Not All Emotions Are Equally Useful: Understanding Authentic vs. Racket Feelings

In everyday life, it’s common to divide emotions into negative and positive. For example, you often hear that if someone is angry, it’s bad. But in reality, there are no bad or good emotions. All emotions are necessary and important, but not all are equally useful.

Let’s figure out why we need emotions.

In Transactional Analysis theory, there are four basic authentic emotions: anger, sadness, fear, and joy.

What makes them authentic (i.e., genuine)? Expressing authentic feelings helps resolve problems "here and now." When we express such a feeling, we do something that helps us complete the situation.

Here’s how they help us solve problems:

Anger helps resolve problems in the present. It acts as an alarm system when our boundaries (psychological, bodily, or physical) are violated. It gives us the energy to restore those boundaries.

Sadness arises from loss, when something ends or has been lost. It helps us overcome a painful or traumatic event that happened in the past. When we grieve or feel sad, we free ourselves from past pain, complete the situation, and say "goodbye" to it.

Fear arises when we lack necessary information. Fear is directed toward the future. With fear, we help ourselves solve a problem we anticipate in the future. By feeling fear, we can understand what information or actions we lack to make the future favorable for us.

And joy! Joy arises when all our needs are satisfied. It manifests as relaxation, a sense of comfort, and seems to tell us, "Everything is okay, you are safe, you can relax and enjoy the present."

These are authentic feelings. However, every time we experience fear, anger, sadness, or joy outside their respective temporal context, that emotion is a racket feeling.

"A racket feeling is a habitual emotion we learned and which was encouraged in childhood, experienced in various stressful situations, and does not contribute to an adult solution to problems" (I. Stewart, V. Joines).

A racket feeling is always a substitute for another feeling whose expression was forbidden in childhood. For example, some people react to any event with anger, and when they are scared or sad, they suppress those feelings and cover them with anger. In this case, anger becomes a racket feeling. Or, for example, there are people who react to everything with tears and sadness. And when it’s important to use anger to defend their boundaries here and now, they don’t feel the strength to do so because they suppress the feeling of anger. Sadness becomes their racket feeling.

Expressing racket feelings does not help solve problems and leaves situations unfinished. Expressing racket feelings will repeatedly lead to the same unsatisfactory result. This is because they do not satisfy the basic needs that can be addressed by expressing an authentic feeling.

All emotions are very important because they signal something to us, but only authentic emotions help us effectively solve our problems, complete situations, break free from scripts, and satisfy our true needs.