The Power of Accepting Unpleasant Emotions

by Alyssa Cameron, Psychology Major, 2023

Between parents, social media, and peers, most people have been exposed to messaging that preaches “positivity.” Quotes such as “just be positive” or “just look at the bright side” might come to mind. Such messaging suggests that it is possible and ideal to only experience positive emotions. It encourages people to push through, ignore, or change their unpleasant sensations in exchange for more comfortable ones. On the surface, this messaging seems helpful, or at the very least, harmless. However, research shows that adopting this mindset about emotions is damaging to one’s well-being. Multiple studies have shown that individuals who place more value on positivity or have higher expectations for happiness are, on average, actually less happy (Mauss et al., 2011). Similarly, because people with this mindset are overloaded with judgments that unpleasant feelings are “bad,” they are more likely to engage in unhelpful responses such as avoidance and rumination (David, 2016). In contrast to a resistant and judgemental approach to unpleasant emotional experiences, approaching such experiences with acceptance has been associated with greater psychological health (Ford et al., 2018). Fully experiencing and accepting unpleasant emotions is key to improving psychological well-being and can lessen the frequency and intensity of unpleasant emotions an individual experiences. Fully experiencing and accepting unpleasant emotions is key to improving psychological wellbeing and can lessen the frequency and intensity of unpleasant emotions an individual experiences.

Emotions are neurochemical systems that evolved to help us navigate the complex stimuli in our external world (David, 2016). Some emotions are far more pleasant to experience than others. Dr. Joan Rosenberg, a psychologist whose work focuses on unpleasant emotions and emotional mastery, identifies eight key unpleasant emotions: sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment, and frustration (Rosenberg, 2016). When one of these feelings gets triggered, chemicals are released in the brain, rush through the bloodstream, and activate various bodily sensations. Emotional experiences are first felt as these physical sensations, which are very real, very uncomfortable, and tempting to avoid. Rosenberg (2016) argues that it is not necessarily the emotion itself but the associated physical sensations that people want to run away from.

These unpleasant emotions are natural, unavoidable, and fortunately, can be incredibly helpful. Despite being so uncomfortable to experience, these emotions made the evolutionary cut, and for good reason. According to Forgas (2013), unpleasant emotional states encourage slower, more systematic processing. When we are experiencing an unpleasant mood state, we rely less on heuristics and cognitive biases and pay more attention to subtle details. Unpleasant emotions are also associated with improved memory, motivation, and more effective interpersonal interactions (Forgas, 2013). This highlights that unpleasant feelings can have positive outcomes. However, how one approaches these emotional experiences, such as with avoidance or rumination, can have negative outcomes.

The ways in which an individual may avoid an unpleasant emotion varies from person to person and emotion to emotion. It may involve turning to external stimuli; eating food, doing drugs, shopping, or scrolling through social media. It may manifest in physical responses such as tightened muscles or shallow breathing (Rosenberg, 2016) Regardless of how someone avoids their unpleasant sensations, they are attempting to suppress or alter their experience and depriving themselves of the opportunity for growth and change (David, 2016). Other individuals may approach their unpleasant emotions with rumination. These individuals find themselves stuck dwelling on their unpleasant emotions, how distressing and “bad” they are, and how much they want them to go away. Dr. Susan David, a psychologist whose work focuses on a concept she refers to as “emotional agility,” claims that ruminating on uncomfortable emotions is entirely unhelpful in getting an individual closer to resolving the issue at the core of their distress (David, 2016).

A more beneficial — albeit more difficult — way to approach unpleasant feelings is with acceptance. An acceptance approach involves acknowledging unpleasant emotions for what they are — temporary, natural, and helpful — without judgment. There is an abundance of evidence that habitual acceptance of unpleasant emotions is associated with greater psychological health across various dimensions including higher life satisfaction and fewer mood disorder, depressive, and anxiety symptoms (Ford et al., 2018). While the exact reason we see these associations is not known, Ford and colleagues (2018) suggest that it may have to do with how emotion acceptance impacts the frequency and intensity with which someone experiences unpleasant emotions.

Ford et al. (2018) hypothesized that habitual acceptance of unpleasant emotions improves psychological health by causing the individual to experience unpleasant emotions less frequently and with lesser intensity. They theorized that, over time, experiencing lower negative emotions should improve overall psychological health (see Figure 1). While it may seem paradoxical that accepting unpleasant emotions would lead to less unpleasant emotions, the reasoning behind this There is an abundance of evidence that habitual acceptance of unpleasant emotions is associated with greater psychologixal health across various dimentions including higher life satisfaction and fewer mood disorder, depressive, and anxiety symptoms (Ford et al., 2018).

theory becomes clearer when comparing the acceptance approach to alternative approaches: avoidance and rumination. Consider the avoidance approach to dealing with unpleasant emotions, in which an individual tries to avoid or suppress their unpleasant emotions and corresponding thoughts. According to ironic processing theory, deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts make those thoughts more likely to surface. In contrast, accepting these emotions/ thoughts and allowing oneself to feel them in their entirety would make the emotions less likely to continue to occur. Similarly, when an individual buys into the idea that unpleasant emotions are “bad,” they may find themselves dwelling on their unpleasant emotions and experiencing them more intensely. Conversely, accepting these emotions — without judging them as negative and worrying about the emotion — allows the emotion to take its natural course without being exacerbated (David, 2016).

Figure 1: The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Courtesy of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Ford and colleagues (2018) conducted multiple studies that found compelling evidence to support this theory. The first study measured participants’ habitual acceptance of their emotions and thoughts, as well as their ill-being and wellbeing across various dimensions, using self-report questionnaires. Results showed a significant positive association between habitual acceptance and psychological well-being. The second study measured participants’ habitual acceptance, as well as their emotional status during a mundane task, via self-report questionnaires. They then exposed participants to an experience designed to induce unpleasant emotion and again measured their emotional status. Participants who had reported habitual acceptance of their emotions experienced less unpleasant emotion after exposure to the stressful event than participants who did not report engaging in habitual acceptance (Ford et al., 2018). This suggests that perhaps habitual acceptance is associated with greater psychological well-being because it leads individuals to experience unpleasant emotions less intensely.

In the final study, the researchers again measured participants’ habitual acceptance of their emotions and thoughts. Participants completed guided diary entries nightly for two consecutive weeks that measured their exposure to stressful events and their emotional status during those events. Results showed that habitual acceptance was associated with less unpleasant emotion during stressful events. In addition, the daily experience of unpleasant emotion mediated the association between acceptance and psychological well-being 6 months after the study was conducted (Ford et al., 2018). This suggests that experiencing less unpleasant emotion in response to daily stressors may be one of the key ways in which emotional acceptance shapes our psychological health.

Unpleasant emotions are common and natural to experience in daily life. While it is evident that accepting unpleasant emotions is beneficial for psychological wellbeing, it is certainly easier said than done. Moving from the mindset that unpleasant sensations are “bad” and need to be changed or avoided to the mindset that they are natural and helpful is no easy task. However, with practice, emotional acceptance can become a natural habitual response. As Rosenberg (2016) states, “It is the day to day choices that determine our day to day happiness, not the big choices.” Making the daily choice to respond to unpleasant feelings with acceptance rather than judgment has the potential to make significant changes in your well-being.

References

1. David, Susan. (2016). Emotional agility. Penguin Random House.

2. Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092. https://doi-org.ezproxy.simmons.edu/10.1037/pspp0000157.supp

3. Forgas, J. (2013). Don’t worry, be sad! On the cognitive, motivational, and interpersonal benefits of a negative mood. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 225-232.

4. Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson C. L., and Savino N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807-815.

5. Rosenberg, J. (2016, Sept. 23). Emotional Mastery: The Gifted Wisdom of Unpleasant Feelings. [Video]. TED. https://tedxsantabarbara.com/2016/joan-rosenberg/.