Comfort In Discomfort

People have different reactions to scary movies and roller coasters. Some enjoy the feeling of being scared while others don't. The question arises why people seek out negative emotions like fear, sadness, and stress for comfort. The school counselors believe that our brain is naturally wired to default to negative thinking, making it easier to feel those emotions. Some people choose to feel negative emotions to flush them out or to find solace in them. However, research suggests that engaging in opposite actions can be more helpful. The distinction lies in whether we have control over the negative emotions. When it comes to fear, it is often driven by adrenaline, which can be exciting. Adrenaline and fear are closely connected, and the release of chemicals like endorphins, dopamine, and norepinephrine during fearful experiences can provide a sense of enjoyment. This same idea can be applied to sad movies and music, where the staged experience allows us to find comfort in discomfort. Are you ready? Yeah. Let's do it. Do you like scary movies? No. God, I hate them. I love them a lot. I just like being scared. But then I go to sleep and I cover myself with my sheets. Kind of. Not really though. I like being scared sometimes. I don't know. It's pretty exciting. And what about roller coasters? But one time when I hear people screaming, I'm like, this is not scary at all. People scream even if they're so old like you guys. I like roller coasters because they're fun. Roller coasters are very exciting. They're not scary. When you're in a basement huddled next to your friends watching a horror movie, of course you're going to feel scared. But is it the same type of fear as when you're dangling over the edge of a cliff or when a massive spider creeps up your wall? My name is Anisha Bajaj. My name is Hannah Friend. And my name is Stella Putnam. We're diving deeper into why people like to feel scared, sad, or stressed for comfort. Why do we like to watch horror movies and go on scary roller coasters when we don't like the feeling of falling through the air or being worried about a test? All of these are different examples of fears, but what makes them different? Is crying over a breakup a whole different feeling than listening to sad music? Why do we find comfort in these emotions? And why is it that sometimes we don't? We decided to interview one of our school counselors, Maria Matisson, in hopes of finding an answer. I think that, I don't know if we make ourselves feel negative emotions, but I think that our brain is naturally wired to default to negative. And that just becomes easier. The pathways to negative thinking, I think, are just smoother and easier to get to. But as far as the reasons we do that, I think it's just habit. I don't know if we're really getting anything out of it. I wasn't actually expecting that answer. But it makes sense when you think about it, you know? Yeah, I feel like it's a lot easier to let yourself feel sad or stressed in a bad situation than try to force yourself to be happy. Honestly, sometimes I don't even mind being sad. That actually leads us to the next question. What's the difference between choosing to feel negative emotions and negative emotions caused by others? Because they're both easy to feel, but one's definitely more intense in the moment. I mean, I think that sometimes we lean into negative emotions to almost, like, flush them out, so to speak. So, like, if we're sad, sometimes we lean into sad music and want to just cry to just sort of, like, get it over with and feel those emotions deeply. I think sometimes people want to feel sad for different reasons. Sometimes it's because they think it's going to have the opposite effect. Like, oh, I'm going to watch a sad movie and it's going to make me feel like my life isn't that bad. Or it's going to, like, allow me to really, really lean into feeling that way in the hope that maybe if I just, like, delve into it, then I'll feel better. But I think other times, you know, I think it's actually pretty counterproductive. I think a lot of the research shows that the best thing that we can do in those times is to do the opposite action. So, like, when we're feeling sad, actually watching a comedy is more likely. But I think that, again, it gets back to this default, which is that it's easier to lean into a negative emotion and continue to feel it. Do you like watching those sad movies? Or do you try not? Yeah, so it's kind of like you're getting your emotions out? Yeah. I actually have some personal experience on this, too, because there's this one episode of my go-to TV show that always makes me tear up, even if I only see, like, five seconds of it. Not necessarily because I'm sad about something else that's going on, but I almost use it as a tool to get a good cry out when I feel almost melancholy, I guess. So that's the way I definitely make myself feel a bit more sad. And for me, it's just comforting and almost calming, and it's not something I would try to avoid. But if that happened to me in real life or something else big just, like, affected my day-to-day that I was super sad about, I don't think it would be as enjoyable, especially since it would be out of my control. And like Maria said, that would make it a bad feeling rather than something that was more comfortable and easy for me to get to. The last question we asked Maria was, what makes negative emotions like being sad and scared uncomfortable in certain situations? I mean, I think when other people are doing things, I don't know that we have control over that. Like, if other people are doing things that make us feel negatively. Well, I would say, like, one of the main distinctions is that one of them is within our control, and the other one is not. I mean, I think if other people do things to us, obviously we respond by feeling some kind of way. And if those emotions are negative, oftentimes we're just responding in that moment. I think what people don't realize is what they can do in those moments, which is sometimes instead of just leaning into that, we have more power than we realize to kind of control those negative emotions. Why people choose to feel a certain way. I mean, I think there's a difference between, like, a sad movie versus, like, a horror movie. And I think one is people wanting to feel scared, but it's more, like, based on adrenaline, which is a little bit different than, like, fear. And I think that can be exciting, so I think that's kind of why people lean into that. We wanted to focus more on what she said about adrenaline, so we dived deeper into the question, what's the difference between adrenaline and fear? And why do we enjoy one and not the other? After researching a little bit on how adrenaline and fear are different, we realized that they're actually very connected. In an article from Psychology Today about adrenaline, they discuss about how if something scares us, the body immediately releases endorphins, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Endorphins mitigate pain, and dopamine and norepinephrine are performance enhancers. The more fearful a certain thing makes you, the greater the release of these chemicals. This is the scientific reason as to why people might enjoy fear in the form of adrenaline, and I'm sure we can apply that same idea to sad movies and music, and how when it is a staged experience that we choose, we can actually find comfort in discomfort. Thank you to our teachers, Paula Doughton and Mark Lewing, our interviewee, Maria Mathieson, and our various Vox Pop contributors. This is Hannah Friend. Anisha Bajaj. And Stella Putnam. Signing off. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Love you.