Why Emotional Pain


is persistent
What you need to know:

1. Research (Keltner et al, 2017) shows that as human

beings we can experience 27 distinct emotions -
e.g. confusion, disgust, admiration, empathic pain,
boredom, joy, relief, sadness, surprise,
amusement, fear, anger, anxiety and so on.

This is a kind of extension to the previously
thought 6 core emotions such as happy, sad, etc

2. Emotions are produced and absorbed by the body in

about 6 seconds, so we tend to re-recreate the
same emotion repeatedly multiple times 

3. “Psychological pain, mental pain, or emotional pain is
an unpleasant feeling (a suffering) of a
psychological, non-physical origin” (Wikipedia, 2019)




Emotional pain - aka ‘mental pain’, ‘psycholgoial

suffering’, ‘mental torment’ and so on


4. Emotional pain usually results from a specific event (or

experience) that created a certain (behavioural)
response and an urge to act in a certain way




“The first problem is that joy and sadness have more in

common than we think. Joy means I get something I
care about. Sadness means I lose something I care
about. So they are really two sides of the same need,
and we couldn’t have one without the other. 



And the second problem is that every emotion is
simply a signal, delivering a message. Even difficult
emotions like fear, anger or sadness are serving an
important function” (Miller, 6Seconds, 2018)

 Psychological Pain:
1.Emotional pain results from
your own personal
interpretation of the event:
‘stress-provoking’ or ‘funny’ -
you chose! 


2.Emotional pain can feel

different from person to
person, mainly in its intensity
and duration


3. Often (persistent) emotional pain (and negative

thinking) is not the problem that we need to solve.
Instead, they are the symptoms of some
underlying issue that we need to address 


4. Emotions are a normal occurrence in life and are not

‘bad’ or ‘good’ inherently. However, we label our
emotions as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ depending on
how we feel and our general sensations from the
experience






“Normalizing is used to depathologize people’s concerns and
present them instead as normal life difficulties” (Corcoran,
2002).

“It helps people to calm down about their problem. It helps them
realize they're not abnormal for having this problem” (Visser,
2007)

Recommended literature:

1) ‘’Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure and Other

Everyday Hurts’ (2013) by Guy Winch

2) ‘’F*ck Feelings: One shrink’s practical advice for managing all life’s
impossible problems’ (2015) by Bennett, M.I. & Bennett, S.

3) ‘Master Your Emotions: A practical guide to overcome negativity and

better manage your feelings’ (2018) by Meurisse, T.
Recommended websites: 


1) ’How to Manage Your Emotions’: https://www.psychologytoday.com/

us/blog/blamestorming/201708/how-manage-your-emotions

2) ’ACT Therapy: The Theory Behind Acceptance and Commitment

Thearpy’ : https://positivepsychology.com/act-therapy/

Copyright © Elmira Strange