Why do we need to label emotions – Good or Bad?

Label Emotions: I have been reveling over a beautiful line of thought expressed by Heather Lanier  in here Ted-talks – Good and bad are incomplete stories we tell ourselves. Of late, I have been thinking about the articles we go through in this site. If I look at the tags, there are so many about success, failure and other definitions that the world around us has imposed in certain ways.

In fact, many of these are definitions we have imposed on ourselves. As a challenge to these thoughts, I would like to dedicate this post to the inspiration derived from the wonderful ted talk from Heather Lanier. Good or bad – I don’t know!

1. The culture to label emotions

If I take a questioning approach to the discussion, I would start off with the need to categorize emotions or feelings we experience.

• Why do we have to label emotions as good or bad?: 
  • Granted some emotions help us towards the goals and some create a distraction. But both of these are emotions and they belong to us. Culturally we are somehow taught to think only good things. I often wonder, sub consciously are we driving ourselves into a denial?
• Makes it easy for people:
  • One thing I do realize is that branding emotions makes it very easy for people to classify us. If I pause at this point and think – this is almost violating a personal sense of being.
  • No one has the right to label emotions or categorize a person based on what they feel. Unfortunately this seems more and more rampant. It is almost funny that such an irony exists among us, but we do tend to do it more often than we think.
• Are we losing individuality by over simplifying?:
  • I have to ask this question. Are we over simplifying emotions so that we don’t have to think further? Are we bluntly encouraging a culture of denial for the real emotions which can make us think and feel

2. Accepting emotions vs branding!

All our lives, we are taught to believe in ourselves and dream big. We are also trained to believe in the magical abilities we all have within to go after what we seek. Ironically when this goes wrong, it is almost as if a tonne of positivity is slapped on us and we are expected to be absolutely fine.

What about processing the emotions we have accumulated over this period in time? To be honest, why do these emotions have to be good or bad in the first place – they are just emotions aren’t they? In the melee of branding things either good or bad, we lose the ability to feel what the emotions really are?

• So what if someone is sad?:
  • Why do we need to force them to feel better and add a lot of peer pressure? I admit it is a difficult one, we cannot see the ones we love suffer, but if we are not helping them, are we really doing the right thing?
• A more controversial question –
  • Who are we doing this for? Is it to make them feel better or to make ourselves feel better? I know this sounds harsh, but we do need to ask the question – are we trying to label the emotion for our own benefit? Is there anything good that is going to come out of this?

3. Bottom-line: Listening to Emotions

Breaking out of cultural inefficiencies is hard. This in some levels is harder to argue as an inefficiency. But we probably don’t have the right to label and force everyone else to follow the same.

Each one of us has a precious individuality and we will need to do everything we can to protect it. This might mean that we ought to fight to get people to leave us alone. And that’s probably fine – the ones who really care about us will find a way to understand. Or we can make them understand when the time is right.

• Individuality remains one of the biggest benefits and beauties in us. If we are crushing that amidst labels, maybe it is time for us to give a break. Maybe it is an opportunity to think and feel things as they come. They don’t have to be good or bad. They don’t have to mean anything to someone external.
• There is a beautiful internal world which keeps telling us how to feel. Listening to the inner voice is certainly a skill. I know it’s not easy considering the number of influence touch points around us. There is simply a lot of factors that can sway us into the cultural herd. I allude to the earlier discussion about “It takes nothing to join the crowd, but everything to stand alone”

A Reminder to Label Emotions

To remind myself of Tony Robbins, ‘Emotions are nothing but mere signals. They always keep telling us something ‘. We can try and ignore them, distract ourselves. I know I have been guilty of doing this.

It doesn’t help, we ought to face what’s within and listen intently. That doesn’t mean that we don’t take a measured decision. But it does mean that we need to get better at listening to our own emotions instead of branding something as a good thought and something else as a bad thought. As we all know – a bad thought gets shunned and avoided. A negative thought is suppressed. Where does this suppressed thought go?

With that, I will leave you with some thoughts and thanks to the inspiration from the Ted Talk from Heather Lanier