Primary and Secondary Emotions

Did you know that emotions arise in two different ways? The first way is pretty easy to recognize on the surface - it occurs when we experience something that we immediately have an emotional reaction to. An example of this is if a pet dies and we feel sad. These kinds of feelings are called primary emotions and they occur automatically.

But there's often another emotional experience at play that we don't as easily recognize, called secondary emotions.

Secondary emotions are not the immediate response to our situation, but rather develop as a reaction to our primary emotions. Using the same example as above, although our primary reaction to losing a pet is sadness, we may have other feelings that are expressed. We might feel frustrated with ourselves for feeling so sad, or fearful of others' judgements about our sadness, or guilty for feeling sad when others "have it so much worse," or if we were raised to think sadness is unacceptable to feel, we might automatically cover it up with anger instead without even realizing the sadness existed to begin with.

As you could imagine, primary emotions are relatively predictable in how they present in various situations, but secondary emotions can vary a lot depending on the person's individual experience and relationship with their emotions. Regardless of how they present, in painful situations secondary emotions pile on top of the primary emotions, making the overall emotional experience larger and more overwhelming.

So why am I sharing this with you? Well, recognizing the difference between primary and secondary emotions can be extremely helpful in reducing our emotional pain.

Both primary and secondary emotions are adaptive signals from our bodies and they're healthy to accept and allow as they arise. The difference is that for secondary emotions, those signals are a response to the conscious or unonscious judgements that we're making about our primary emotions. 

But what if we worked to abandon the judgements we have about our feelings? If we were to accept our primary emotions as they are and view them from a place of curiosity rather than judgement, those secondary emotions may never arise. If we gave ourselves permission to feel our sadness after losing a pet, we would no longer be judging ourselves for feeling sad, and we would no longer have the anger, fear, guilt, or frustration that could come along with it. This ability to manage our secondary emotions can be extremely empowering and help to reduce our overall emotional pain during a difficult moment.

I'm sure there are a number of ways we can reduce the judgements we have about our primary emotions, but here are a few starting points.

• Learning more about emotions and their natural functions can help us make sense of the emotions we experience. 
• Many mindfulness practices offer great insights in how to practice nonjudgementally observing feelings with curiosity. ACT therapy offers these mindfulness skills as well. 
• Noticing what primary and secondary emotions typically arise for you in various situations can help to build awareness and emotional intelligence. 
• Exploring what you may have learned about emotions as a child can offer great insights as well, as you can then begin challenging judgemental assumptions you may have about "bad" feelings (hint: there's no such thing as a good or bad feeling, just comfortable and uncomfortable ones).
  
• Learning how to look after ourselves in reaction to painful primary emotions can be a helpful step to reduce any natural tendencies to escape into a more comfortable secondary emotion.
  
  
  If you found this information interesting and would like to learn more about emotions, please consider speaking with a therapist.