Contentment, excitement, happiness, apprehension, despair, shame, rage … the range of human emotions is huge and complex. Clearly it’s emotions that give life meaning, fuel inspiration, and bring people together. Emotions can also stoke the fires of worry and send us into dark places … sometimes driving us to our knees.

In this chapter, we’ll look at the essential aspects of emotion: how they can aid adaptation, contribute to aliveness, and help to promote emotional healing and growth.

Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek TV series was a serious guy. As a Vulcan, he presumably was free from the experience of emotions—a pure intellect. He lived long and prospered, but probably didn’t have much fun.

Emotions are not just about feeling. They can serve very useful purposes, and, in fact, may at times save our lives.

To navigate safely through the world, people are highly dependent on accurate information about their environment—delivered to the brain by the sense organs. Let’s take the senses of smell and taste as an example. If you bite into a rotten apple, it would serve you well to quickly notice that it’s rotten and spit it out. The unpleasant taste (which actually is always a combination of taste and smell) immediately alerts you that it’s not edible.

In a fraction of a second, morsels of the apple excite taste buds and nerves in the nose, which send nerve impulses to the brain. Here the brain interprets the incoming information. Sensations are evaluated in complex ways, and it is here that the brain interprets the information. It recognizes the smell and taste, and it also makes a judgment, “This tastes terrible.” This leads to a reaction—spitting the apple out of your mouth.

You may have just saved yourself from getting food poisoning. These senses tell us something about the world in that moment.

In a very similar fashion, most human emotions also provide us with information that can guide our behavior—in helpful and adaptive ways. For example, Ann attends a party where there are a number of guests she does not know. A man she has never met before approaches her, and after they talk for a few minutes, she begins to feel a vague sense of uneasiness about him. Paying attention to her emotions, she excuses herself and moves across the room to visit with a woman friend she knows from her work.

Ann wasn’t engaging in mind reading, per se, but she was picking up on certain bits of information about the man. Her perceptions led her to believe that there was something about him that left her feeling uneasy. It was this inner emotion that prompted her departure. She may not have been able to articulate just exactly what she was picking up on, but all the same, her emotions and her intuition told her to say good-bye and seek out someone else to talk with. Ann’s uneasiness is not an emotional problem … it is valuable information.

Thus, one purpose our emotions play is to help take in information about the world, interpret what is going on, and then influence action. Next time you step into a street then suddenly notice a bus heading right toward you, and the momentary startle and fear prompt you into getting quickly out of the way, you will have experienced a very common example of how emotions guide behavior and ultimately can help you stay alive. Emotions play a critical role in helping people to evaluate safety versus danger: what to approach, and what to avoid. It is important to pay attention to and take seriously emotions and gut feelings.

Whether it is something as small as deciding what movie to watch on television, or a much more important life decision such as choosing a career or who to marry, emotions serve as a sort of internal self-guidance system. Gathering information by speaking with friends about and pondering situations always evokes inner thoughts and feelings. These feelings, such as excitement, boredom, fear, apprehension, and enthusiasm, lead to conclusions such as “Go forward,” “Stop and be careful,” or “This ain’t for me.”

Some people are in touch with their emotions, and this can help tremendously, especially in making major life decisions.

However, many people (for various reasons) are not fully aware of how they truly feel. Such people may only come to a gradual awareness that they hate their job, or are not truly in love with their spouse. Being cut off from awareness of inner emotions is an all-too-human condition that can be hazardous to one’s emotional well-being. A blind person is in potential danger crossing a busy street. An emotionally blind person is also in great peril when making major life decisions.

Psychologist Sheldon Kopp has said, “In sharing, we seek relief from our loneliness, reassurance about our worth, and release from our guilt.”

The outward expression of feelings can be a powerful way to make and maintain a connection with other people. A prime example is the crying of a hungry infant. His tears give a clear message: “I need help,” and those who love him come to the rescue. In a similar fashion, outward displays of emotion continue throughout a lifetime to convey human needs to others, and can elicit support or bring people together in times of need. For example, when a husband comes home and clearly looks worried, his wife notices his distress and begins to speak to him and to provide understanding and support for what may have been a very difficult day.

The expression of emotions almost always is a way of conveying personal values. The reasons for feeling strongly about something relate directly to the way you perceive events and what matters to you on a very personal level. An example might be feelings of sorrow when watching a news report about the suffering of innocent people who have lost their homes and loved ones in a tragic earthquake. Even more personal might be in situations of domestic violence, where a woman is outraged at how she could be so devalued and so abused by someone who presumably loves her. This violates one of her deeply held personal values.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

It may seem paradoxical, but often expressing unpleasant emotions ultimately results in less intense suffering. An example is when people cry. Often a crying spell can result in relief. Noted neuroscientist, William Frey has studied the biology of crying and has demonstrated that the shedding of emotional tears actually reduces stress hormone levels.

Although for many people, crying is accompanied by inner feelings of shame or self-criticism (e.g., “What’s wrong with me? I feel like a crybaby”), 75 percent of those who give themselves permission to have a “good cry” report that just a few minutes of crying results in (on average) a 40 percent decrease in feelings of anger, anxiety, frustration, sadness, or other intensely felt emotions.

Honest emotional expression often leads to a sense of relief, even if in the moment it feels unpleasant. If the emotion is shared with another person (depending on how open and accepting they are) it can also feel good just to know that you have been heard and understood. Feeling validated for having emotions, in itself, can often be healing. Henry David Thoreau said it so well, “It takes two to speak the truth … one to speak and another to hear.”

Psychologists generally agree that, universally, people experience seven basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise, and shame. Culture and individual personal experiences during one’s lifetime certainly have an impact on whether or not people outwardly express emotions. But all human beings, at one time or another, inwardly feel these seven common emotions.

All of these basic emotions may be also described in terms of their intensity, such as …

Many more complex emotions also exist: envy, guilt, hatred, pity, impatience, boredom, loneliness, and so on.

People talk about emotions in a number of ways. Often they are experienced as a momentary sensation, such as the sudden fright you feel at the movies when something in the film jumps out of the dark. Ten seconds later that emotional reaction disappears as new things unfold on the screen. Life is full of these momentary reactions, like ripples in a pond when a stone is thrown into the water … noticeable, but soon gone.

However, some emotional reactions appear to be more enduring. Such is often the case when people are going through major life changes, for example, when someone falls in love or when a loved one dies. Here emotions are experienced as more enduring and often pervasive. The man who is grieving the loss of his wife, for example, may feel sadness permeating most of his waking life.

A widely held theory is that more pervasive feelings (often referred to as moods) are made up of recurring series of emotional moments—like one stone after another thrown in a pond in which one ripple builds on another, and at some point it feels continuous. Let’s look at an example.

Craig just got laid off from his job. In a general way he feels down, discouraged, and negative. His day starts off with a plan to go out and look for a new job. But, one of the first things to happen that day is that he accidentally spills his cup of coffee. He feels irritated. Five minutes later he nicks himself shaving. Another irritant. When he goes out to get on his way to search for work, he has trouble starting his car. Craig thinks to himself, “I can’t believe it … everything in my life is going wrong!” He now could appropriately be seen as being in a bad mood. One frustration piling upon another. His general view of his life at this point in time is negative, only to be punctuated this morning by a series of irritating events.

Momentary events have provoked inner thoughts for Craig. The fact that he is out of work has likely resulted in an underlying emotion state; he feels negative and down. In human beings these undercurrents of emotion have their greatest impact on people by selectively influencing perception. For example, Craig’s general state of feeling down biases how he views on-going events. Let’s say that his day holds prospects for a new job; he had just gotten a good job lead from a friend and he will go to apply for the position that morning. This might leave many people feeling at least somewhat hopeful. However, owing to his overall negative mood, when he spills his coffee or cuts himself shaving, he is much more prone to interpret these events in ways that turn up the volume on his already negative and pessimistic mood.

It is the accumulation of negative perceptions and conclusions that change his “Maybe I will get that new job” perspective into “Everything in my life is going wrong.” Here frustrating events are interpreted with a particular spin … tuning out the positive and accentuating the negative. Thus what may otherwise be an annoying experience, (spilling coffee) operates like a spark on dry timber, and a more pervasive negative mood is ignited. As he gets more and more caught up in the negative mood, Craig finds it hard to maintain a focus on what otherwise might be something positive and hopeful, such as the job lead.

Negative moods bias perception: bad things are noticed or amplified and potentially positive events are either ignored or downplayed.

Three months later, Craig got the new job and has now been working there for the past nine weeks. And he loves it. One morning, it’s déjà vu … he spills his coffee, nicks himself shaving, and has trouble starting his car. Yet this morning his reaction to these events is only mild irritation. Nothing like that morning three months ago. The frustrating events are exactly the same, but they are now interpreted in an entirely different context. This morning Craig thinks, “Oh well, it’s no big deal.” His perceptions are now more balanced. He sure doesn’t like spilled coffee or a razor cut, but it’s now seen from a different perspective.

In the midst of trying times, most people, to some degree, lose perspective, and this results in more distress. In later chapters, we will look at a number of powerful and simple techniques for regaining a realistic perspective during very emotional times.

It is common for people to judge others’ behavior and emotional reactions. Let’s say Karen is standing in a long line at the post office. When it is finally her turn to be served, the postal clerk clearly looks impatient, irritable, and annoyed. Karen walks away thinking, “What a jerk!” Would her reaction have been the same if she knew that the clerk’s wife just told him last night that she wanted a divorce? Of course it wouldn’t. She would see things from a very different perspective. We are not mind readers and are rarely privy to much information about the lives of people we encounter each day. People are very prone to making a lot of conclusions every day based on little accurate information.

People are equally, if not more, inclined to be quite judgmental toward themselves. So many times in therapy sessions, I’ve heard just such harsh self-criticism, “What the hell is wrong with me?” “I’m just too sensitive,” “I feel like a complete loser,” “I hate myself.”

A very important and central feature to successful coping and emotional healing has to do with your ability to develop a compassionate inner voice, an inner attitude of kindness and internal support. Harsh self-criticism is the root of an enormous amount of unnecessary human suffering. What is clear is that when people come to really understand the true nature of their emotions, to have an accurate appreciation for why certain life events hurt so much, this understanding can become the foundation of an attitude of self-compassion. A frequent turning point that I have witnessed in my clients during therapy is when, instead of remarking, “God, I’m just so screwed up,” they see more clearly the origins of their emotional pain. And, I’ll hear a very different kind of comment such as, “No wonder I feel so bad … just look at what I’ve gone through.”

Oftentimes in the course of psychotherapy many people don’t so much get cured, but they do experience a transformation. Their view of themselves shifts from pathologizing their emotions (concluding they are screwed up or mentally ill) to recognizing their emotional reactions as entirely understandable.

In Chapter 1, we spoke about primary and secondary emotions. Another helpful way to understand different kinds of emotional pain is to consider the following two types of suffering: necessary pain and unnecessary pain.

Necessary emotional pain is basic, common, honest human anguish that virtually all people would feel when they encounter a tough life event, like the loss of a child, being fired, going through a divorce, or encountering serious financial problems. If you get burned, it hurts. You have little choice but to feel the pain. Certain life events just hurt.

In addition, there is general agreement among psychologists that at least some types of painful or distressing emotions need to be both felt and expressed to facilitate healing following very difficult life events. In this respect some suffering is also deemed necessary. No one likes to bleed, but when you cut yourself it is inevitable. Furthermore, bleeding, in itself, is a part of healing. It cleans bacteria out of the wound and clots to form a scab.

Unnecessary pain is suffering that goes beyond the core emotional response. It is exaggerated, intensified, and prolonged suffering that, generally, is due to extremely self-critical thinking. In the wake of a seriously distressing personal event, many peoto others or with private inner thoughts and beliefs. Examples of this include, “I’m so screwed up,” “Nothing I do is right,” “What the hell is wrong with me?” or “I’m being silly and childish to feel so upset about this.”

An almost constant inner barrage of self-condemning thoughts represents one of the most common sources of human emotional suffering. While facing the truth of necessary pain is probably essential to successful coping and emotional healing, unnecessary pain only intensifies and prolongs suffering.

Distracting yourself, denying inner feelings, or numbing yourself with drugs or alcohol can temporarily avoid necessary pain. But those who manage best during stressful times are those who can acknowledge this legitimate pain and take the difficult path of what psychotherapists call working through. As the poet Robert Frost said, “The best way out is through.”

Emotional coping and healing can take place as you confront the truth of difficult experiences and inner feelings and walk through these times (not “go around” or “get over,” but work through) by expressing emotions, struggling to find meaning in your suffering, and by confiding in others. This pathway is what psychiatrist M. Scott Peck refers to as “the road less traveled” … many people understandably do not choose this path, because it involves squarely facing painful feelings. Avoiding painful feelings is not a crime or a sin; it’s natural. But it can also be a major stumbling block to effective coping.

One way to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary pain is to ask some basic questions:

Of course, these can be difficult questions to answer with certainty, since a good deal of necessary pain initially hurts so much that it’s hard to imagine that it can serve any helpful purpose. But it is very important to learn how to recognize necessary pain, and find ways to face it and accept it, while also being able to spot unnecessary pain. Unnecessary suffering is an extraordinarily common source of emotional distress; the kind of distress that you can learn how to control. Later chapters will offer a number of action strategies for turning down the volume on unnecessary emotional pain.

How can you tell if certain emotions or moods are normal and healthy or if they are somehow maladaptive? At times this is hard to judge. In part this is due to how you define “normal.” In the aftermath of the loss of a loved one, most people experience very painful feelings of sadness and anguish. In a recent study (San Diego Widowhood Project) 88 percent of those having just lost a spouse stated that they felt worse than they ever had at any other time in their lives. If you could somehow measure the intensity of emotional suffering, such sadness would go off the chart for most of these people. However, it would also be correct to say that such emotional pain is normal. It is normal in two respects.

First it is normative, meaning that it happens to most human beings. Second, it is clear that a central feature in emotional healing following tragic losses is at least, to some degree, to feel and express the emotions of grief. Here it is normal because it helps to foster healing. It is in no way pathological. In fact, gritting your teeth (refusal to mourn) increases the likelihood of what psychologists call complicated bereavement. Complicated bereavement often leads to greater risks for developing depression, psychosomatic symptoms (e.g. insomnia, tension headaches), and substance abuse.

This question of healthy versus unhealthy is also strongly influenced by your individual cultural values and reactions from friends and loved ones in your life.

An additional step to take in evaluating your mood or emotions is to take inventory of the following, any one of which may signal that your painful emotions go beyond “necessary pain” and that you may benefit from professional help from a psychotherapist.

If you find that you are answering “yes” to several of these questions, it is important to consider professional help. The final part of this book provides a guide to professional psychotherapy and also medication treatments for some types of emotional problems.

The Least You Need to Know