In the “Potato” book, I present a model of the negative emotions and anger management with three primary negative emotions of hurt, frustration, and fear, and one secondary emotion labelled as anger. I also state that having emotions is like having arms and legs. If I were to write this first chapter today, I could make some amendments.
Instead of limiting to one secondary emotion, I could assign each primary negative emotion its own secondary emotion. For example, anger could be the secondary emotion linked with frustration, sadness could be linked with hurt, and alertness could be linked with fear. If we wanted the secondary emotions to rhyme, perhaps we could use the terms mad, sad, and egad! The main point is that the secondary emotions are energized states compared with the primary emotions. In the Potato book, all three secondary emotions fall under the single term “anger,” which is presented as an energized state to provide for motivation to deal with an unacceptable situation.
The other amendment would be to alter the statement: “having emotions is like having arms and legs” to “having eyes and ears.” Not that referring to arms and legs is wrong, for our emotions motivate us to action. However, the actions we take fall under the management side of the equation we are dealing with, and so arms and legs used to describe emotions is not entirely accurate. But eyes and ears may be more precise in hitting the point. Our emotions are like sensory organs that detect something, just as eyes detect light and ears detect sound.
Our negative emotions detect injustice, represented in the Potato book as potatoes. So our emotions are the potato detectors. In this sense, emotions are like a spiritual or social sensory organ, in the context that spirit implies the realm of relationship dynamics, and an injustice is identified in the context of an adversarial relationship. For example, if somebody does not do something you think they should be doing, then it is as if they do not acknowledge your or other’s existence, which would be taken as an adversarial position.
Another concept that has to do with the three primary and secondary emotions has to do with their relationship with time. It could be argued that frustration and anger have to do with the present, hurt and sadness primarily in relation with the past, and fear and alertness with the future.
Perhaps the destructive mindset could be understood as a risk factor for mental illness. As a reminder, the destructive mindset limits our ability to deal with stressors in terms of power. Within the destructive mindset, we either feel powerful or powerless in the context of the stressors we face and the emotions we feel.
Understanding our potatoes from past experiences destructively could be a risk factor for depression, with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. A sense of powerlessness linked with the destructive mindset could be a risk factor in various anxiety disorders, which may have to do with perceived potatoes that are not present but are seen as possibilities in the future. Perhaps understanding present potatoes within the destructive mindset could be a risk factor for impulse control problems.
The impact of training yourself to form the constructive mindset, when your sensory organ of negative emotions alerts you to unacceptable relationship dynamics, is therefore paramount in order to lessen the risk of a mental disorder.