I was listening to a podcast by Brene Brown, where she touched upon a term called ‘meta-emotion’. It intrigued me because I never knew this term existed. I delved deeper into the topic, only to realise that we feel this on a subconscious level everyday. My blog is to make you aware of this term and my understanding of it.Meta-emotions are emotions we feel about our emotions. Confused? Say someone rubs you the wrong way and you lash out. Then you feel angry about being angry. That’s meta emotion.
It’s essentially the secondary emotion concerning the primary emotion. In my opinion, the negative meta emotion stems from the non-acceptance of the primary emotion itself. Unless we feel and accept our emotions, how will we ever learn from them? Human traits help us push our limitations to strive towards a more mindful way of living. And mindfulness is devoid of thoughts and acceptance of the present moment as is.
Self awareness and self compassion help us look into every aspect of our own emotions in a more non-judgemental way. We can strive to neither feel guilty of our happiness nor angry at our outbursts. We can strive to learn and exert ourselves to a better version of ourselves through these emotions.
This is just a glimpse of my interpretation on this, else it’s a much broader and a deeper topic.
Painting courtesy: Timothy Kyaterekera