From childhood we learn to repress negative emotions like fury, sadness, fear, shame… But if we learn to recognize the cause of those emotions, we will receive a lot of responses about ourselves.
We as human beings pursue happiness, but we falsely believe that this means only to live positive emotions and avoid negative ones. We have learned that negative emotions are useless and for this reason they have to be removed. We do not want to be furious in oder not to be judged by others, we flee from sadness, to seem in balance with ourselves and we mask anxiety to sustain our ego.
But negative emotions are strongly connected to our responses to what happens in our environment. The emotions of fear and fury are essential for our survival. So their repression is useless and has negative impacts on the organism and psyche. Negative emotions can show us where there is an imbalance, a possible health problem or an attention focus within a relationship.
So it is necessary to accept our negative emotions to be capable of self-love.
How do negative emotions help us in our personal development?
Negative emotions help us to initiate fundamental changes in our life. Sadness puts us face to face with the depth of our being. Melancholie connects us with our real values. Therefore we learn many things about our personality and the world. The successful management of our negative emotions influences positively empathy, the relationships with others, modesty and moral considerations.
How to understand and manage negative emotions?
First of all, you have to accept your negative emotions instead of running away from them. Observe how you feel, without trying to change your mood. Some persons concentrate themselves on the respiration while they learn to tolerate the strong emotions. Another method is to concentrate on emotions and to imagine them as clouds, which are coming and running by, nothing more. Also useful is to start a journal and to note down daily the emotions and and situations you have faced during the day, in order to become more aware of them and to observe them more clearly.
Conclusion: Every emotion has a role. Sometimes the reasons are more evident, other more subtile. Observe them and see what message do they want to tell you. This will help you to grow psychologically. It is important in the first stage just to observe them, then to stay within the emotion, until it loses its intensity.