THINKING ABOUT OUR EMOTIONS ON A SLIDING SCALE [MENTAL HEALTH] ARTICLE 2

Article 1

When we think about negative and positive of different emotions , we can consider how intense a particular emotion is or how long it lasts.. If we just see an emotion as either ‘on’ ‘off’ then we are faced with a basic choice of either continuing to have it , or trying to get rid of it. When the emotion is unpleasant , our tendency is to want to get rid of it. However, if we instead think of emotions as being on a sliding scale, rather like a volume control from ‘ very mild ‘ at I out of 100 , to ‘ extreme’ at 100 out of 100 , then we have some other choices. We may find that we can endure a certain level of the emotion.

One reason why it is useful to think about our emotions as being on a sliding scale is…