Mixed feelings: what they are and how we can handle them

We have all experienced situations in which our feelings were confused, since they went in one direction but also in another.

It's the mixed feelings. We are going to try to better understand what this phenomenon consists of, reviewing some examples and everyday situations. We will also learn some of the psychological mechanisms behind it and also how to deal with them.

• Related article: "Emotional psychology: main theories of emotion"

What are mixed feelings?

We talk about mixed feelings when a person experiences ambivalent emotions before a stimulus, be it a situation, a person, animal or object. Said element would be generating a multiple emotionality in that individual, thus causing him to have sensations that seem to go in different directions and sometimes even seem totally opposite, such as love and hatred.

Faced with such a situation, the person feels confused, because the mixed feelings generate instability, since the individual loses the guide that emotions normally provide. In these cases, he stops knowing how to act based on the emotion they are feeling, since it is not only one, but there are two and sometimes even more or they are so diffuse that he is not capable of identify them.

Experiencing mixed feelings is, therefore, going through an emotional labyrinth that tires the mind of those who are experiencing it, since they have to live with very different sensations around some element of their life. Some of them encourage you to get closer while others order you to do the opposite. Faced with a situation like this, it is logical that the person feels that disorientation.

Why does this psychological phenomenon occur?

But, how can such a paradoxical situation occur, that of mixed feelings, in a rational being like we humans? The answer is simple. No matter how rational we are, we are still emotional beings as well. Reason is governed by logical laws, but emotions are not. Although we can modulate them (precisely through reason), sometimes it is very difficult to control the appearance of a specific emotion.

Life is extremely complex. There are so many variables that affect each stimulus that on many occasions it happens that some parts related to that specific element are pleasant to us and therefore it drives us to get closer to it, while at the same time there are dimensions of that same stimulus that are unpleasant and even aversive for us, causing rejection.

What happens then? Does the person get carried away by one emotion or the other? Generally, the most intense will win, unless reason has something to say about it.. That is where our rational part comes into play. It is easier for this to happen the less force the emotion we are trying to "defeat" has, because if it increases so much intensity that it overwhelms us, even reason could be compromised.

Mixed feelings occur many more times than we think, but in most cases one of the emotions is substantially more intense than the other, so the weaker one will be eclipsed and sometimes not even the other one. we will detect.

• You may be interested in: "Cognitive dissonance: the theory that explains self-deception"

What to deal with mixed feelings

We have already seen what it means to have mixed feelings and the discomfort that can sometimes cause the person who experiences them. What could an individual who is in that situation do to be able to feel better? In the first place, it would be positive if the person spent some time doing an introspection exercise that would allow them to identify all the emotions you are experiencing.

This is not the time to make judgments about whether each of these emotions is good or bad on its own. Once we have completed the list, we can repeat the exercise thinking this time about a specific situation in which that stimulus has been present. Now is the time to further explore the mixed feelings and assess whether each of those emotions was triggered by the stimulus or by the situation itself.

We'll keep digging to find out what exactly caused us to feel the way we've identified.. To do this, we can write down in another column what we believe was the origin of each of these sensations, so that see exactly where it came from and check that we have not automatically assigned any to the stimulus original.

At this point we can come to realize that a certain emotion that caused us discomfort did not really come directly from the element that we believed, but that it had been generated by a contextual situation and we had automatically associated it with the stimulus.

In the case of people and mixed feelings towards them, we can fall into the so-called transfer process, which consists of assigning them emotions that another person actually provoked in us, simply because they remind us of she. In these cases it is also useful to carry out that introspection that we were talking about and check if the feelings are genuine for this individual or in reality they are generated by a third party.

After exploring the origins of the mixed feelings, it is time to try to find a solution. If we have identified an emotion that is unpleasant to us, we can go to the source to try to convert it into another that is more positive for us. For example, if a negative feeling stems from a specific comment someone made to us at a given time, we can try to talk to that person about it.

Another good exercise is to hypothesize scenarios where we explore the pros and cons of each solution we come up with. For example, we can evaluate the consequences of telling the person who offended us what they made us feel, the consequences of talking about it with a third party, the consequences of doing nothing, etc.

In this way we will have all the information on the table to be able to make an informed decision. So we can choose the route that most convinces us, and we will even have the rest of the options ready in the in case the first election was unsuccessful and we continued to have mixed feelings without solve.

Introspection work is very powerful and productive, but sometimes we may need the help of a person outside of this whole situation to find new points of view that perhaps we are missing slipping away. Therefore we must not rule out the look for the objectivity that an external individual grants if we believe that the work we are doing is not generating the good results that we would expect.

In cases where the situation is causing great discomfort and we are not able to find that improvement, the counselor we are looking for could be none other than a psychological therapist. Undoubtedly, with the tools that this professional will provide, the person will find the relief they need.

The case for cognitive dissonance

We have made a tour of the different facets of mixed feelings as well as the methodology to be able to resolve them in the most satisfactory way possible. We are now going to know the case of cognitive dissonance, a phenomenon that, although it has nuances different, it has a lot to do with mixed feelings, so it deserves a mention apart.

Cognitive dissonance also implies discomfort in the individual, but in this case it is generated by the tension between two or more thoughts or beliefs, which come into conflict with respect to a given situation or stimulus. We see, therefore, the resemblance that it has with the purpose of this article.

It is a concept coined by Leon Festinger and refers to the need for coherence that being has between what they feel, what they think and what they do, that is, between beliefs, thoughts and behaviors. When this coherence is compromised, for example because we are forced to carry out a task that goes against what we think, that is when cognitive dissonance appears.

this dissonance It can lead the person to try to deceive himself, making him believe that the behavior he is carrying out does indeed seem correct to him., since his beliefs were wrong. He tries to fit the pieces together in order to see the discomfort he is suffering reduced, which is why one of the ways he uses to do so is that of lies, through self-deception.

Therefore, cognitive dissonance would be an independent psychological phenomenon but would have some relationship with feelings. found, although these would differ fundamentally in that, as their name dictates, they refer only to feelings or emotions.

Bibliographic references:

• Aronson, E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance: A current perspective. Advances in experimental social psychology.
• Carrera, P., Caballero, A., Sánchez, F., Blanco, A. (2005). Mixed emotions and risk behavior. Latin American journal of psychology. Konrad Lorenz University Foundation.
• Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
• Garrido-Rojas, L. (2006). Attachment, emotion and emotional regulation. Health implications. Latin American journal of psychology. Konrad Lorenz University Foundation.
• Schneider, I.K., Schwarz, N. (2017). Mixed feelings: The case of ambivalence. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier.