Have you ever felt annoyed about feeling stressed about an upcoming deadline? Or felt guilty about feeling sad because you think other people have it worse?
These “secondary” emotions, defined as meta-emotions, represent the way we “feel” about our feelings – the emotions you have surrounding your emotions. Essentially, they are born from feelings that we were already experiencing. In the scenarios above, the feelings of annoyance and guilt are your meta-emotions. Negative feelings towards negative emotions are defined as “negative-negative” meta-emotions and are the most common, yet challenging, type of meta-emotion to face.
According to psychiatrist Srinivas Dannaram, MD, meta-emotions “act as a reflection or review of the emotion or emotional experience we had.” Since these emotions can be conscious or unconscious, many people might not connect feelings of annoyance and guilty with stress and sadness. In fact, meta-emotions arise so automatically that we have a tendency to assume that the feeling is a response to something else, rather than evaluating the root cause of the feeling. Through recognizing and processing meta-emotions, you can learn to process the initial feelings that prompted the meta-emotions to arise, ultimately regulating your emotions better and leading to a healthier mindset.
How to recognize meta-emotions
When an emotion comes up, it’s important to take a step back and identify the feeling. Once you have established that you are experiencing a negative feeling, ask yourself:
- Where did this emotion come from?
- What happened prior to the emotion?
- How did I get here?
If you’ve realized that the negative emotion arose from an event that had prompted an initial, negative feeling, you’ve officially recognized a meta-emotion!
Feeling and processing meta-emotions
Once you have recognized the meta-emotion, it’s important not to disregard them. If you don’t respond to them, you will probably keep behaving the same way, and unfortunately, you’re not giving yourself a chance to grow.
Acknowledging that you are feeling a meta-emotion is important. Personally, rather than feeding more into a more negative emotional response, I describe my feelings as facts instead of making a negative judgment regarding them. For example, instead of saying “I’m pathetic,” I will acknowledge my feelings and say, “I’m feeling guilty about feeling sad.” This acknowledgement will help you feel the feeling and move past it faster.
This ties in with self-compassion – it’s important to show yourself kindness and patience to feel these complex and cumbersome feelings. Talk to yourself as if you were a loved one; it’s vital that you can feel validated and reassured during this self-reflection.
In order to process these emotions, think about why you felt annoyed about being stressed, or why you felt guilty about being sad. As meta-emotions are a reflection of the initial emotions, use them as a tool to understand why you originally felt stressed or sad in the first place.
It takes lots of openness and active reflection, but eventually, you will realize and recognize that negative responses to negative emotions are not helpful. After practice, you can change the way you respond in the future.
Recognizing meta-emotions in others
Once you get better at recognizing secondary feelings and changing the way you face your meta-emotions, you may also recognize them in others. As a result, you may be able to understand them from a different perspective, and therefore, resolve conflict more easily. Additionally, you may be able to help them process their meta-emotions in a more positive, healthy way.
Meta-emotions may be complex and overwhelming, but after breaking them down, they are nothing more than a response to another feeling. By getting in touch with both meta-emotions and initial feelings, you can learn why you responded a certain way, which in turn, teaches you how to respond to and deal with difficult experiences. In the long run, you may experience reduced stress, have a better mindset regarding situations that were initially triggering, and generate more self-respect and patience for yourself and others.