Labeling Emotions ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ Can Affect Your Mental Health

Emotions are just biological reactions—until you label them. Labeling emotions can shape your destiny.Imagine a surprise celebration planned by a group of friends for someone’s birthday—let’s call him Alex. As Alex walks into the room, everyone yells, “Surprise!” While most of us would feel surprised, our emotional responses may significantly differ.Scenario 1: If Alex interprets the surprise as “good, fun, or enjoyable” or as a joyful expression of love and appreciation from friends who went out of their way to plan a celebration, his emotion of surprise would be coupled with happiness and gratitude. In this scenario, Alex is overwhelmed with joy, smiles, and expresses heartfelt appreciation. His positive interpretation of the event enhances his overall experience, creating a lasting, positive memory.Scenario 2: Conversely, Alex may feel startled, uncomfortable, and disoriented by the surprise. This negative interpretation could overshadow the positive intention of the surprise, leading to a less joyful initial reaction.You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.— Jon Kabat-ZinnWhile there are often both positive and negative ways to appraise how we feel in different circumstances, positive appraisals of our feelings—such as how Alex reacts in scenario 1—can benefit our health, according to a large peer-reviewed study in the journal Emotion.“People differ in their habitual tendencies to make particular emotion judgments, and these habitual emotion judgments were associated with individual differences in psychological health,” the authors wrote, adding that “research on emotion judgments has the potential to inform clinical treatments.” How We Interpret Our Emotions People are complex: There’s how you feel (essentially, a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters), and then there’s your judgments and reactions toward your feelings. As these two elements interact, your feelings can influence your thoughts, but thoughts also drive your feelings. The result is your emotional experience.Individuals differ in the emotions they prefer to feel—for instance, some people prefer to preserve calm, placid states, while others revel in exhilaration. (Some readers may find this abundantly clear in romantic relationships when deciding what to do on date night!) Depending on their priorities, some might deem various emotions as positive (e.g., good, appropriate, or useful) or negative (e.g., bad, inappropriate, or harmful).Related Stories12/31/2012For example, certain individuals may view happiness as healthy and desirable, while others may be wary of happiness and experience apprehension about the consequences of feeling happy resulting from letting one’s guard down or losing control. Consistency is also a powerful motive since we tend to interpret our experiences to match our narratives; thus, counterintuitively, some individuals may actually feel more comfortable with negative moods.To understand how individuals’ emotional appraisals impact their health, researchers for the Emotion article polled over 1,600 participants, asking them how they typically react to different kinds of emotions. They grouped the gamut of emotional experiences into positive emotions (e.g., joy, excitement, or contentment) and negative ones (e.g., sadness, anxiety, or anger) and looked at how positive or negative reactions to those emotions correlated with their mental health. ‘It’s All Good’ As expected, the results showed that people who interpret positive emotions as good fare better psychologically. Interestingly, judging negative emotions as good, appropriate, or useful was also linked to better health. Contrastingly, those who interpreted positive or negative emotions as bad, inappropriate, or harmful had poorer mental health.This tells us that when you’re feeling bad, while it’s probably not something you want to feel, it may nevertheless be beneficial to consider the utility of such a feeling.Negative feelings can be like warning lights on a car. They allow you to notice something is awry and motivate you to take action. For instance, anger can be destructive, but it can also signal that we feel something is unfair, galvanize us to ask why, and take steps to improve things.What’s not helpful, of course, is ignoring the warning. Imagine seeing the “check engine light” appear, then pulling over to get a drink or binge-eat—which would make no sense, right? And yet, people often do the equivalent when their emotional “warning lights” appear! Emotion Judgments and Health What the “glass half full or empty” metaphor should tell us is that multiple perspectives are valid. However, those who view the “glass half empty” tend to see the downside to positive emotions (e.g., “I feel good now, but I don’t want to get carried away.”) or fail to see the upside of negative ones (e.g., “Now my day is ruined.”) and are more prone to lower levels of well-being.At a visceral level, it doesn’t feel good to say, “This is bad.” The stress that o