Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
scientificamerican.com
Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#2“The complexity of life” is really ambiguous. The actual headline, “Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being”, is much more descriptive.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#3LOL. Pop-science today!
More than a half of the text are references to another "studies" to convey the fundamental idea, which every biology student should know after the first semester - emotions has been evolved for a purpose - they are signals between sub-systems, so, they are here "by-design", and should not be ignored or suppressed. An emotion is a signal that an action is needed. Actions, however, could (and should) be suppressed, not emotions.
Another fundamental idea is that any self-delusion, including so-called "positive attitude" would sooner or later (but inevitable) lead to a dissonance due to increasing of the distance from reality (an error). This idea has been popularized by the Buddha ("to see things as they are") and formalized by AI theorists - the method of minimizing a squared error (a distance between an expectation and an actual fact) is exactly this.
How much they earn, these "scientists" (a professor of marketing!) who are unaware of the fundamental principles of biological system organization?
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#4“The complexity of life” is really ambiguous. The actual headline, “Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being”, is much more descriptive.
We've reverted the title from “Acknowledging the complexity of life may be a fruitful path to well-being”.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#5“The complexity of life” is really ambiguous. The actual headline, “Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being”, is much more descriptive.
We've reverted the title from “Acknowledging the complexity of life may be a fruitful path to well-being”.
I find “Acknowledging the complexity of life may be a fruitful path to well-being” to be much more revealing. The 'term' negative is too subjective.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#6> "In fact, anger and sadness are an important part of life, and new research shows that experiencing and accepting such emotions are vital to our mental health."
Translation: "New Research": Having watched Inside Out.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#7I just read "life of a slave" by frederick douglass. It's been helpful to calibrate my emotional responses. I try to treat emotion like sound or light - a signal from the outside world, with appropriate responses.
When I get upset at things now, I compare whatever's bothering me to "being a slave, being whipped for teaching fellow slaves how to read the bible" - and i realize how unimportant the thing was.
This ability - to compare our experiences to those of others - is why i think christianity has something to it. I ignore all the talk about God, and just think of the story of Jesus - a guy who went around telling everyone, "hey lets be nice", and got tortured for it. Being able to forgive someone who'd do that to you is a tall order - but if you have that ability and truly follow that pattern, you'll be much happier and contented.
I don't see the guy as divine - i see him as a helpful calibration point. Forgiveness is a path out of anger. There's a lot to be angry about in our modern world, but that doesn't make it helpful for us.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#8Depression was a major part of Winston Churchill's life, and he used the phrase ‘Black Dog’ as a euphemism when talking to family and friends. Sometimes when I feel the negative emotions come to me (every few weeks / months), I think about that and I think about just walking alongside the black dog. It helps to remember that.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#9LOL. Pop-science today! More than a half of the text are references to another "studies" to convey the fundamental idea, which every biology student should know after the first semester - emotions has been evolved for a purpose - they are signals between sub-systems , so, they are here "by-design", and should not be ignored or suppressed. An emotion is a signal that an action is needed. Actions, however, could (and s…
The author's not a professor or marketing. She's a "Psychotherapist, Ayurvedic Health Coach, Writer, CEO-Bettie Page Fitness, Songwriter, Activist, Editor." Still not very hard science though.
Re: Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
#10I watched a documentary about heroin addiction in a wealthy northeast U.S. town.
I recall being struck at how the parents of the addicts presented in the documentary (who were all young) talked about how all of their kids were always so happy as children.
Then, when interviewing the addicts, there was a clear recurring theme that they wanted to do drugs because they could not handle the pain of being off drugs.
I did not feel these things to be unrelated.