Why is it beneficial to express emotions?

Not repressing what we feel is key to have an optimal self-regulation capacity.

In the last two decades, the boom in the study of the nature of emotions and the relevance of their proper management for the psychological well-being of human beings has been justified by countless investigations, initiated by authors such as Peter Salovey and John Mayer or Daniel Goleman. Thus, the construct of emotional intelligence is currently addressed and included by most branches of psychology (clinical, educational, sports, organizational, etc.) as one of the basic components to achieve a higher level of personal effectiveness more easily.

Let us then explain the relationship between the two phenomena: why is it important to know how to express and manage emotions?

What are emotions for?

In general, the emotions present three fundamental functions that allow the human being to adapt in a more competent way to the environment in which he is interacting. Firstly, they have a communicative function, from which it is possible to let others know how one feels and, from this, to discern what psychological needs that individual may have.

Secondly, emotions regulate our own and other people's behavior, since there is a very close link between our state of mind and the state of our emotions. there is a very close link between an individual's emotional state and the type of behavioral response behavioral response.

Finally, emotions have a strong impact on the process of social interaction, allowing the subject to perceive more effectively the particularities of the interpersonal environment where he/she develops, allowing him/her to reach a higher level of intellectual and emotional psychological growth.

Functions of basic emotions

Paul Ekman established six so-called basic emotions, since his research, based on the analysis of nonverbal language (facial gestures) of individuals from different cultures, showed that expressions of joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise were common, and therefore and therefore unconscious, innate and universal. All of them have considerable utility based on the three general functions mentioned above, but what kind of message or information does each of them convey?

1. Joy

Joy becomes a facilitator of interpersonal interaction since the social nature of human beings, according to the preservation of their own survival, tends to get closer to that which produces a feeling of well-being (social relationships) and to flee from stimuli that provoke the opposite effect.

Moreover, joy is an enhancer in the attainment of deeper life goals and projects, since it serves as a motivational activator and encourages the individual to take action..

2. Sadness

Sadness is the emotion experienced at the loss of a valuable and significant object for the individual. This kind of event provokes feelings of grief, failure, remorse, etc. that must be processed and assimilated gradually. Thus, sadness is useful for the activation of processes such as introspection, awareness or support for others. It could be understood as a sign of "energy saving" from which an adequate elaboration of the grief generated by the object of such loss is possible.

3. Anger

This is the reaction produced by situations in which the individual perceives obstacles with respect to an established goal. the individual perceives obstacles with respect to a specific established goal.. Thus, the person feels that he/she must preserve the integrity and defend him/herself, other individual/s or some other specific phenomenon. In this sense, the emotion of anger indicates that there is a potential danger that must be faced and overcome.

4. Fear

It is the warning that our mind emits when faced with the perception of a potential danger that can compromise one's own physical or psychological survival. Such a threat can be real (speeding down a poorly lit road) or imagined (the fear of being fired from one's job).

This type of warning allows the person to be prepared to give a specific response.. Unlike the previous one, fear has a connotation of avoiding suffering the effects of the threat instead of being oriented to confront it openly.

5. Disgust

This is the emotion that is more linked to more organic aspects, since the message it is intended to send is to protect the subject from the ingestion of food or substances that are harmful or at least unpleasant for him/her. Therefore, it is more related to a Biological level, it is more related to a biological level than to a psychological one..

6. Surprise

It implies the experience of an unexpected circumstance for which the person needs to gather his own resources and prepare for action. It is a neutral emotion since its momentary nature has no pleasant or unpleasant meaning in itself.

The benefits of expressing emotions

As it has been observed, the experience of each and every one of the emotions described above has an adaptive function for the human being. An inherent characteristic of this is the fact of communicating with the environment, so that one of the first reasons that supports the need to master the competence of emotional management lies in the fact of not losing this communicative and adaptive ability.

It can be concluded, therefore, that the problematic element does not reside in the manifestation and experience of the emotion itself, but that the phenomenon causing the emotional discomfort in which the person is immersed on certain occasions is the degree of intensity of this emotion and the type of management that is carried out on it.

When an emotion prevents the individual from remaining conscious in the present moment and in the reality that surrounds him at that precise moment, it is when the greatest emotional affectations are usually derived. That is to say, when the emotion "kidnaps" the mind and transports it out of the present, the rational, logical or authentic thread is usually lost.

According to Salovey and Mayer's (1997) model of emotional intelligence, emotions are understood as skills that can be learned. These skills consist of emotional perception, emotional understanding, thought facilitation, and emotion regulation.. It could be said that the first of these skills greatly favors the development of the others, since a previous objective to consolidate becomes the competence in knowing how to identify and express one's own and other people's emotions.

From this milestone, the processes of analyzing and giving meaning to emotions (comprehension skill), the integration between cognitions and emotions which orients the subject to attend to the most relevant contextual information for decision making (thought facilitation) and the promotion of intellectual-emotional knowledge or the achievement of adaptive balance with respect to pleasant/unpleasant emotions (emotional regulation) become more easily attainable.

The disadvantages of resistance to expressing emotions

The absence of competence in the four indicated skills can lead the individual to adopt emotionally dysregulated functioning dynamics, i.e. based on the aforementioned emotional "hijacking". This repertoire is characterized by the following manifestations, according to three levels of action:

1. at the cognitive level

Inability to describe and observe the present experience (one's own and others) in the absence of unfair or inordinate judgments and criticisms about the externalized emotion; incompetence in the understanding of the cause that motivates such emotion and the type of information that can be extracted as personal learning.

This point is related to the use of an irrational or distorted type of cognitive reasoning with respect to the manifested emotion.

2. At the emotional level

Difficulty in finding the balance between resistance to emotion and emotional over-reaction to potentially destabilizing situations; ineffectiveness to to transform the meaning given to unpleasant emotions (initially negative) into a more (initially negative) into a more accepting perspective, fostering a greater tolerance to discomfort.

Both the attitude of repressing emotions (especially unpleasant ones) and emitting them in an uncontrolled and excessive manner are equally harmful to the individual.

3. At the behavioral level

Impossibility to self-control the emission of an impulsive or hasty response that Difficulty in the adequate management of the specific situation.Deficiency in the ability to differentiate what kind of emotional consequences the person will experience in the short and long term, which usually tend to mitigate or change over time.

The fact of being guided behaviorally by an incorrectly managed emotion can lead to the aggravation of the experience, increasing the discomfort initially generated.

By way of conclusion

It has been shown in the text that an adequate level of emotional competence is essential to promote the psychological well-being of the human being.

One of the prerequisites for consolidating this ability lies in the capacity to know how to identify and express one's own emotions, understanding them as "warnings" that alert the individual to an experience or event that must be attended to psychologically as a priority. On the contrary, the repression or resistance to emotions can lead to significant psychological damage..