Emotion regulation is about eliminating negative emotions

The answer is no. The core goal of emotion regulation has never been to eliminate negative emotions, but to establish the ability to live with negative emotions and control its impact within the boundaries that do not interfere with normal decision-making and life.

It's quite a coincidence. I just received a visitor last week who works in Internet operations. The girl just graduated two years ago and came to me with a lot of anxiety. She said that she spent thousands of yuan to take emotion management classes, forced herself to listen to meditation for half an hour after get off work every day, and even specially downloaded an APP to record "the occurrence of negative emotions." "Number of Times", requiring that she should not feel irritable, grievances, or frustrated more than three times a day. As a result, she had insomnia for three consecutive weeks this month. Last week, she was so sick that she vomited when she heard the white noise of meditation. She spent all her energy on "eliminating" negative emotions, but in the end she was tied up by emotions.

This obsession that "negative emotions must be eliminated to be healthy" actually originated from the mass communication deviation of classic psychological theories. Many people’s understanding of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is to “correct skewed thoughts and eliminate bad emotions.” However, in fact, the core of CBT is never to eliminate all negative emotions, but to adjust the adaptability of emotions and events: if you lose ten yuan, you will collapse and want to resign. This is a cognitive bias that needs to be adjusted. However, if you lose an important project and feel sad for three days, it is normal and there is no need to force it. Interestingly, many CBT practitioners now take the initiative to tell clients that there is no need to force themselves to "get better immediately". Feel free to be sad when you are sad. Just don't drag your emotions out to make important decisions.

Later, after the rise of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), academic circles became more clear about the value of negative emotions: it is essentially a protective mechanism accumulated by human evolution over millions of years. Anxiety reminds you that what you are doing may be risky, so don’t be reckless ； Sadness helps you release stress and sends a signal to those around you that “I need support.” ； Anger is your natural boundary line, helping you protect your own interests. Isn't this just like the smoke alarm in your kitchen? It usually makes noise when cooking. You just need to open a window to ventilate it. You can't just disconnect the battery just because it occasionally reports false alarms, right? If a fire breaks out one day, you won't even receive an early warning. I have seen several cases of damage to the amygdala of the brain. People are born with inability to feel fear and anxiety, let alone negative emotions, and all risk perceptions are gone. They often transfer hundreds of thousands to strangers casually, and often increase leverage when investing. They live a more dangerous life than anyone else.

In the six years I have been doing individual emotional counseling myself, the most annoying people I have ever seen are people who shout "you need positive energy" and "cannot have negative emotions" every day. There used to be a cross-border e-commerce boss who always smiled in front of people and said that he had "given up emotions". At the end of last year, there was a problem with the capital chain. He persisted without telling anyone for two months. One day, he was hit by someone while driving on the road. He squatted on the side of the road and cried for half an hour. He came over and told me that he always felt that he was too weak when he had negative emotions and had to suppress them quickly. As a result, all the emotions were fermented in his heart and exploded to pieces at the smallest thing.

Of course, there is another school of thought on the Internet now, saying that "negative emotions are all internal friction, and success can only be achieved by eliminating them all." It is not surprising that this view is popular. It is simple enough, black and white, and gives you the illusion that "I just need to get rid of all the bad emotions and everything will go smoothly." Instead, there is no need to go Face the real problem behind your emotions - you feel guilty about fishing at work. Instead of trying to get rid of the guilt, you should either finish what you need to do, or accept that you just want to fish for a while, and the guilt will naturally disappear. If you suppress your emotions and continue to fish, you will only get more anxious.

To be honest, I never force myself to "don't be angry" or "don't be sad" when regulating my emotions. The last time a project was rejected by a partner, I closed the door and cursed for ten minutes. After the scolding, it was time to talk about compensation and change the plan. It is much more efficient than holding in "I want to be professional and I can't have mood swings." Sometimes when I work overtime until ten o'clock and someone steps on my foot on the subway, I won't force myself to be "generous". I just roll my eyes and mutter a few words, then get angry and forget about it. If I hold it in, I will definitely have to quarrel with my family over something as trivial as slippers on the wrong side when I get home, which will make it even more troublesome.

To put it bluntly, we don’t live to be a bug-free program. It’s normal to have a little emotion. Don't think of emotional regulation as killing the background of your mobile phone. You think that all unhappy processes must be cleared to be clean. Leave a small corner for negative emotions. If it stays for a while, it will find it boring and then go away. If you have to chase it away, it will linger on. Do you think this is true?