Anger, sadness, boredom, anxiety – emotions that feel bad can be helpful

Remember the sadness that came with the last time you failed miserably at something? Or the last time you were so anxious about an upcoming event that you couldn’t concentrate for days?

These kinds of feelings are unpleasant to experience and can even feel overwhelming. People often try to avoid them, suppress them, or ignore them. In fact, in psychology experiments, people will pay money so you don’t feel a lot of negative emotions. But recent research reveals that emotions can be useful, and even negative emotions can bring benefits.

In mine emotion science lab at Texas A&M University, we study how emotions like anger and boredom affect people and explore ways these emotions can be beneficial. We share the results so people can learn how to use their emotions to build the life they want.

Our studies and many others have shown that emotions are not uniformly good or bad for people. Conversely, different emotions can lead to better outcomes in certain types of situations. Emotions seem to work like a Swiss army knife – different emotional tools are useful in specific situations.

Regret can help you recover from a failure

Sadness occurs when people perceive that they have lost a goal or a desired outcome and cannot do anything to improve the situation. It could be failing a game or failing a class or a work project or it could be losing a relationship with a family member. Once triggered, sadness is associated with what psychologists call a disabling state of doing little, not much behavior, or physical stimulation. It also brings sadness thinking that is more detailed and analytical. It makes you stop and think.

The benefit of the stopping and thinking that comes with grief is that helps people recover from failure. When you fail, it usually means that the situation you are in is not conducive to success. Rather than simply moving forward in this type of scenario, sadness prompts people to step back and assess what is happening.

When people are sad, they process information in a deliberative, analytical way and want to avoid danger. This feature comes with more accurate memory, less affected crisis from irrelevant assumptions or informationand better detection of other people lying. These cognitive changes can encourage people to make sense of past failures and possibly prevent future ones.

Regret can work differently when there is the possibility that failure can be avoided if other people help. In these cases, people tend to cries and can experience increased physiological arousal, such as faster heart rate and breathing. Expressing sorrow, through tears or verbally, has the benefit potentially recruiting other people to help you achieved your goals. This behavior seems to start in infants, with tears and cries signaling caregivers to help.

Anger prepares you to overcome an obstacle

Anger occurs when people perceive that they are missing out on a goal or desired outcome, but that they could improve the situation by removing something that is preventing them. The obstacle may be an injustice committed by another person, or it may be a computer that keeps crashing while you’re trying to get your work done. Once triggered, Anger is associated with “readiness for action.” and you thought focuses on the obstacle.

The benefit of being prepared for action and focusing on what’s in your way is that it motivates you to overcome what stands between you and your goal. When people are angrythese processes information and makes judgments quicklythey want to take action and they are are stimulated normally. In experiments, Anger actually increases the power of people’s kicks, which can be useful in physical encounters. Anger leads to better outcomes in situations involving goal challenges, including conflict games, difficult puzzlesvideo games with obstacles and quick response tasks.

Expressing anger, facially or verbally, has the advantage motivating other people to pave the way. People are more likely to concede in negotiations and give in to issues when their opponent looks or says they are angry.

Anxiety helps prepare you for danger

Anxiety occurs when people perceive a potential threat. This could be a speech to a large audience where failure would jeopardize your self-esteem, or it could be a physical threat to yourself or loved ones. Once induced, anxiety is associated with preparation for a response to danger, including increased physical arousal and attention to threats and danger.

Being prepared for risk means that if a problem does occur, you can respond quickly to prevent or avoid it. When anxious, people quickly detect threats, have quick reaction times and are on high alert. The opening of the eyes is often accompanied by fear and even anxiety it gives people a wider field of vision and improves threat detection.

Stress primes the body for action, which improves performance in a range of tasks involving motivation and attention. It motivates people to prepare for upcoming events, such as spending time studying for an exam. Anxiety also triggers protective behavior, which can help prevent the potential threat from becoming a reality.

Boredom can get you out of a rut

There is less research on boredom than many other emotions, so it is not as well understood. Researchers discuss what is and what is he doing.

Boredom seems to occur when it is one’s current state without causing any other emotional response. There are three situations where this deficiency may occur: when emotions fade, like the happiness of a new car going into neutral. when people don’t care about anything in their current situation, like being at a big party where nothing interesting is happening. or when people don’t have goals. Boredom does not necessarily arise just because there is nothing going on – someone with the goal of relaxation may feel quite content just sitting quietly without stimulation.

Psychology researchers believe that the benefit of boredom in situations where people do not respond emotionally is that prompts you to make a change. If nothing in your current situation is worth answering, the The aversive experience of boredom can motivate you seek out new situations or change the way you think. Boredom has been associated with more risk-seeking, desire for innovation, and creative thinking. It seems to act as an emotional wand, pushing people out of their current state to explore and create.

Using the emotion toolbox

People want to be happy. But research finds that a fulfilling and productive life includes a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Negative emotions, even though they feel bad to experience, can motivate and prepare people for setbacks, challenges, threats, and exploration.

Pleasant or not, your emotions can guide you to better results. Perhaps understanding how they prepare you to handle various situations will help you feel better when you feel bad.