New ways to think about difficult emotions.

Difficult emotions sit at the heart of almost every mental health issue. How well do you understand and work with your difficult emotions? 

‘Bad’ emotions? I think one of the fundamental issues in coping with emotions is the way we tend to judge them as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘positive’ or ‘negative ‘. 

Most people think, for example, that love, and happiness are positive, while anger, sadness, shame & fear are bad. Judging some emotions as bad encourages us to avoid them, rather than work with them. All emotions are essential. While it’s true that some emotions feel better than others, the truth is that all emotions are essential because they give us important information that we need to act on.

If we never got angry then nothing would ever change! Anger has driven all of the important human rights movements throughout history... like abolishing slavery, women’s rights, and freedom of speech.

If we never felt fear then we wouldn’t be able to keep ourselves safe when in danger – all our prehistoric ancestors would have been eaten by predators because they weren’t scared enough to run away to safety.