What Is A Secondary Emotion?

Eating spaghetti isn’t always graceful. You may snag a few noodles on your fork, only to start twirling and realize you’ve ended up with a giant mass of spaghetti. All the noodles may be entangled, making it difficult to separate one from another. Emotions can be similar. Quite often, they get tangled up with one another and become complicated to distinguish. One emotion can even trigger another. When an emotion arises in response to how you feel about an event or situation, it’s typically referred to as a secondary emotion. Gaining a deeper understanding of your secondary emotions can help you increase your self-awareness and better control your nervous system. A licensed therapist can provide professional insight and help you gain perspective through in-person or online therapy.

Primary vs. secondary emotions

The importance of emotional intelligence usually begins when you’re young and continues into adulthood. Schoolchildren often participate in social-emotional education, learning how to identify and appropriately respond to their feelings. 

As you grow older and join the workforce, emotional intelligence is often critical in advancing your career. Being able to understand your emotions can help you better know yourself and relate to those around you.

What are primary emotions?

A primary emotion can be defined as your initial reaction to a situation. Psychologists often identify eight primary emotions: anger, joy, shame, disgust, surprise, sadness, fear, and interest. You may also experience other emotions that are a combination of these basic emotions. Primary emotions are often instinctual, difficult to control, and intense (at least initially). However, for some people, certain emotions can trigger a second emotional response. When this happens, you are usually experiencing a secondary emotion. 

What are secondary emotions?

A secondary emotion can be seen as a reaction to a primary emotion. Many of them are learned based on how you react in specific situations. Imagine you grew up in a household with frequent conflict, yelling, and relational aggression. This environment may have influenced you to be wary of others. When you experience happiness, you may react with wariness or apprehension since that’s not a feeling you often experience. Or, if someone swerves into your driving lane on the highway, you may first react with fear but then experience frustration. 

What is a secondary e motion as a way to prevent vulnerability?

A secondary emotion may also be your mind’s way of preventing vulnerability. It can cover up a more sensitive emotion with one that is less sensitive, potentially preventing you from experiencing hurt based on your primary emotion.

How are primary and secondary emotions connected?

Distinguishing between primary and secondary emotions

Many researchers agree that any emotion can be primary or secondary. In general, the difference between primary and secondary emotions depends on which one you feel first. Being able to distinguish between the two can help you identify underlying feelings about certain situations so you can better work through the negative emotions you experience. 

Unpacking secondary emotions

Secondary emotions can often dictate how we behave and act around others, whether we want them to or not. One of the most significant factors that influences your secondary emotions may be what you’ve been taught is acceptable to feel. For example, sadness can be a healthy emotional reaction to various situations in life. However, someone who grew up hearing, “Crying is for babies,” or even, “Don’t be sad,” may experience shame or guilt when they do feel sorrow. 

Healthy secondary emotions and unhealthy secondary emotions

A healthy emotion is usually categorized as a rational response to an event. An unhealthy emotion, on the contrary, tends to be irrational. Some people view negative emotions as bad or wrong, but feeling negative emotions can be part of the human experience. They may only become problematic when they interfere with your ability to move forward.

It’s suggested that sadness, healthy anger and annoyance, remorse, regret, concern, disappointment, and healthy jealousy can all be healthy negative emotions. Depression, anger, guilt, shame, anxiety, hurt, and unhealthy jealousy are often classified as unhealthy negative emotions. 

Unawareness of primary emotions is an effect of secondary emotions

Secondary emotions often reflect internalized beliefs we have about a situation. Over time, a secondary emotion may become so automatic that we’re unaware of our primary emotion. For example, someone may be happy that they’ve earned a raise at work, which is their primary emotion. However, if they believe they don’t deserve good things or don’t actually work hard enough, their secondary emotion may be shame or anxiety. Over time, that person may associate good and happy life events with shame, always making the connection that they don’t deserve good things.

How to recognize and identify secondary emotions

Because secondary emotions are typically learned responses, you can often trace back to the origin of the emotion to better understand why you feel the way you do. A few common factors may impact the secondary emotions you experience:

• Past experiences: Past experiences, especially traumatic ones, can have a powerful impact on how you react to different emotions. 
• Childhood: During childhood, your parents may have instilled certain beliefs in you about how you should react to life situations. Sometimes, this can be positive, like when you’re taught to celebrate your successes, but sometimes, this can be negative, like if you’re told you shouldn’t be afraid of anything. 
• Media: Over time, you may internalize what you see on social media, hear on TV, or read in books. Constant exposure to certain beliefs about how you should react can shape your secondary emotions. 

Managing secondary emotions like anger and jealousy

Emotions can be incredibly complex, so much so that you may not even be aware of what you’re feeling. In addition, without realizing it, you may even completely dismiss a primary emotion and focus solely on the secondary emotion. 

Emotional self-awareness can be developed by listening to your body and what it is communicating. A fast heart rate, tense muscles, or light sweat may indicate the secondary emotion of anger, for instance. You may also try meditation to help you pause and focus solely on how you’re feeling at that specific moment. Because they tend to be learned responses, you can be intentional about managing your secondary emotions in a healthy manner. 

You may consider utilizing coping strategies to help you lean into your primary emotions so that you can work through them. For example, if you’re feeling anger as a primary emotion, you might implement actions that help you healthily diffuse your anger, such as going for a long run or listening to music that calms you down. Doing so may prevent you from wallowing in unhealthy secondary emotions like jealousy.

Navigating primary emotions and secondary emotions in therapy

It can sometimes be challenging to separate primary and secondary emotions or to identify how one feeling leads to another. A therapist may be able to help you delve deeper into how you really feel about situations and where your seemingly automatic responses may have originated. 

For example, you and your partner may often fight about who does the dishes, and you may feel angry because you believe you’re always the one doing them. By talking it through with a therapist, you may realize that you’re angry because you feel overwhelmed by all your other commitments. Your therapist can then help you communicate this to your partner and develop a plan to more mutually respectfully balance the load at home.

Benefits of online therapy

If you’re wondering how you could possibly balance therapy on top of all your other responsibilities, online therapy may be a viable solution. Online therapy generally enables you to schedule sessions with a mental health professional at your convenience, day or night. A platform like BetterHelp may also provide messaging services so you can stay in touch with your therapist via an online portal throughout the week, and they will respond when they can. 

Online therapy for managing emotions and mental health issues

In many cases, difficulty managing emotions can lead to the development of mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. If you have been feeling consumed by negative emotions, know that you are not alone, and there may be various options for treatment. Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be an effective treatment for mental illnesses, including OCD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and phobias. 

That said, you don’t have to have a diagnosis of a mental illness to experience the benefits of online therapy, or any therapy, for that matter. Emotional control is a practice that all humans can work to improve throughout their lives and across different relationships. 

Takeaway

Secondary emotions usually arise in response to how we feel. Most of the time, a secondary emotion is a learned emotional reaction to a primary emotion. It may reflect how you think you should feel about a particular event, instead of how you actually feel. Digging down to the root cause of a secondary emotion may help you better understand yourself, and this practice can often improve your relationships with others. To successfully identify and manage secondary emotions, you may benefit from the support of an online or in-person therapist.