0.7 A conversation about measuring emotion and its conclusion: mood  (Page 17/26)

Someone could be in a mood that makes them think a lot of negative thoughts. That would just be being in a "bad" mood, because it is negative. You could be in a bad mood and decide to not think negative thoughts, because your thoughts are under your control. You think about a lot of bad things that might happen to you or are happening to you, or how your current emotional state is that is contributing to the envy, guilt, frustration or shame you are feeling (whichever one(s) it is you are feeling). This seems rather obvious, a negative mood could further your thinking negative thoughts, which could further the negative mood. Real things that happened to you in addition to your own thoughts could contribute to this mood. Your negative mood could automatically make you think negative thoughts and there could be nothing you could do about it because you feel so poorly. It might be the natural thing to think negative thoughts while experiencing negative emotions, this could possibly help you deal with the emotions or something like that. I mean if something bad happened to you or is happening to you, it is natural to reflect negatively.

How harmful could negative thoughts be? They are just thoughts. I would say that anger, fear, and anxiety are much worse because they are more real. With those the person actually experiences real pain. I admit that envy and guilt can be fairly bad, but that is only because they would start generating the emotion pain they because they are so negative. Whenever one of these negative emotions starts generating the emotion pain, or the emotion anger, fear or anxiety - which are all closer to pain than the other negative emotions, then it is a lot worse than it is just by itself, without the pain. But that is sort of a redundant statement, it should be clear that a negative emotion can be painful. It is obvious, then, that any negative emotion could be mixed with stronger negative emotions or with pain.

Boredom, despair, disappointment, hurt and sadness. The words "boredom" and "disappointment" make it seem like the hurt, sadness and despair aren't that bad. If you were really hurt you wouldn't be bored, you would be in pain. So my guess is that the negative and passive state isn't as bad as the negative and not in control state. If you are negative but it is directed outward, that is negative and forceful, which is also probably worse than negative and passive. I know from my own experience that boredom can cause pain, but it isn't negativity that is directed towards anyone, and you are probably under control. Though the pain and negativity in the passive type can be just as bad, it just wouldn't seem like it is that way because you aren't doing anything, you are just being passive.

This (my guess) might be something like, your feelings were hurt, and then you quietly accept it and just rest with the negativity, it not causing you to become forceful or think many negative things. Maybe this type of negativity isn't as bad as pain or negativity that causes you to become forceful or think bad things. Someone just quietly accepting the pain seems like it wouldn't be a pain that is too large or disturbing (that causes a reaction). Maybe when you start getting really annoyed, it makes you more aggressive by putting you in a higher, more intense emotional state - you might then be in both the mood "negative and out of control" and "negative and forceful" at the same time. I guess that would be negative, forceful and out of control. Emotion is something that is not under your control, you could become angry and forceful because of how your emotions or attitude made you feel.