ABSTRACT
People often believe that there are good and bad emotions and that one must suppress or eliminate “bad” emotions. This lack of acceptance results in the inability to tolerate discomfort that further exacerbates emotional experience. This chapter discusses the consequences of viewing one’s emotions as “pathological” or “abnormal”—for example, feeling ashamed or guilty about emotions, having the inability to express emotions and labelling oneself as so different from others as to be defective. In contrast to this view of “bad” emotions, the Emotional Schema model normalizes a full range of emotions as part of the human experience.
