Positive vs Negative Emotion Reconcile

When I write about my last article about emotion world, I have several question about the article. "Stef, all agree that we need to have a positive life man, don't let this world ruin your life!". Well I tend to agree until this statement: "I hope I can get rid off all the negative emotion so I don't feel depressed anymore and have a happily ever afterlife with things that give me positivity".

Again somehow this is a wish that every people hope they have in their life. Why? Well you will have thousands of argument from why we need to escape from the negativity. Some argue it just kills us or maybe I want a "meaningful life" I don't want any sorrow be an obstacle in my life.

Well, it all sounds true until I asked my self a question, what if this world becomes a paradise for me where I get positive all day and I get rid of all the negative emotion. I will answer it with an analogy. Let say you eat the most delicious steak in the world. You feel it's extravagant until you want to cry because you never found the food that is so delicious. But what if, you eat that food every day, like literally every day. After a week maybe it just become an ordinary food. So many psychological research has proved this paradigm. We can call it habituation, increase intolerance, etc. But I mean yeah It may also happen with emotion, when we always get positive every day, positivity may become meaningless.

Referring to my previous article, we won't be able to avoid the bad things happen to us. It's just part of life that we will always encounter and this kind of emotion will always exist with the association. So that kind of paradise will also never exist. Well it sounds depressing for some people, because no matter how hard you try you won't be able to escape negative emotion.

But now let dig dive deeper into this emotion that torture us, the emotions that literally may "kill people".

The continuum of emotion

So many people think that positive and negative emotion is just a continuum where we assume when we feel negative it means an absence of positivity and a feeling of positive is an absence of negativity. But if emotion is a continuum, you won't be able to feel the mixed feeling and even 1 emotion may have been a result of several emotions.

I love to use the Pluthick model because it is easy to digest while still giving the relevancy of emotion. One emotion can be the result of mixing the positive and negative emotion at the same time. This kind of mixed emotions are called Dyads. For example, Pride is the result of anger and joy. Crazy right? Well it's very logical because there won't be any pride in yourself if you don’t feel something positive about yourself. You also feel different gradient of emotion, for example, anger my varied from annoyed until rage (like doing a table flip).

Emotion as a mechanism for survival

I bet you will also ask, why we need emotion in the first place? Yes it makes a color in our life. Sometimes it's so frustrating to deal with emotion and I agree until a certain point. Let's see our pet. Dogs have emotion. If you left them they may feel sad. They show joy when you play with them. Positive feeling of getting food or play with you is the association that "this is someone that cares about my life and I can trust him/her". It also happens when they meet a new person. They feel a sense of threat that evoke fear because someone is not known so they are barking to the stranger

See it's also happening to us, we feel angry with our boss because there is a sense of threat. For example, maybe they make you do more jobs that will cause you more energy with incomparable results. Or maybe you are angry with your colleague that critique you because it's a threat to your work which you have put effort into. We can always see the antecedence of why we feel a certain emotion, it's just a gift from our ancestors. They felt happy when they find a good source of food or mate because it means they will ensure their survival, at the other hand they may feel fear as the sense of insecurity

Survival may have less relevancy with the condition of the modern era especially when we are talking in emerging and developed world. We won't find a tiger in the middle of the street. Also, food and water is easier to get nowadays then thousands of years ago. Then, how about our bosses or society that threaten us?

The reptile brain that focus on survival is still left in us, it make us vigilant or anticipate new situation or when we feel someone will take our resources. That's why we need to understand the situation first, is it a real-life risk and security threatening situation or not. In the modern world, it becomes more complex for us to stop and understand the situation first. When we see the situation clearly, we will able to choose the right response. For example, a mother yelled at her kid because he got a bad mark. Well, why the mother need to be angry? If you follow the reptile brain that is threatening your dignity as a mother you, it may happen. But if you assess the situation correctly that maybe the child had difficulties within that lesson, you may have a very different response. When we don't asses the situation correctly, the respond emotion might make the condition worse

So as we see, nowadays a logical decision to choose the right response in the right situation has become more important. Do you think that emotions that created by survival mechanism especially negative emotions are still relevant as human?

Emotion as a mechanism of growth

So to begin with, I want to ask questions.

What is the beginning of this fast-growing species? Where does innovation come from? Humans have lived in stone-aged much longer than modern aged. One of the tipping point is when humans can do introspection. The searching for meaning. Early human just care about survival, someone like Aristoteles and Socrates and Confusious asking the question about life is the sign that our brain truly evolved that differ us from animals.

But why people asking questions about life? It's because of the suffering. The pain that you feel in life make you ask a question, why do we feel this pain? Why life is such a burden? These cues, this introspection won't happen unless you feel a certain emotion. We see when people asking the why of the existence, the introspection, there is where humans reach their capability. There will be no revolution when everyone feels the same. Suffering made some people ask the question, is this the right thing? Collective introspection create a revolution that grow the humanity even more than before. 

It's also the same with us today. If you search enough in this life, I bet there's a moment that you feel mellow and ask yourself, why do I exist? What for…. This kind of question drives you to search for life. This kind of question will never exist if you just feel happy all the time. A moment of suffering in your life awaken your introspection and introspection come from negative emotion.

So now it comes to the question of what should we do with this negative and positive emotion? Should we delete it? Or what?

I would say I will divide it into two things. The first thing is just to let it happen. Most of the time in this very fast world, we never introspect ourselves why some emotions are triggered. For example, we got mad just because the waitress in the café needs to be called several times before got you. Have you asked yourself why you feel it? Have you ever try yourself on the waitress position? You must understand that every emotion once again has antecedence. If you don't understand the cause you will be played by your own emotion. When you are played by your emotion, your mind will be directed according to your emotion, not vice versa.

This is also happening to positive emotion, then why don't we ask ourselves, why I don't feel positive in this kind of situation. Maybe something block you down, maybe there's unfinished business in your life. You will never find the answer unless you seek it and deal with it. Question to ourselves is the first step to find the meaning in our life.

So either it is a negative emotion, or the absence of positive emotion, we need to accept what emotion happens to us and find the meaning of why we feel it. The more we understand the why, the more we understand what is meaningful to us and that’s what makes us able to direct our lives according to the values and meaning that you want. We will be wiser to determine what kind of response should I do. We often judge a situation as it is, but what we need is see the situation as it is, that's what we called mindfulness (you can browse furthermore what is mindfulness).

The second time that we need to do is evoke. Why evoke? Simple argument, you choose what you want to become. Is it a mellow drama person or someone who is always cheerful. This is where the emotional world take place. A positive emotion can be triggered such as joy that you get from the most enjoyable hobby that you can have. A sense of serenity can be evoked by redesigning your room, if you like me love smell, buy some lavender essentials oils also help. The concept of emotion world helps you to take control of your life. Instead of complaining why this doesn't happen and let the emotion take you over, try to take control of yourself by determining what you want. So instead of complaining that the boss always make you angry, find opportunity in the workplace, focus on the job that you like that give you the sense of development thus evoke your optimism.

If we take the meaning from this discussion, eventually it back to yourself. The only way that we are not defeated by your emotion is to be aware and have control over your thought that eventually help you to control your emotion. Why people getting depressed? Simply because they lost control over their emotion falling into the depressive episode. I always believe the one who can care the most to you is yourself. Instead of get rid away of negative emotion, why don't we become friends with them? To find the meaning of yourself and your existence. You only live once so why don't you make it meaningful?

References

Putting Some Emotion into Your Design – Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. (2019). Retrieved 1 September 2019, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/putting-some-emotion-into-your-design-plutchik-s-wheel-of-emotions