Every negative emotion I have, I’m told to go to therapy.
Negative emotions are human!
Why have we, as a society, grown to fear them?
Therapy isn’t for negative emotions. It’s for poor reactions to negative emotions.
If you’re told to go to therapy for “every negative emotion you have” it sounds like there’s more going on here than you just having them.
Great response.
I have a family member who gets angry very often. Things make him mad, I get it. The emotion isn’t bad. However, he then starts yelling at everyone around and becomes hard to be near him. Anger isn’t why he needs therapy. Yelling at those he supposedly loves instead of communicating why he’s upset is why.
I was told by many family members that I need to go to therapy. I suffer from severe fatigue due to my many medical conditions, so I must obviously be depressed (???). I felt fine, but I went anyway, because surely something must be wrong if so many people are insisting.
The therapist started with, “what brings you here?” and I’m like “I don’t know, my partner talked me into it.” We actually had a decent discussion come out of that. Turns out that my (now ex) partner was controlling and abusive, and the problem wasn’t with me at all. I didn’t see it because it’s apparently really hard to notice such things from the inside, but it’s obvious in hindsight.
Leaving my ex improved my mental health tremendously, but probably not in the way my ex wanted. Still tired all the time, but now I’m happier about it, more confident, and actually like myself, without all the constant negging and abuse.
So I guess the moral is, even if you feel fine, therapy can still be helpful in unexpected ways.
every negative emotion you have, someone tells you to go to therapy? I see two options: you are either having a lot of extreme overreactions that make bystanders uncomfortable, or, you are spending too much time with someone who is probably just trolling you.
Or maybe you just exaggerated a bit here
You need therapy bills to economically quantify your emotional damages so that you can sue somebody for them.
Negative emotions are human, but often we arent well equipped to deal with them. If you can deal with them in a mature and responsible manner, congratulations! If not, therapy can get you to that point.
We dont need to journey through everything alone, often a helping hand is necessary to pull you forward.
Why do you suppose humans aren’t well equipped to deal with negative emotions? Also, why do you suppose people have so many more negative emotions than we did in the past?
I’m nearing the half century mark. I work in education. I used to work in sales and retail. I’ve traveled to most corners of the planet. I read widely. I can attest, humans aren’t well equipped to deal with negative emotions and people have so many more negative emotions than we did in the past. This is the Internet.
Also, I’m not shitting on therapy. Therapy is keeping the wheels on this bus I’m riding. That said, therapy often fails at addressing underlying causes precisely because the dreck we exist in — and are forced to wade through — drives us back to therapy.
“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted in a profoundly sick society.” ~ attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s modern society, propaganda on TV is designed to create negative emotions with the solution of buying and consuming being the answer.
Negative emotions are human!
Sounds like something a therapist would say. Actually, the usual line is something like “if there’s a bear, negative emotions are very helpful”. (It’s always a bear; never a mugger or a giant rolling boulder. I don’t make the rules)
It’s hard to say over the internet, but either you’re in a crowd where they overuse that line, or your emotions have grown to become unhelpful in your life.
Emotions don’t have to be helpful? They just are
Healthy emotional response means you react to your environment in an appropriate way given the environment. Unhealthy emotional response means you pass out when you hear a helicopter or you can’t have healthy relationships or hold down jobs or feel good or feel anything. Emotions just are until they’re an impediment to living.
It feels like an over correction. Therapy has been long since been badly stigmatised and people realise how much it can help. If someone feels therapy will help then that’s great. But it’s not a magical solution to every problem. And even if therapy is helping you, you need to do 90%of the work on yourself and therapy helps you untagle the last 10% that’s too difficult to handle on your own.
Negative emotions are good for the evolutionary niche they developed for.
But when your fight-or-flight response kicks in during an exam, it doesn’t help you do the exam, but makes it even harder. To be able to function in the society we’ve built for ourselves, it’s necessary to be able to control our natural negative emotions without bottling them up entirely.
Now THAT’S an unpopular opinion! Here take my up—wait what sub is this??
I hear you. Fuck therapy. Should I go to therapy?
I used to just drink my problems away. In short, I don’t recommend. Now I deal with everything as it comes. At this point I don’t need theory but everyone is different and some need additional coaching through this thing called life. Nothing wrong with that.
shills for big therapy?
We don’t need therapy for every negative emotion. Some we might if they are persistent. But I agree, it is possible to rise to the occasion more often than not when it comes to dealing with our emotions and our current situation.
No I agree with you, no emotions are negative. They all have a purpose, and are a personal message to you (not anyone else). Boredom is a wind up machine for future prospects, that’s where you develop your sense of who you are and want to be. And if you want to be a crazy inventor, grab a white lab coat, mess up your hair and get yourself some Boredom. Anger can fire action to improve your situation. Or, you know if you happen to have a lot of money and no relatives, grab yourself a black rubber suit with wings.
I could go on. But all emotions are a message for you from your sense systems. They’re always reading the room, they’re non verbal, emotional alarm systems are the way they tell you a room is on fire or full of flowers.
It’s when you get stuck in an emotion that can be problematic. Rumination, or inability to emotionally process those emotions can cause life to feel super uncomfortable. And you can absolutely ask for help from someone who went to school to learn the mysterious ways of the emotional brain.
Emotions are kinda like a more sensitive and intricate alert system for danger approaching, as opposed to the more sledge hammer version provided by your fight or flight systems (all the same place).
If you don’t notice your emotions, bottle or ignore your emotions, they feel unheard, and what does any alert system do if it’s mildly sentient and feels like their danger alarts didn’t get heard? They just get louder until they feel like you got the message.
So whilst absolutely all emotions are a full and complete part of the human experience and can be vital and essential to life’s progression and an assistance, they can also start going defcon 5 over the toast being burnt, and therefore need some recalibration.
And then there’s emotional immaturity…
For most people, therapy is the only way to speak with a person who isn’t like most of the commenters here.
Does your own voice sound like commenters here? I’ve done a few sessions for issues I couldn’t resolve, but IMO the vast, VAST majority of issues are not issues that require a professional touch.
Beautifully said.
