Are There Such Things As Bad Emotions?

Emotions are not bad things as such. But there many people who actually say that anger is a good and useful motion in that it is fiery and passionate, perhaps even creative – just what is needed to get a job done. However, anger is often misused a lot of the time instead of being actually put to good use. Some people would also argue that fear is also a good and useful emotion; because fear protects us through the fight and flight response; if a person sees a dangerous dog then fear will cause him to run or take some other defensive action. This is, of course, is a natural and appropriate action to take.

So there is nothing intrinsically bad about emotions as such, but what it is that makes our emotions bad are the structures of thought with which people have been conditioned over many years. Our thoughts are what ultimately create the struggle and the pain we experience in life.

The difficulty that this situation imposes upon us is that these thought structures, known as complexes, are often extremely complicated, extensive and difficult to understand. It has been the role of psychoanalysis to work with these belief systems, in an attempt to understand the logic behind these thought structures, and something of how these thought structures actually came into being, according to our life experiences. Many of these limiting complexes are not uncommon to other people, and therefore, the study, diagnosis and resolution of the mental and emotional issues of one person, can often be used to help other people who have similar problems.

A far simpler way of dealing with these restrictive belief systems and the emotions that arise from them is to simply release or welcome the emotional states that we are in at that moment. It is not entirely necessary to be able to understand exactly why we feel the way that we do, but we do have the choice to be able to let go of the restriction imposed by our own limiting beliefs, by letting go of a feeling and/or its underlying want or wants. Alternatively, we can actually allow the feeling or want to just be - we can accept it just as it is, and this will have exactly the same effect as letting it go.

When we let go of our attachment to a want or a feeling – it is allowed to rise to a higher state and in that moment we feel lighter and less stressed.