Revised August 8, 2023
Originally published in the #RyersonSA blog as “SA Has the Feels 201 (Part 1): A Primer on Managing Your Emotions and Feelings”, 2017/02/09
We live in a culture that doesn’t always do a great job helping us learn how to manage our own emotions – especially the big ones! In this two-part series, we’ll first learn more about different categories of emotions and then we’ll learn more about how to manage them.
Feelings, Needs, and Action Tendencies
Emotion theory tells us that emotions have evolved to be a rapid signaling system, bringing our attention to what is most critical in our environment for our survival, and organizing our bodies to meet a specific need through action. The table below lists several primary adaptive feelings and gives examples of the kind of information they provide, the needs they signal, and the action tendencies they direct us towards.
Primary Adaptive Emotions
Copied with permission from Thompson, S. & Greenberg, L. (2023). Emotion Focused Therapy: An Overview in Foroughe, M. (Ed.), The Clinical Manual of Emotion Focused Therapy for Youth and Caregivers. Routledge.
If you can identify what you are feeling, understand what you need, and know what you can to do to fulfill that need, you will be able to quickly settle your emotion signals. Let’s take a closer look at anger as an example.
The emotion underlying the feeling of anger typically produces physiological changes such as elevated blood pressure and heart rate, directs blood flow away from our internal organs to large muscle groups, and gives us a surge in energy. We may typically experience anger as a reaction when a boundary or principle that is important to us has been violated, like our personal space or a deeply held conviction. Perhaps someone has inattentively stepped on our foot in the subway causing sudden pain or has taken credit for a project we worked hard on. In such cases, feeling anger gives us information. It signals to us that a wrong has occurred that we wish to have righted. We may then use the energy and tendency towards assertive action prompted by anger to address the situation, helping us to feel better.
Of course, how we express our anger is subject to complex social learning throughout our lives. Beginning in early childhood others react to the way we express emotion. Through others’ reactions to us, we begin to learn and internalize rules for how we express our emotions (“Be nice!”, “Crying is for sissies”, “Toughen up!”). Such rules are often impacted by our gender, ethnocultural background, class, physical size and abilities—among other variables. In a North American middle-class-influenced context, we might show angry disapproval through our facial expression or we might assertively, but politely, ask for what we need or stand up for our beliefs.
Here’s where it gets a bit tricky. Each emotion we experience can be felt in different ways – as one of four different categories of emotions.
What Category of Feeling Am I Trying to Manage?
Have you ever wondered why some people say it’s important to pay attention to what you feel, while others believe that your feelings will lead you astray, or should be set to one side? In fact, only one of the categories of feelings we are going to talk about gives us accurate, immediately useful information about what we need, along with a push in a specific direction to meet our needs. These are called primary adaptive feelings. The other three categories of feelings need a bit more decoding or transforming before they can be helpful to us. These include primary maladaptive, secondary, and instrumental feelings.
To get started, I recommend this great little 7-minute video created by Anne Hilde V. Hagen, the Norwegian Institute for Psychological Counseling, and the Norwegian Institute of Emotion Focused Therapy. I will be referencing it repeatedly throughout this article as I explain the different categories of feelings.
The video introduces Alfred, a sensitive, yet highly guarded owl who has learned to cut himself off from his primary adaptive feelings. In this video, we learn that Alfred has experienced some difficult times as an owlet. As a result, he has learned to hide primary adaptive feelings like sadness and vulnerability. As an owlet, when Alfred felt sad he was often shamed or scared by his caregivers. As a result, when he feels sad now, he quickly and automatically feels shame and fear—these secondary feelings cover up his sadness. If shame and fear were overwhelming and frequent as an owlet, Alfred may even have learned to feel shame or fear instead of sadness whenever something sad happened to him—shame and fear would then be called primary maladaptive feelings.
To make it a bit more complicated, when Alfred feels secondary shame and fear, he also feels and shows secondary anger to protect himself from being hurt again. (Note: if Alfred didn’t actually feel anger, but just pretended to push people away, then anger would be called instrumental, rather than secondary—don’t worry, we’re going to go through these categories together below). So, why is it a problem for Alfred to cover up his sadness and vulnerability? When Alfred pays attention to his secondary anger, and not his primary adaptive sadness, he may push people away rather than drawing them close leaving him feeling even more sad, lonely, and hurt. If Alfred could feel and attend to his primary adaptive sadness, it would inform him that he is indeed sad and lonely. Alfred could then take steps to get what he really needs: connection, comfort, and love. He could seek to be vulnerable with and deepen his trust in others to make close friends or find a loving partner. The sadness and loneliness would then recede—the emotion signal would have been received, acted upon, and turned off.
Let’s take a look at each category in turn.
Primary Adaptive Feelings
Tagline: Pay attention to these ones!
Primary feelings are, quite simply, the first thing we feel in response to a new stimulus (something we perceive, remember, or imagine). Within this framework (and there are many frameworks for thinking and theorizing about emotion), primary feelings can be described as adaptive or maladaptive.
It’s important to note that words like “adaptive” and “maladaptive” are not meant to cast judgment on the feelings themselves, rather, they are meant to refer to whether or not the information provided by the emotion will lead us towards what we need (adaptive), or away from what we need (maladaptive).
- In Alfred’s case above, sadness is adaptive when it is:
- Fresh and new (not old, repetitive, and stuck),
- At an intensity that matches the situation,
- Signals that something important has been lost or is missing, and motivates him to seek comfort and support.
Returning to our earlier example of anger, anger is adaptive when it:
- Is fresh and new (not old, repetitive, and stuck),
- Is at an intensity that matches the situation,
- Signals and motivates us to right a wrong or defend a valued principle or boundary.
Primary adaptive anger can actually help maintain safety and good relationships by letting people around us know where our boundaries lie.
The essence of this is captured in one of my favourite Brené Brown quotes: “My question is big, B-I-G—what boundaries need to be in place for me to stay in my integrity and make the most generous assumptions about you?”
An essential part of knowing one’s boundaries is having access to the emotion of anger (remember that this includes a wide range of feeling experiences like: anger, annoyance, irritation, frustration, hurt).
So, when we are able to be aware of our emotion signals and feelings in the moment, when an emergent feeling is fresh and new, and when the action that the emotion suggests is in alignment with what we really need, we are dealing with an adaptive primary feeling. This is feeling-based information we can trust and use—it serves a specific purpose, delivers a signal into our conscious awareness, and when we act upon the signal, the signal turns off. No further management needed. This type of awareness and use of feelings in the moment is what, for me, underpins excellent mental and emotional health.
Primary Maladaptive Feelings
Tagline: Don’t be led astray!
Staying with the example of anger, most of us have expressed anger more strongly than a situation warranted, or expressed anger when it clearly wasn’t helping move us in the direction of getting what we really needed. So what went wrong? Why do our feelings sometimes lead us astray? By now, you may be beginning to arrive at the answer—your anger wasn’t stemming from a primary adaptive feeling!
In the video, Alfred’s maladaptive feelings are represented by the shadow, which depicts reactions that have developed out of past hurts. Remember, Alfred was often frightened and shamed as an owlet. As a result of past learning, Alfred now lives with a sense of old, stuck fearfulness and persistent shame in his life. As therapists, we sometimes refer to these reactions as “here and now” responses to “then and there” problems: I am reacting right now as I did when I was hurt in another place, at another time, by a person who (probably) isn’t even in my presence right now.
In order to protect himself, Alfred has learned to feel frightened (primary maladaptive fear) instead of feeling his primary adaptive sadness and loneliness. His fear makes him withdraw from others. This makes sense if we see Alfred as trying to protect himself from being hurt by others again. The problem is, acting on feelings of fear does not help reduce Alfred’s loneliness or sadness. When Alfred immediately feels fear in a new interpersonal situation that doesn’t call for it—when this fear gives information that is misguiding—he is experiencing a primary maladaptive feeling. It does not help Alfred meet his needs for closeness.
Maladaptive feelings, in this case fear and/or shame, are like signals on a car’s dashboard that have become stuck in the “on” position, constantly blinking and flashing for our attention, even after the initial problem has been addressed. As the narrator puts it, sometimes “your real emotions are messed up and make a lot of trouble for you.”
Secondary Feelings
Primary adaptive feelings and primary maladaptive feelings; got all that? Good! Because now we’re going to add in secondary feelings. In Alfred’s case, his primary maladaptive fear may promote beliefs such as “people will hurt me” or “the world is a dangerous place.” Primary maladaptive shame may promote beliefs such as “I’m unworthy of love” or “I deserve to be alone.” Expecting to be rejected, shamed, or hurt by others, Alfred may don his protective anger, pushing others away before they can get close to him. In this example, Alfred’s anger is a secondary feeling. It covers up his fear and shame, and comes in response to thoughts generated by these underlying primary maladaptive feelings. Anger is not the first thing he feels, and anger is not coming from a violation of healthy adaptive boundaries, but is a reaction to other feelings and thoughts.
Secondary feelings are commonly learned through emotion socialization processes; we are taught by our parents, friends, pop culture, and teachers how to feel about our own emotional reactions. For example, some children may be told they are being “bossy” when they assert their limits or boundaries, like saying no to a friend who proposes a game and advocating for another. Other children may be told to “suck it up” or “toughen up” when they feel sad or scared and cry. In each case, the child may learn that expressing what they are feeling is not acceptable to the adults around them. Children may learn to feel ashamed of their assertiveness and desires, or ashamed of fear and vulnerability.
Let’s work through a quick example: On the first day of gym class with a new teacher, Casey is asked to climb a tall rope. If Casey is afraid of heights, Casey may feel fear, and then feel ashamed of for feeling scared. If Casey also expects the gym teacher to make humiliating remarks in front of the class if Casey refuses to climb the rope, Casey may also begin to feel angry at the teacher. (Before reading on, take a moment and identify fear, shame, and anger as primary adaptive, primary maladaptive, or secondary feelings.)
In this case, fear is a primary feeling. However, you may not have had sufficient information to determine if it was adaptive or maladaptive. If the rope hangs over a concrete floor and Casey’s upper body strength is not sufficient to climb the ropes, this fear may be primary and adaptive—it helps Casey stay safe. If the rope hangs over a soft mat that will reasonably prevent any injuries, and Casey has fallen from a height and been hurt in the past, the fear may be primary and maladaptive (there is no real danger, and engaging in the activity to the best of Casey’s ability may actually help build strength and confidence). Feeling ashamed is a secondary feeling. Feeling angry in response to imagined scenarios is also secondary.
While secondary feelings do tell us a lot about how we have been raised and the social rules we have internalized, they do not typically give us useful information about what we need in the moment—although they may inform culturally appropriate ways to go about getting our needs met once they are identified. In the scenario above, anger and shame do not clearly direct Casey towards core needs: core needs are not likely to be fulfilled if Casey fights in anger, or withdraws in shame.
As with primary maladaptive feelings, secondary feelings do not provide helpful information about what we need in the here-and-now. Secondary feelings are important to acknowledge and name. Naming feelings can help them feel more manageable. Then, we need to track back to find the primary emotion that gave rise to the secondary feeling in the first place. In general, we can assume that some feelings are always secondary: the hopelessness of depression and all forms of anxiety are examples of secondary feelings.
Instrumental Feelings
Finally, let’s briefly review instrumental feelings. This is depicted in the video when Alfred “fakes” sadness to get an apple from a friend, when really, he’s not feeling sad at all. By definition, expression of a feeling is considered instrumental if we are expressing something we are not actually feeling in order to control or manage the environment around us. For example, “faking” tears to avoid punishment, intentionally appearing angry to control another’s behaviour, or pretending to feel warmly towards someone to avoid embarrassment are all examples of instrumental feelings.
In summary, emotions can be experienced as:
- Primary adaptive emotions: these are helpful signals that tell us what we need and prepare our bodies for helpful action. Pay attention to these emotions. Once you have acted upon them, expect the emotion to subside as the signal turns off.
- Primary maladaptive emotions: these are intrusions from the past and involve us have an old stuck feeling in response to a new circumstance. They don’t help us figure out what we need in the moment, and we don’t tend to feel better after we act upon them. These emotions are associated with old hurts that we need to heal if we want to stop our own cycle of negative feelings.
- Secondary feelings: these are reactions to reactions. Typically, we have learned patterns of feelings growing up as we have been taught when emotions are considered acceptable or unacceptable to feel and express. They don’t tend to help us figure out what we really need, although they may give us clues about how to express our feelings to others in ways that don’t make others uncomfortable.
- Instrumental feelings: this happens when we express an emotion that we don’t really feel. Often, we do this in order to influence or control someone around us. It can be helpful to stop and evaluate whether this strategy is really helping us to access what we need, and if there are any unwanted side-effects like diminished trust in relationships.
If you want more help to unpack the presence and impact of different categories of emotions in your life, therapists trained in Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), will be familiar with these concepts and their implications for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and more simply in relationships and in daily life.
Join me in the next article as we tackle tips for regulating and managing different categories of emotions.
If you want more help to unpack your own emotions and the role they may be playing in depression, anxiety, stress responses, or relationship difficulties, our emotion focused therapists are here for you. Reach out to book an appointment with one of our mental health professionals.
