We can all agree that our minds are what makes us one of the most advanced species on the face of the earth, but our emotions make us this as well. Humans are complex beings socially and emotionally. This means our emotions are multifaceted and always have a root cause. We love experiencing emotions like happiness, contentment, peace, pleasure, and so on. But what do we do when our emotions are negative? How can we cope and maybe change the way we feel? Firstly, we must know what emotions are and what their origins are. Emotions (colloquially known as our feelings) are states of being, pleasant or unpleasant, they are bodily responses triggered by events, circumstances, or situations in our lives or the lives of others. We feel what we feel or we feel nothing at all because of something that has occurred, is occurring, will occur, or a lack thereof.
One might argue that emotions come from the heart and the gut because that is where we feel them, however, they actually come from the mind. When an event occurs, is occurring, or will occur, our mind tells us a story that in turn influences and triggers a certain emotion. What you think determines how you feel. For example: When a little girl knows her birthday is coming and her parents are going to throw her a big party, her mind tells her “Your birthday party is going to be a blast”, and she becomes excited when she gets a cake she doesn’t like for her birthday instead of the one she likes her mind tells her “your party is ruined”, and she becomes sad. When she sees that all her friends have arrived at her party and they’re having a good time, she feels happy because her mind tells her “You’re having a good time and the people you love are too”.
So you can think of emotions as a passenger on a roller coaster that travels from events to our minds, to our heart/gut. When we encounter negative events in life, it’s important to understand that firstly, in life we will encounter hardships so we must plan for them and be prepared for them. Secondly, we must address the root of this negative emotion which is the mind. When an unfavorable event happens, we must change our mind/perspective on it and this will then change the way we feel about the situation. For example: if we fall and scrape our knee, we can be thankful that we have a limb and put a band-aid on it instead of complaining about the pain. If we have a test coming and we start thinking negatively, saying to ourselves “I’ll fail this test”, we can instead tell ourselves “I’ll pass this test because I’ve studied and it might be easy”. Finally, if a loved one of ours has died because of a horrible illness, we can tell ourselves “They are not in pain anymore, they’re in peace”. If we can change our minds we can change our emotions.
Self-reflection and analysis are also important. This may sound crazy, but conversing with yourself in private is actually healthy; you can meditate on the event and ask yourself “Why do I feel this way?” “Is what I’m telling myself true?” And so on. We can also journal and talk about our emotions to someone we love and trust. According to Verywell Mind, in the 1970’s “psychologist Paul Eckman identified six basic emotions”: happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. He later expanded this list and included emotions like pride, excitement, shame, and embarrassment. This article also brought up another great psychologist by the name of Robert Plutchik who came up with a “wheel of emotions”. I feel this wheel is a great tool in pinpointing our emotions. There are some variations to this wheel, but this is the most basic one:
Here it shows Joy, Love, Fear, Anger, Surprise, and Sadness as the root emotions that then branch out and give birth to certain secondary emotions like desire, confusion etc.