The Causes of Emotions: The Emotional Pitcher

Unpleasant emotions such as anger, rage, and aggression can be called destructive feelings. They harm both the individual (their psyche and health) and their relationships with others. These emotions are constant sources of conflict, sometimes leading to material destruction and even wars.

Let’s imagine the “container” of our emotions as a pitcher. Place anger, rage, and aggression at the very top. Here, we can also show how these emotions manifest in a person’s outward behavior—unfortunately, all too familiar insults, quarrels, punishments, spiteful actions, and so on.

Now, let’s ask: what causes anger? Psychologists give a somewhat unexpected answer: anger is a secondary emotion, arising from entirely different experiences such as pain, fear, or hurt.

So, we can place feelings of pain, hurt, fear, and annoyance beneath anger and aggression, as the causes of these destructive emotions (the second layer of the “pitcher”).

All the feelings in this second layer are suffering-based: they involve varying degrees of distress. That’s why they’re hard to express, often kept silent, and hidden. Why? Usually, out of fear of appearing weak or being humiliated. Sometimes, a person isn’t even fully aware of them (“I’m just mad, but I don’t know why!”).

People are often taught to hide feelings of hurt and pain from childhood. You’ve probably heard a father tell his son, “Don’t cry, learn to fight back instead!”

So, what causes these “suffering” feelings? Psychologists have a clear answer: pain, fear, and hurt arise from unmet needs.

Every person, regardless of age, needs food, sleep, warmth, physical safety, and so on. These are called organic needs. They’re obvious, so we won’t focus on them here.

Let’s concentrate on needs related to communication and, more broadly, to living among people.

Key Psychological Needs

Here’s a sample (by no means complete) list of such needs:

• To be loved, understood, recognized, and respected
• To feel needed and close to someone
• To experience success—in work, studies, or other activities
• To realize oneself, develop abilities, improve, and respect oneself

If a country isn’t facing an economic crisis or, even worse, war, then organic needs are generally met. But the needs listed above are always at risk!

Despite thousands of years of cultural development, human society still hasn’t learned to guarantee psychological well-being (let alone happiness!) for every member. It’s an extremely complex task. After all, a person’s happiness depends on the psychological climate of the environment where they grow up, live, and work, as well as the emotional baggage accumulated in childhood. Unfortunately, we still don’t have mandatory schools for communication—they’re just beginning to appear, and only on a voluntary basis.

So, any need from our list can go unmet, which, as we’ve said, leads to suffering and possibly to “destructive” emotions.

How Unmet Needs Lead to Negative Emotions

Let’s take an example. Suppose someone is having a streak of bad luck—one failure after another. This means their need for success, recognition, or maybe self-respect isn’t being met. As a result, they may develop persistent disappointment in themselves, depression, or resentment and anger toward those they see as “responsible.”

This is true for any negative experience: behind it, you’ll always find some unmet need.

What Lies Beneath Our Needs?

Let’s look at the model again and see if there’s anything below the layer of needs. It turns out there is!

When we meet a friend, we might ask, “How are you?” or “Are you happy?” and get answers like, “You know, I’m just unlucky,” or, “I’m doing great, I’m fine!”

These responses reflect a special kind of experience—a person’s attitude toward themselves, their self-assessment.

Of course, these attitudes and conclusions can change with life circumstances. At the same time, there’s a kind of “common denominator” that makes each of us more optimistic or pessimistic, more or less self-confident, and thus more or less resilient to life’s challenges.

Psychologists have devoted much research to these self-perceptions. They call them self-image, self-perception, self-esteem, and, most often, self-worth. The term “self-worth” was coined by Virginia Satir and best captures this complex, hard-to-describe feeling.

Researchers have discovered and proven several important facts. First, self-esteem (let’s use this familiar term) has a strong impact on a person’s life and even their destiny.

Another key fact: the foundation of self-esteem is laid very early, in the first years of a child’s life, and depends on how parents treat them.

The general rule is simple: A positive attitude toward oneself is the foundation of psychological survival.

Basic needs: “I am loved!”, “I am good!”, “I can do it!”

At the very bottom of the emotional pitcher lies the most important “treasure” given to us by nature—the sense of life energy. Let’s picture it as a “sun” and label it: “I exist!” or, more poetically, “This is me, Lord!”

Together with our basic drives, this forms our initial sense of self—a feeling of inner well-being and life energy!