There's no such thing as "negative" emotions

I’d been thinking about writing a post on why we should think of all emotions as positive. Then, a week and half ago, we had to put my 15-year-old beagle-mix down (obligatory photos of him throughout this post).

The grief and sadness I’ve felt have been intense, but in no way would I ever describe them as negative. They are a sign of how much I loved him and how connected I was to him. The only thing that has felt “negative” during this time was that it’s so unacceptable in our society for people to openly have emotions in public.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, exercise and movement can help release emotions that are trapped in our bodies, which can be one reason that exercise is such a trigger for us. When I went to the gym last week, the movements released a fresh wave of grief. But rather than breaking down, as my body desperately wanted to, I held it in. So then I also had to deal with frustration and anger at living in a society in which we are so unequipped to deal with both our own emotions and other people’s emotions. And as a result, too many of us must waste a significant amount of energy pretending everything is fine.

In today’s post, I want to reinforce the idea that all emotions are “positive,” and that, although I think healing is a mostly individual practice, the initial repression of our emotions actually represents a huge societal problem.

Emotions are complex and multi-faceted, so what follows is a very incomplete description of these emotions. The goal here is simply to make clear that these emotions should be perceived as positive (thought difficult), rather than as negative.

Sadness is a sign you were connected to something and lost it. That connection is positive.

Grief is a sign that you loved, and that who/what you loved fundamentally impacted who you are as a person. To have loved is always positive.

Connection is what makes life worth living. Connection is the sign that you were doing everything right. Connection is the best part of our lives. So yes, grief and sadness may hurt a lot, but that pain means you had something great in your life. There is nothing negative about that.

As I’ve had waves of grief wash through me, I’ve realized that they’re much like cleansing a wound. Soap and antiseptic might hurt a lot as we cleanse a wound, but they’re necessary to ensure that the wound heals. Ignoring a wound means it could get infected and cause greater problems later on. Ignoring our emotional wounds, especially the big ones, carries risk, just as ignoring large physical wounds does.

The emotions we need to feel to process loss and emotional pain are so very positive because they’re signs that we had something good, and they’re signs that we’re taking care of ourselves to ensure that we can heal.

Grief and sadness are just two emotions though. I argue that all other emotions are also positive, though they can get misdirected or processed inappropriately. I’ll touch on this below, but first, I want to briefly look at some so-called “negative” emotions, but which I argue are actually positive.

Anger: Anger arises when you or those you care about are under attack. It is the ultimate emotion of defense and to defend yourself or others is a positive act.

Disgust: Disgust is also a defensive emotion that protects us against rancid or poisoned foods, against illness, or against people and actions that may negatively affect our social standing. Taking care of our health and our social well being is also positive.

Guilt: We feel guilt when we’ve done something wrong, especially when we’ve wronged someone else. There’s nothing negative about wanting to be the best version of ourselves and to not want to hurt others.

Shame: Shame is what we feel when we fear that our actions could cause our loved ones to cast us out. To want to be part of a social group, to want to have a family, to not want to be alone—these are all positive.

Jealousy: To be honest, I don’t know as much about jealousy, but it seems to be a defense against abandonment. There’s also nothing negative about not wanting to be abandoned.

Envy: Envy arises with a sense of injustice—that we have not been treated fairly. It can be another defensive emotion, or it can also help motivate us to take actions that we might deem as positive. To defend against injustice or to be motivated to take positive actions are both good.

There are many other emotions, but these are the primary categories of “negative” emotions. Except nothing I described above is negative. All of the emotions listed here serve to protect us.

So how did these emotions get such a bad rap?

In general, I believe all emotions—“positive” and “negative”—provide the basis for how we: defend ourselves, defend others, connect with ourselves, connect with others, maintain those connections, and/or heal emotional wounds when the connections are broken.

If we never learned how to process these emotions in a healthy way, then problems arise because our defensive systems, our regulatory systems, and/or our co-regulatory systems may not function properly.

We may act out certain emotions that feel safer to express, even though we actually feel other emotions (e.g. crying when we feel angry, lashing out in anger when we feel sad, or smiling/laughing as we try to express something emotionally fraught). Alternatively, many of our defensive emotions may seem like they’re arising in response to something that’s occurring now, but in fact, they’re arising because we’re trying to protect old emotional wounds that never healed.

As a result, some of us may become like injured animals, biting at everyone because we’re so scared we may get attacked again, and we don’t want anyone to see how injured and vulnerable we really are. Others of us may go into hiding—pretending that we’re totally fine at all times, no matter what happens.

Hiding our emotions and hiding from our emotions is how we end up with so many chronic health conditions and chronic pain. If we cannot feel the old feelings, and if we cannot feel emotions that want to arise in response to events today, then every time one of those emotions gets triggered, the act of repressing it—i.e. hiding from it— also triggers our fight/flight/freeze response.

Chronically repressed emotions lead to a chronic fight/flight/freeze state, which then leads to chronic illness and chronic pain.

But it’s not the emotion that causes the problem.

Repressing the emotion is what causes the problem.

Most of my writing to date has been around the techniques that can help us process old emotional wounds that are causing us to be sick or in pain today. I typically advise doing a lot of these practices alone, and I try to make clear that, though emotions need to be felt, they should never be expressed against someone.

However, the reason we never learned to process our emotions properly is because our parents or caregivers didn’t know how to either, and likely they didn’t know how to because their parents/caregivers also didn’t know how. Given the millions and millions of people today who suffer from chronic conditions that are likely the result of repressed emotions, I think it’s fair to say that this is not some unique, individual problem that just you and I and a few others have to solve.

Emotions are a fundamental component of being human. More and more research is suggesting that emotions are how we process and interact with the world around us. When generations of people across multiple societies are unable to exhibit and be in the presences of healthy expressions of emotions, that’s not an individual problem: that’s a societal problem.

We live in a world where we cannot grieve—or feel anything big—publicly because:

• too many others (friends, family, colleagues, and strangers) don’t know how to be present with our emotions;

• emotions like crying are seen as too childish or too feminine;

• emotions are unprofessional; and

• many of us are simply not brave enough to express emotions that may make us seem vulnerable.

We shy away from so many of the “negative” emotions because, as a society, we do not know how to process these emotions in a healthy way, and we do not know how to be with people who are experiencing these emotions.

None of this is our fault (yours or mine): it’s a societal problem.

For now, I do not have a solution to the societal problem, though I do think it’s critical to be aware of just how big this problem is. Fortunately, once you understand the connection between health problems and repressed emotions, you can, as an individual, begin to heal, regardless of what our society does.

A good place to start is by recognizing that all of your emotions are positive and none of your emotions should be feared or repressed. It’s “just” a (very difficult) matter of learning how to access them and process them in a healthy way, and then taking as much time as you need (which may be months or years) to feel through all of the old emotional stuff from your past.

In honor of Sammy, the regal-ish beagle-ish.

~March 2011 - June 19, 2026