The Upside of Feeling Down

The Upside of Feeling Down

When I was little girl, I was always told to “turn my frown upside down” or to “not be sad, but get glad”. “Negative people do not get anywhere in life,” my parents would say to me. I learned that you were supposed to grow up and be happy. Happy emotions were the norm and you should never feel any other way. No one ever wanted to be a negative person. It almost seemed like people were afraid to be in a bad mood, as if it was the end of the world and you needed to make yourself happy again right away. I agreed with everyone else, bad feelings were just that, bad. During my sophomore year of high school, I found myself in the middle of a battle with depression and anxiety. I thought I was losing myself to this dark place. My parents took me to a psychologist and she showed me how to think of my problem as a positive thing. She believes that with every moment of happiness, comes a few moments of sadness and when that happens, you need to use it to your advantage. She had me read about benefits of negative emotion, and I learned that negative emotions are strong assets when it comes to cognitive functioning in the brain. She helped me see a different side, one that goes against the grain. If someone suffers from negative emotions, many psychologists will medicate the patient and try to fix the “bad” feelings. They do not explain that negative emotion in doses is actually a good thing, or that it can profit your everyday life. Negative emotion can benefit a person’s memory, persuasion, and relationships. It is arguable that negative emotions only provide negativity, but I am willing to argue that they can actually be beneficial.

On the other hand, what people do not realize when they are sad is that their memory is actually improving. Throughout various experiments, it has been proven false that depression affects attention span. Joseph Forgas, a cognitive psychologist, clarifies doubts with his explanation of the brain’s cognitive function:...