Why Negative Emotions Can Actually Be Good, According To Mental Health Experts

Working with the team at Disney means that Dr. Keltner and Dr. Damour helped guide the team on which emotions Riley's 13th birthday could introduce — and apparently, there were a lot of options. "The science is starting to say there are 20 to 25 emotions that could be characters," Dr. Keltner says. "I had sort of pitched like indignance, like more protest-y. But my role was [to] think about what emotions to portray." (Dr. Keltner also says Compassion and Shame haven't made an appearance — yet).

Riley's shift from child to teenager feels just as chaotic onscreen as it is to live it out. The new emotions enter with a bang, create a huge mess, and then won't leave. And the chaos is one thing Dr. Damour loves the most about the scene.

"It does show how destabilizing Riley's new emotional landscape is for her and for her parents," she says. "As someone who cares for families with teenagers...it's very isolating to be the parent of a teenager."

"13 and above, [kids] can start to spin things around see how other people might see them," she continues. "So, hello, here comes embarrassment. Hello, here comes envy. All of that arrives on the scene because there's a cognitive shift makes the arrival of these emotional experiences possible in a way that wasn't possible when they were younger."

While embarrassment and envy definitely don't feel good when you're experiencing them, both Dr. Keltner and Dr. Damour agree we should stop labelling emotions as "negative" and "positive."

"Kids and parents sometimes operate with the idea that you're supposed to feel good, that mental health is about feeling good," Dr. Damour says. "And what we know as psychologists is that mental health is not about feeling good, it's about having feelings that fit what's happening and then managing those feelings well."

"I cannot tell you how honored I am to be part of a project of this scale that gets that messaging right," she continues. "That negative emotions are part of being human and they're actually a wildly valuable, illuminating, organizing part of being human that they are as much the part of the team as the happy emotions or the comfortable emotions. This is such critical messaging."

"When you look at the lab science, it turns out a lot of these what we call 'negative emotions,' like embarrassment and forms of envy [show] that you care about doing well in the world, you care about being part of a social community," Dr. Keltner adds. "You feel embarrassed, you made a mistake and you'll make amends."

Social media might not be a huge aspect of this story, but the inclusion of Envy can provide endless conversations for families. "When we look at the research on really when harm is done by social media, which is a very murky and subtle body of research, [it's] social comparison," Dr. Damour says. "So I just feel like this film just gives a lob to families to talk about the experience of social comparison and envy...If you verbalize an emotion, you feel it less intensely. So just sit at dinner and say, 'Did you see anything online that made you feel envy?' Right? Suddenly you're helping to mitigate the harm of social comparison online by naming the emotion. I just get goosebumps talking about it!"

"I think negative, positive isn't good," she continues. "I think comfortable, uncomfortable can sometimes get at it and to mainstream uncomfortable emotions as essential to our experience [is powerful]."

I know from firsthand experience that no matter how old you get, feeling overwhelming by your emotions can stay with you. And Dr. Damour has some advice on what to do when you experience that. "Your job is to feel what you're going to feel. Where the rubber hits the road is how you cope with it," she says. "And either you can cope with it in ways that bring relief and do no harm, or you cope with it in a way that brings relief and comes at a cost."

She recommends talking about your feelings to get a new perspective, going for a run, taking a nap, or even listening to your favorite music. "All we want is for people to steer clear of the ways that help them feel better that will be costly," she adds. "So whether it's abusing substances or being hard on other people, being unkind to themselves as a way to get a grip on a feeling, that's where clinicians step in."

"We're tracking, what do you do next?" she says. "So in benign envy, it's like 'I feel envy and I'm gonna work harder,' and then in malignant envy, it's 'I envy, I'm gonna take you down.' So it's not the feeling, it's the path choice in the way that you're feeling."