Bipolar View on Emotions
I remember the time I realized that we human beings tend to believe in bipolar emotions. What do I mean by that?
There was a gentleman that had to come see me for anger management.
And earlier in the day, he had gotten fired. So that afternoon, when he came in to see me, he was still very, very angry. He was pacing in my office and telling me all these things that he was going to do to this now, former boss. I wanted to get him to calm down to see if he was really threatening this guy’s life, or was he just speaking out of anger?
And, at one point, as he’s pacing back and forth my office, he stops and turns at me and he goes, “What? You want me to be happy I got fired?”
I’m like, “Oh! So you think there’s only two ways to experience emotions.” You’re either positive emotions, happy, or negative emotions angry, sad, anxious. That sort of thing. And you know what? There is a third option.
And that third option is what we call neutral emotions. Isn’t that particularly happy that we noticed or sad that we notice. It’s more along the lines. Of calm. And so this more along the lines of calm is what we call neutral emotion. So there are three ways to experience emotions, not just two.
Three Categories of Emotional Experiences
Now, let’s put some names in certain categories. So let’s start with first naming some positive emotions. Now positive emotions are things like happy, excited, joyful, love, serenity, satisfaction, contentment, amusement.
Now naming some neutral emotions, these are more along the lines of calm. These aren’t sad that you notice or excited that you notice. So it can be things like fine, alright, okay, “normal”, just plugging along, nothing new.
Now with negative emotions, this is where it gets interesting. There are three categories, they’re along the lines of sad, mad, and nervous.
Okay. Let’s look at some negative emotions along the lines of mad. These can be emotions like annoyed, frustrated, peeved, contrary, bitter, infuriated, irritated, mad, furious.
Now let’s look at some of the negative emotions around sad. These can include: sad, despondent, grieved, disappointed, gloomy, downcast, depressed, hopeless.
Now let’s look at some negative emotions along the line of nervous. Include nervous, afraid, fearful, anxious, apprehensive, overwhelmed dread and panic.
From evolutionary psychology, emotions serve an evolutionary goal. A lot of your positive emotions are about connections and building those social structures. Your negative emotions are typically your fight, flight or freeze.
Now, they also refer to this as negativity bias. Now are we more motivated by the carrot or the stick? Many times we’re very much motivated by the stick.
One of the three ways in the experience of emotion, not two, and that there are three categories within the negative emotional realm. So next time when you find yourself emotional, you ask yourself, am I experiencing a positive emotion, a negative emotion, or am I just fine?
Want to learn where our emotions come from? Click here for that episode of 3 Minute Psychology
Would you like to explore options to work with me? Click here.
Would you like to watch a free webinar on Trauma and the Brain? Click here.
The form you have selected does not exist.
