Fear, Joy, Fun - Emotions - Counselling

Article: The "Functional" Meaning of your Emotional Message

Article extracted from a workshop & book called:

DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOU - by Dieter Luske© - Gold Coast

... all following articles, are written as workshop manuscript
... questions were asked to stimulate active participation.

ARTICLE NUMBER - 20 - Chapter 3

The "Functional" Meaning of Emotions - (Emotional Message)

EMOTIONS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

How to help emotions of Fear - Joy - Fun

FEAR

Fear, being a close relative to anxiety has to be viewed with a deep understanding of life itself.

Fear is basically the underlying emotion for all of mankind's dilemmas.

Wars and the arms race; the whole insurance industry; doing the right thing out of the fear that something could be wrong; politics with its fear of losing the next election; religions and their fear of punishment; the list is endless.

After saying that, how can fear have a function, let alone a positive one?

Fear is also a basic instinct feeling, and without fear we couldn't judge real danger, the emphasis being on real.

THE POSITIVE FUNCTION of fear is caution; a truck coming towards you is real.

Fear is warning you of real physical danger, and it tells you to react accordingly. It is essential for survival.

THE NEGATIVE FUNCTION of fear is to react on imagined fear, as if it was real.

Reacting to what you think rather than reacting to facts.

It is you who thinks and makes up negative movies. Remember that you are your own 'Mental Movie Director'. You decide what movies you are running. It is you who can stop a negative movie, and therefore your fear.

Throw out those negative movies and replace them with positive ones.

Therefore, fear has another positive function. It makes us aware, (if we take the time to listen), of what the fear really consists of.

That helps us to sort it out, so we can decide whether we will persist in reacting to fear based motivation, or whether we will start trusting our own intuition and discover what real life is about.

Ask yourself a few questions:

Do you stay in your job, because of fear of not being able to pay your rent, or because you like your job?
Do you live to earn a living, or is there more to your life?
Are you staying married, because of fear of being on your own?
Are you staying in your box, because of fear of the unknown?
Are you keeping up with your present lifestyle, because of fear of change?
Do you react to life and base your decision on an underlying fear?
Why do you do what you do? Are your actions, thoughts etc. ruled by fear?

Spend some time on these questions and see what you can come up with.

Overcoming fear could be mankind's biggest hurdle! If you could choose, to either feel love or fear in any situation, which would you choose?

If you choose love, then ask yourself, what stops me, why do I still carry fear with me?

It's your choice whether to love or fear your life, your environment, your neighbour, your boss, your spirituality.

BUT ... don't forget to differentiate between real reasons for fear and imagined ones.

JOY

What a nice feeling! However, please remember, no emotion or feeling is better than another, neither is one positive nor the other negative. As soon as you depict one as better, all you are really saying is, that the other one is bad. So, don't create opposites, there are no real opposites only two equal parts which make one whole part.

Anyway, let's come back to the joy of joy.

THE POSITIVE FUNCTION of joy is quite obvious, it lets you know that you are on the right track, keep doing what you are doing, it works.

Remember also how this emotion came about, so that you know how to trigger it when you need it. Enjoy it!

THE NEGATIVE FUNCTION of joy is feeling joy when it is improper, or fooling yourself, confusing real joy with some cheap substitute, like drugs, overeating etc. A real victim position would be the deviate, sick kind of joy.

FUN

Fun is an interesting emotion. It probably is not one you have had serious thoughts about. If you wondered about fooling yourself with joy, you will understand that it is much easier to fool yourself with having fun.

Fun is always a short term emotion, and what comes after you have had some fun, will determine whether you really had fun or just fooled yourself.

THE POSITIVE FUNCTION of fun is having plain oldfashioned good fun and enjoying it for the fun of it. It makes you feel good for the moment. It rewards you with feeling good and relaxed. It helps you to get over a tricky situation and generally to stay on the bright side of life, but fun is not always funny.

THE NEGATIVE FUNCTION of fun is self-punishment.
What some people call fun, makes my hair stand up. Let's list a few of the more or less 'accepted' ones, such as: getting drunk, taking drugs, sleeping around, and all other dangerous 'fun' thrills.

FUN IS NEGATIVE WHEN YOU FEEL GUlLTY THE NEXT DAY.

There is one more extremely important aspect of fun, it is very often confused with happiness. How can you tell fun and happiness apart?

The key, is to know that fun is a shortterm emotion and happiness a long term, and a goal as much as an emotion.

... to be continued with: Happiness - Love - Hate