Emotions Are Like A Pendulum

Emotions are like a pendulum, while some days we feel at the peak of happiness, others we experience the greatest sadness. What is relevant is that the strength of our positive emotions will find its counterpart in an equally high intensity of negative feelings. It might seem that in the first case it is appropriate to be carried away by excessive joy, but the reality is not such.

Experiencing our emotions (whatever their valence) with excessive involvement will lead us to suffering. These are to be the sails of our ship, which help us navigate through life, but we should never give them the role of helm. When your emotions take over you, chaos is almost assured.

Emotional intensity

Some people naturally have a greater tendency than others to emotional intensity. These individuals feel each and every one of their emotions to a greater than average magnitude. They are deluded, overflowing with joy and also sinking into despair and paralyzed by fear. Your entire world is guided by emotions and they affect you in a profound way.

Experiencing such high emotional degrees ends up throwing these people out of control. Any small event in their life is enough to destabilize them and they can often feel like they are drowning in their own emotional world. Excessive sadness can lead to depression, exaggerated fear can constitute anxiety, uncontrolled euphoria is a symptom of mania.

Either extreme is dangerous because it deprives the person of control over himself. Only those who achieve balance develop freely in life, the rest are prisoners of their internal states. If we want to enjoy a good state of psychological health we have to balance what we feel.

The danger of extremes

We all easily understand how unpleasant it is to feel negative emotions intensely. However, we may think that getting excited, rejoicing and enjoying excessively cannot be bad. Let’s put ourselves for a moment in the shoes of someone who feels intensely:

Suddenly a golden opportunity arises for this person: he finds his dream job and his financial status skyrockets. It is logical and natural to feel happy and grateful for having achieved a goal, but this person will possibly go further. The enthusiasm will be so great that you can lose focus and start spending uncontrollably, or neglect the other areas of your life because your energy is completely focused on this achievement.

Thus, your economy and your personal relationships will deteriorate and when the pendulum swings and the situation changes, you will find yourself face to face with a shattered reality. The fall will be tremendous because so was the rise. The person will feel descending into the abyss because he was unable to keep his feet on the ground when everything was going well.

The same could happen if you start a new relationship. Surely you think you have found the love of your life and the meaning of your existence. Happiness will be so overwhelming that it will lead you to surrender to that relationship 100%. When it ends, the immense emptiness you will feel will be proportional to the initial euphoria. And at that moment you will discover that you gave yourself so much, that you ended up with nothing.

Emotions are like a pendulum: let’s seek balance

Therefore, as Aristotle affirmed: ” in the middle point is virtue “. Emotions are an intrinsic part of all human beings, we must allow ourselves to feel them, we must listen to them, but we must never give them control. Let’s try to keep our feet on the ground at all times: if something good happens to us let’s not lose focus, and when something bad happens let’s not lose hope. 

Let us put ourselves in the position of external spectators of our own emotions, let us not identify with them. Emotions are like a pendulum: throughout our lives we will experience feelings of all kinds, we will develop the ability to analyze them from a higher point. What I feel at a given moment is not what I am.

Emotions are guides to cope with our environment and act in the best possible way. Let’s take your message and apply it, but without getting too involved. We feel, but never forgetting that we have the helm.