Don't Just Bedammed, Negative Emotions Need To Be Expressed For Mental Health

Mental Health (Photo: Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Mental health is often identified with happiness. In fact, not only happy, to get mental health, people must accept all emotions that are present, including negative emotions.

According to psychologist from the Indonesian Clinical Psychologist Association, M Ari Wibowo, negative emotions are things that need to be done because they will help someone learn to manage feelings.

"I want to use the title of my workshop series, it's called thinking about thoughts, thinking about feelings, feeling thoughts, and feeling feelings. So I want my friends to allow me to feel their feelings," said Ari, quoted from ANTARA, Tuesday, October 4.

According to Ari, currently there are many ways to manage stress that are actually just trying to make someone run away from their feelings. In fact, he said, this would make a person not good at managing feelings.

He continued that when a person tries to feel his feelings about certain conditions, it is natural that he feels pain. This pain will be part of the process so that someone can manage their feelings as well as possible.

"What I found was when I asked my client to feel the feeling, he was shocked. He felt pain, then panicked. In fact, it is natural to feel feelings that other feelings will arise and physical reactions," he said.

"So if you are not used to managing your taste and enjoy running away, you are happy to have fun, for a walk that is called healing, even though it's just refreshing, then when you feel feelings, you will be surprised. But I will say it's very normal," he continued.

Psychologist who is also from the Indonesian Clinical Psychologists Association Feka Ange Pramita added, allowing the presence of negative emotions is quite difficult. One of the reasons is the parenting pattern that always prohibits children from crying.

"For example, children cry, they are told not to cry. So negative feelings are not allowed to exist. So when we grow up, we find it difficult to manage our self-regulation, difficult to manage our stress," said Feka.

"So, in the end, if it's piled up (the stretch) it will be very difficult," he added.

Feka also said that there is nothing wrong with parents to admit their negative feelings if the child sees this. This, he said, would make children learn to deal with conflict.

"I think it's okay, I just need to be careful when conveying what is wrong. For example, when fighting with his father, be careful using words fighting or telling the whole story without being filtered, because he certainly doesn't understand the context," said Feka.

"So we are sad that in front of the child it is okay because later they will see that the problem can be solved. They really need that process," he concluded.