What if the problem is not how we feel but how we feel about our emotions? Why understanding our “meta-emotions” can make us happier and help us manage our relationships?
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed @ by your emotions that you find it difficult to explain why you feel a certain way? It may seem difficult to distinguish the reasons why you feel angry, upset or guilty, however a moment of calm is observed to be very easy to mutate into sadness, fear or even intense melancholy.
If you have difficulty expressing your feelings or feel confused about why you are reacting to an event in a certain way, then it could all be due to your “post-emotions”.
Post-emotion is a term that is used more and more often in psychological circles and supports the way we follow in our daily lives.
Understanding how our meta-emotions work and what they reveal about us can be crucial to our mental health while improving our interpersonal relationships.
“When I found out about post-emotions, the game changed,” says Zoe Aston, Therapist, Mental Health Consultant and author of Your Mental Health Workout, which uses the concept of post-emotions with her clients to help them depth of time to change the perspective with which they deal with the range of their emotions.
But what exactly are post-emotions and how can a better understanding of them improve our emotional and mental well-being?
Simply put, meta-emotions are the emotions about our primary emotions that stem from a basic emotion we are already experiencing in the present.
For example, we may feel sad or cry loudly as we watch a movie and the secondary emotion may be the shame of crying. Or we may get angry at an issue at work and then feel guilty about it.
“Post-emotions often create emotional conflict in our minds,” says the expert, and everything is affected by them as they are the basis of most aspects of our lives.
Post-emotions are deeply rooted in our childhood or the society in which we grew up.
The psychological study of post-emotions is still relatively new, having emerged more intensely in the 1990s. The majority of research has focused on emotions between parents and children, however psychologists are increasingly using the term to explore how emotions are influenced by systemic social dynamics.
“Post-emotions can be really systemic,” says Aston, explaining that our emotions are often deeply rooted and stem from behaviors we experienced in childhood or in the society in which we grew up.
“Our emotions are rooted from a very young age before our prefrontal cortex is able to think logically. “They usually come from what our caregivers, teachers, peers have taught us, as well as from what we even saw on TV.”
For example, if a child is upset and a parent has told the child to reject this grief, the child learns that sadness should be avoided. This is established in our belief system as we grow older and so in this case the child as he grows up begins to feel guilt, shame or even indignation as a result of his sadness.
Post-emotions play a really critical role in our mental health. Is the same true of our relationships?
Especially with them. Post-emotions affect most aspects of our lives. Most of us have a laid back attitude when it comes to painting a picture about ourselves. However, one of the biggest parts of our lives to activate our emotions is our interpersonal relationships.
Post-emotions also affect the way we judge other people. More specifically, if one is often angry at work and believes that one’s anger is a bad feeling, then one can characterize oneself as a ‘bad’ or difficult person. But if we were taught from a young age that anger is an acceptable and helpful emotion, then we would consider ourselves to be extremely honest with our emotion.
How do I manage my meta-emotions?
Awareness is also the key here. Understanding why we feel a certain way about a situation and why we are experiencing certain emotions is essential to improving our emotional well-being.
So developing a good narrative management around our emotions, especially our core emotions such as anger, sadness, shame, sadness, happiness and love, will help us learn in the long run to recognize when our secondary emotions are activated but also the why. For Zoe Aston, the point is not to reject post-emotions or try to undo them, but to realize why we feel so that we can deal with our emotions in the best possible way.
Keep a mood diary
With sure success, I would suggest you to use a diary to record how you feel and whether they weigh you down or make you feel happy. This way you will watch more closely the whole range of your emotions and you will make sure that you have the power to discern not only your emotions but also your meta-emotions.
So why do you feel guilty? Why do you feel sad and finally why are you still angry today? A mood diary will give you a record of where your emotions are coming from, what answers are helpful, and then you will facilitate yourself by changing the way you respond to your future post-emotions.
It is a form of self-training, which will give you the time and space to express yourself and take a break from everything that is happening in your mind.
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