Why Emotions?

"What would it look like for you to invite sadness in as a friend?" I looked at my counselor with shock and disbelief. I immediately blurted out, "Why would I do that?!" I honestly don't remember the remainder of that session. My mind immediately descended into a frenzy. Who on earth would ever want sadness as a friend? I have worked most of my life to avoid, eliminate, squelch, and or ignore my sadness along with every other "bad" emotion.

Like the stereotypical man, I worked to rise above my emotions and make "rational" decisions. Feelings were supposed to get in line with my other, more “reasonable faculties”. And when those pesky little buggers raised their heads, I would smash them down to make sure they didn't influence things too significantly. Emotions, especially the negative ones, were a nuisance that needed to be kept in line.

What use are Emotions?

But what if there is more to our affective experience than that? If they serve a purpose, what purpose would emotions serve? Perhaps they tell me what I like to do and things I don't much like to do. Or maybe they help me figure out my temperament and what kinds of work I should be pursuing. Or possibly they are a result of human brokenness, and if we lived in a perfect world, there would be little more than pleasant serenity. If it were only that simple…

In subsequent sessions with my counselor, as well as in my time studying to be a counselor myself, I realized that the purpose emotions served was far more profound than I had initially considered. As far as I can tell emotions serve at least these three purposes:

Three Purposes of Emotions

1. Emotions allow me to know and respond to the state of my internal world. Like the indicators on a dashboard, or the instruments of an airplane cockpit, I can understand the running condition of my inner world through the information provided in and through my emotions.

2. Emotions allow me to connect with others in the context of their emotional experiences. I cannot attend well to my wife if I remain wholly oblivious or contemptuous of her emotional state; the same holds with my children, not to mention the clients that I serve within my clinical practice.

3. Fundamentally emotions give me data regarding the quality, nature, and impact of the relationships and conditions I am currently navigating.

Working Against Myself

So here is the ironic thing: In my effort to be logical and rational, I tried to eliminate emotional data from my evaluation, hobbling myself in the very goal (being rational) I intended to pursue. I will never be logical if I eradicate relevant data, even emotional data, from my calculus. It turns out that by diminishing, ignoring and downplaying my emotional experience, I was becoming less rational.

When we shun our emotional experience, we end up numb to our world. As with numbness in the dentist chair, we don't feel pain; we don’t feel anything. We can't taste our food; we can't report if our toothache is better or worse; we don’t have enough data. Likewise, if we live a life void of emotion, we can't live a life informed by the experience of either joy or sadness.

Welcome to the Human Race

So when my therapist asked me to, "invite sadness in as a friend," he was asking me to be more integrated. He was inviting me to be more rational and logical; more wholehearted; and fundamentally more fully human. We are not (nor were we ever intended to be) cold, calculating machines. In fact, when we integrate our emotions more fully into our lives, we don’t only live more rationally, but we also find a bedrock of meaning and purpose.

However, living a more fully integrated life is costly. Integrating our emotional lives into our story opens us to hurt and sadness, but it can also bring great joy. The invitation is to acknowledge your heart with all of its pain, sadness, grief, distress, anger, fear, gratitude and joy. It is an invitation to live a life fully integrated, and fully human.