"Navigator, Instruments!" Emotions As Indicators Of Our Current Life Situation

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

We all want our life to have as few negative and as many positive emotions as possible. It seems that this is happiness.

It is unlikely that happiness can be reduced to a simple mathematical formula, where positive emotions are in the numerator and negative emotions in the denominator. However, we can create for ourselves a life situation where positive emotions will prevail over negative ones.

If you ask us to list positive emotions, we will readily name everything: joy, pleasure, pleasure, excitement, ecstasy, etc. The same is with negative ones: shame, sadness, despondency … We experience positive emotions when we feel good, and negative when we feel bad. This scheme is familiar and understandable - like the ciliates from the experiment of scientists, floating away from salt water into fresh water, we try to leave the situation in which we feel bad, about which negative emotions signal us and find ourselves where we will feel good.

However, life is much more complicated than just two droplets of water: with salt and fresh water. It is not always possible to leave a situation in which we feel bad. For some reason, a person continues to work at an unloved job, live with an unloved person, or even in a situation of violence. Negative emotions can already go off scale, all the sensors and indicators are screaming - get out of there, it's bad, it's dangerous!

Sometimes a person really listens to the "readings of the instruments", and sometimes … Yes, sometimes he prefers to "turn off" these very instruments. Psychologists use the word dissociation. A person dissociates, separates his emotions from himself, ignores them. These "devices" seem to be somewhere separate from himself. Then the psyche, in order to show the person himself that it is necessary to change the situation, already connects the body, the somatics.

Sometimes, when analyzing the client's psychosomatic symptoms, it becomes clear that these symptoms occur in him in certain situations in life, in certain circumstances. One client with high blood pressure told me that when she goes to work in the morning, she feels as if a huge weight is on her shoulders.

The most interesting thing is that she did not connect her work and hypertension. Then, with a more detailed story about her work, she described a lot of negative stories, we managed to "pull" out of her anger towards some colleagues, and other emotions that she suppressed, as if separating them from herself, did not allow herself these to feel emotions, more precisely - to let them into the field of consciousness.

However, what to do if a person, even realizing that at this place of work or with this person he feels bad, still does not want to change his life situation, preferring an unhappy life filled with negative emotions, and even diseases that are caused by this particular situation, changes. If we are not talking about yourself, but about someone else, then nothing. This is the choice of the person himself, even if we really want to help him, get rid of suffering, then this usually does not work. He either ignores our "opening eyes" to another person for his situation, or agrees with our assessment of the situation, but throws up his hands, saying that he cannot do anything about it.

But what about you? If you yourself feel at a dead end, you understand that something needs to be changed, but it is not clear what and how! Or you even understand, but you are afraid or have doubts. Maybe something can be changed within the situation itself? How to "desalinate" this drop of salt water? Perhaps I will get better qualifications, work better; Or will I talk to my husband again and he will change?

Anything can be. People do change, and your boss or a nasty coworker can quit and breathe easier at your job. But, nevertheless, what to do if you feel that something is wrong in your life, that your mood is very often lowered?

First, try to track in what situations or after what typical events your mood changes from positive to negative. Try to analyze your emotions, at least for a start, just call them: "I feel sad" or "I am angry." Even the simple fact of naming an emotion usually makes it easier.

Secondly, try, after all, to deal with this place of your location or a typical situation in your life. What makes you experience these negative emotions? And what can be done to change the situation?

Most importantly, don't separate from yourself, don't dissociate your emotions. Understand that these emotions signal danger to you that you cannot ignore them, especially if they are strong and frequent. Ignoring and suppressing them can lead (most often does) to extremely negative consequences - depression, psychosomatic illnesses, chronic low mood, that is, make you unhappy.

Well, why be unhappy if you can become happy?:)