The Case for Experiencing Our Positive Emotions in Therapy
Why it pays to lean into what feels good
4 min read
Therapy is popularly recommended by many in New York City – perhaps especially due to the stressful nature of the city. Many New Yorkers have a therapist or are quick to recommend one. While therapy can be a wonderful space to uncover the deeper parts of ourselves, both therapists and therapy-goers alike will be the first to let you know it does not always feel particularly great. In fact, it can take discomfort before things really do lift. But, a lesser-talked-about phenomena is the benefit of feeling our positive emotions in emotions. Why would we pay to focus on what’s going right?
So, what about the benefits of making room for our positive emotions?
Stephanie Alirkan, a therapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy in NYC speaks to how “in some ways, believe it or not leaning into what feels good, is sometimes actually the more gargantuan task!”
Most of us have heard of, if not experienced, what’s known as the “negativity bias” or “negative confirmation bias.” This is the human tendency to not only register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events.
It is even discussed by well-known relationship researcher John Gottman (one of the creators of the Gottman Method of Couple’s Therapy). In his methodology, his research finds the magic ratio is 5:1. This means that for every one negative feeling or interaction between partners, there must generally be five positive feelings or interactions. Brene Brown, a researcher on shame and vulnerability, in her original Netflix special, speaks personally on how experiencing positive emotions can start to open up space for fearful thought patterns to come right back, almost like a see-saw effect of sorts.
If anything, all of this makes sense since our brain is more specifically wired for fear due to protective instincts of the more primitive parts of our brain (i.e. the limbic system).
Think of it this way: During the earliest days of humanity, it would’ve ensured survival to keep in mind what fauna and flora were poisonous in our wild environments, and more strongly remember not to eat a particular type of berry. So, before you get down on yourself when you find yourself defaulting to your inner critic, it actually just tells you that your body’s natural intelligence is actually in working order for survival. According to Tina Tacorian, at Downtown Somatic Therapy, “the inner critic wants to protect you from feeling incompetent, inadequate, or like a failure.”
“Before you get down on yourself when you find yourself defaulting to your inner critic, it actually just tells you your body’s natural intelligence is actually in working order for survival.”
We may already have heard that we should “feel to heal” in order to process our more stressful emotions, so the tendency might be to skip over or bypass our lighter ones. Yet, if the name of the game in your healing journey is to thrive as well as survive, these default tendencies and mammalian urges make it even more essential to gear more toward the powerful nature of positive emotions!
Neurons that fire together wire together: this is yet another reason to move toward rewiring the lesser used neuronal networks. A lot of the more fearful feelings we experience are rooted in familiar negative story lines and thought patterns. The reason it is hard to change is because these tend to be heavily strengthened neurons and thought patterns that have wired together for decades, with decades of data (from cognitive negativity bias) to back it up!
Negative emotions also tend to be way more addictive due to that negative bias. It makes evolutionary sense, too, in that our brains had to register poisonous fauna millions of years ago. Our brain is wired for addiction because it is a pattern making machine, and autopilot is essential for the human brain since it requires very high energy consumption.
One solution for this is to stop trying to get rid of tending toward negativity, but instead using a crowding out method to start to become more addicted to positive emotions. This is why hokey or not, resistant or not, affirmations and gratitude journaling do help one at least get started on the path.
“You will also be supported in accessing your own inner wisdom so that you can connect with the ancestor that you want to become with your own families, communities, cultures, and the Earth.”
We already know we tend to repeat old patterns and compulsions, but the first step would be to decrease our discomfort when we first start trying to experience the opposite. We won't be able to move to those positive feelings if we are above a threshold of stress because fight or fight puts the prefrontal cortex of our brains in distress, causing us a harder time regulating emotions.
That's where therapy can help. If you find yourself wanting to experience more of your positive emotions, but finding yourself blocked, it can be a sign you are running up against a testing ground. Logically, we will always feel tested by some of our wants by nature because we would not be desiring it if we were already a match for it.
Through working with one of our therapists at Downtown Somatic Therapy, we can support you in meeting these blocks so they can be a step on the roadmap to your desires. Consider reaching out to us to book a consultation with a therapist today.