Know Your Four Basic Emotions

Fear, anger, joy and sadness are the four basic human emotions. We all feel them at any time, age and culture. But, do you know how to master them? Are you always aware of them?

These emotions are not in our daily lives as a matter of arbitrary or whim, but because they play a major role in our psychological development. This means that they serve to warn us and guide us in the conservation of our organism and in socializing with others.

Maybe this is a little hard to understand, as it sounds so technical or straight out of an encyclopedia. But what is important to remember here is that we are all afraid, angry, happy and sad, because in this way the mind and body develop and we can transcend as human beings and socialize.

We have learned (and will continue to do so) through our emotions. So if you had a beautiful time in your life where everything was happiness, it likely formed your personality, just as if you went through an event that made you very sad or something that caused a lot of anger or fear.

It doesn’t matter how old we are, where we live or what we work. Without exception, we will experience these four basic emotions on more than one occasion. This is because emotions are very useful information; they allow us to know how we are here and now, being a learning guide for our life, so that we can understand ourselves and to know how to continue if we pay attention to them.

There are no good or bad emotions, as we usually think or categorize what we feel. There are emotions that can be more or less pleasant. Each of them has a specific function and they are all necessary.

What functions do the four basic emotions have?

These four basic or primary human emotions are an energetic quality, as they allow us to act expansively with others (anger and joy) or with ourselves (sadness and fear).

We will look at the four basic emotions separately so that we can know the specific role of each of them in our lives.

Fear

It is an emotion known to scholars as a “contraction reaction”. It is included in the group of reflective emotions and its function is to warn us about the presence of a danger,  either of doing or causing us harm.

Fear allows us to assess our ability to face situations that we perceive as threats. If we learn to know first and manage fear later, we experience prudence and drive away panic, phobia or recklessness.

Happiness

Also known as  “expansion emotion”. It serves the function of helping us to bond with others, so it is among the expansive emotions (along with anger).

Joy can be manifested in different ways, the most frequent being tenderness, sensuality and eroticism. If we manage joy well, we can achieve serenity and fullness. If we don’t know how to handle it well, it will lead to sadness, euphoria or frustration.

Sadness

It is in the group of contraction emotions and is known as the most reflective of all. It always evokes something that happened in the past and its function is to help us be aware of a thing, situation or person that we have lost or missed.

Sadness also serves to let go and let go of what doesn’t belong to us or is bad for us.  Finally, another of the functions of sadness is to allow others to accompany us, preventing us from becoming too vulnerable or dependent.

Anger

It is the second most expansive emotion. It’s about an impulse, a way to get something or someone out of “above”, to send out what bothers us, what we believe to be unfair or what is doing us wrong.

Anger implies an overload of energy that, at times, helps us to fulfill what we want or assures us of the need for threat. Therefore, it should not always be considered negative. What happens is that sometimes, instead of helping us to solve what happens, it becomes an additional problem if we take its expression to the extreme.

It would be a kind of effective cleanser for all that weighs us down. But beware; to do this, we must recognize it, accept it, and correctly manage anger.

Once we are aware of our emotions and learn to live with them, it will be easier for us to realize that they are all important to our lives.