Anger, disgust, sadness… are healthy emotions. Don’t let people gaslight you into thinking otherwise.
Discussion
They are natural parts of us, but if you're angry or disgusted or sad more often than you are not those things, then there is a good chance that isn't healthy.
People are often angry when some part of their personality is trying to protect another part of themselves that has been hurt in some way. Directing anger at people or things can be a way to avoid dealing with some aspect of reality (related or not), & avoiding reality is a coping mechanism that can be pretty destructive long term. The only way to heal is to accept reality & ask the angry part of you to step back so that the hurt part can be experienced, observed, & addressed.
I see it all as a set of dyads linked to purpose. The emotion informs you, and in some cases you communicate it to inform others. With this set of simple dyads all human emotions can be recreated by mixing and adjusting intensity of signal . Each dyad deals with the same “info” adjusting towards positive or negative.
The dyads:
Joy and sadness (objective) this is for the stuff you need to chase, joy when you have it, sadness when you don’t. Mmm eating steak makes me joyful.
Anger and fear (obstacles) how to deal with the obstacle between yourself and your joy. Anger, I can overcome. Fear, I should avoid it.
Trust and disgust (inclusion) what should I include or exclude from my environment to maximise the chance of joy.
Anticipation and surprise (awareness) how much do you know about this situation?
That’s it. So, if an emotions is recurrent. Indeed, it’s that its purpose was not put into action. Depression tells you to stop, think and devise a plan to go find joy. Constant disgust tells you something has to be removed from your environment.(or that you should change environment)
Trauma is when this compass gets damaged, especially if trauma was the result of malevolent actions intentionally messing with your emotions to gain control. One recurrent way cults and groups abuse their members is by suppressing anger, disgust and sadness. Those signals shouldn’t exist in the perfect community. The community is not perfect, but the signal has to be muted to enable the make belief.
Bookmarked
All feelings and emotions are guests in your inn. Give all guests the same attention if you want to be a good host.