emotions build up rather than dissipate.
Standing up and walking around helps to activate the thinking part of your brain.
3 more ideas
4
Key Ideas
Roller coasters and our search for thrill
Rollercoaster rides are closely linked with the physical sensation we get from the world. The rides are successful because they can force an emotional experience.
O...
People enjoy being challenged
There are four different aspects to sensation-seeking:
- Thrill-and adventure-seeking, which has to do with a high adrenaline experience.
- Experience-seeking. People who like unusual experiences.
- Disinhibition. People who might like to scream on a rollercoaster and give in to their emotions.
- Resistance to boredom.
Generally, people that go out to amusement parks want to be challenged and taken to the edge of danger, but ultimately still want to be safe.
The rollercoaster design
Several things have to be considered to design a roller coaster ride: The cultural trends in society, novel technologies, and what people talk about. The wooden rollercoaster is popular in America, but not that much in the UK.
If the ride is too short, people won't be thrilled. If it is too long, every inch will cost tens of thousands of pounds.
one more idea
2
Key Ideas
Effects of music on productivity
- Listening to music with lyrics is distracting for most people. It’s best to avoid it when working on tasks that require focus or the learning of new information.
- Listening to
Music and the brain
Music has a real impact on human emotions and perception. Music activates different areas of the brain in different people, but there are general brain and mood patterns revealed by music research.
For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks.