It feels like the society I interact with dislikes expression of negative emotions, at least in the sense that expressing negative emotions is kind of a big deal—if someone expresses a negative feeling, it needs to be addressed (fixed, ideally). The discomfort with negative emotions and consequent response acts to a fair degree to suppress their expression. Why mention something you’re a little bit sad about if people are going to make a big deal out of it and try to make you feel better, etc., etc.?
Related to the above (with an ambiguously directed causal arrow) is that we lack reliable ways to communicate about negative emotions with something like nuance or precision. If I think imagine starting a conversation with a friend by saying “I feel happy”, I expect to be given space to clarify the cause, nature, and extent of my happiness. Having clarified these, my friend will react proportionally. Yet when I imagine saying “I feel sad”, I expect this to be perceived as “things are bad, you need sympathy, support, etc.” and the whole stage of “clarify cause, nature, extent” is skipped instead proceeding to a fairly large reaction.
And I wish it wasn’t like that. I frequently have minor negative emotions which I think are good, healthy, and adaptive. They might persist for one minute, five minute, half a day, etc. The same as with my positive emotions. When | get asked how I am, or I’m just looking to connect with others by sharing inner states, then I want to be able to communicate my inner state—even when it’s negative—and be able to communicate that precisely. I want to be given space to say “I feel sad on the half-hour scale because relatively minor bad thing X happened” vs “I’m sad on the weeks scale because a major negative life event happened.” And I want to be able to express the former without it being a bid deal, just a normal thing that sometimes slightly bad things happens and you’re slightly sad.
The specific details are probably gender-specific.
Men are supposed to be strong. If they express sadness, it’s like a splash of low status and everyone is like “ugh, get away from me, loser, I hope it’s not contagious”. On the other hand, if they express anger, people get scared. So men gradually learn to suppress these emotions. (They also learn that words “I would really want you to show me your true feelings” are usually a bait-and-switch. The actual meaning of that phrase is that the man is supposed to perform some nice emotion, probably because his partner feels insecure about the relationship and wants to be reassured.)
Women have other problems, such as being told to smile when something irritates them… but this would be more reliably described by a woman.
But in general, I suppose people simply do not want to empathize with bad feelings; they just want them to go away. “Get rid of your bad feeling, so that I am not in a dilemma to either empathize with you and feel bad, or ignore you and feel like a bad person.”
A good reaction would be something like: “I listen to your bad emotion, but I am not letting myself get consumed by it. It remains your emotion; I am merely an audience.” Perhaps it would be good to have some phrase to express that we want this kind of reaction, because from the other side, providing this reaction unprompted can lead to accusations of insensitivity. “You clearly don’t care!” (By feeling bad when other people feel bad we signal that we care about them. It is a costly signal, because it makes us feel bad, too. But in turn, the cost is why we provide all kinds of useless help just to make it go away.)
It feels like the society I interact with dislikes expression of negative emotions, at least in the sense that expressing negative emotions is kind of a big deal—if someone expresses a negative feeling, it needs to be addressed (fixed, ideally). The discomfort with negative emotions and consequent response acts to a fair degree to suppress their expression. Why mention something you’re a little bit sad about if people are going to make a big deal out of it and try to make you feel better, etc., etc.?
Related to the above (with an ambiguously directed causal arrow) is that we lack reliable ways to communicate about negative emotions with something like nuance or precision. If I think imagine starting a conversation with a friend by saying “I feel happy”, I expect to be given space to clarify the cause, nature, and extent of my happiness. Having clarified these, my friend will react proportionally. Yet when I imagine saying “I feel sad”, I expect this to be perceived as “things are bad, you need sympathy, support, etc.” and the whole stage of “clarify cause, nature, extent” is skipped instead proceeding to a fairly large reaction.
And I wish it wasn’t like that. I frequently have minor negative emotions which I think are good, healthy, and adaptive. They might persist for one minute, five minute, half a day, etc. The same as with my positive emotions. When | get asked how I am, or I’m just looking to connect with others by sharing inner states, then I want to be able to communicate my inner state—even when it’s negative—and be able to communicate that precisely. I want to be given space to say “I feel sad on the half-hour scale because relatively minor bad thing X happened” vs “I’m sad on the weeks scale because a major negative life event happened.” And I want to be able to express the former without it being a bid deal, just a normal thing that sometimes slightly bad things happens and you’re slightly sad.
The specific details are probably gender-specific.
Men are supposed to be strong. If they express sadness, it’s like a splash of low status and everyone is like “ugh, get away from me, loser, I hope it’s not contagious”. On the other hand, if they express anger, people get scared. So men gradually learn to suppress these emotions. (They also learn that words “I would really want you to show me your true feelings” are usually a bait-and-switch. The actual meaning of that phrase is that the man is supposed to perform some nice emotion, probably because his partner feels insecure about the relationship and wants to be reassured.)
Women have other problems, such as being told to smile when something irritates them… but this would be more reliably described by a woman.
But in general, I suppose people simply do not want to empathize with bad feelings; they just want them to go away. “Get rid of your bad feeling, so that I am not in a dilemma to either empathize with you and feel bad, or ignore you and feel like a bad person.”
A good reaction would be something like: “I listen to your bad emotion, but I am not letting myself get consumed by it. It remains your emotion; I am merely an audience.” Perhaps it would be good to have some phrase to express that we want this kind of reaction, because from the other side, providing this reaction unprompted can lead to accusations of insensitivity. “You clearly don’t care!” (By feeling bad when other people feel bad we signal that we care about them. It is a costly signal, because it makes us feel bad, too. But in turn, the cost is why we provide all kinds of useless help just to make it go away.)