This is why it’s important to distinguish between Primary and Secondary Emotions.

This is why it’s important to distinguish between Primary and Secondary Emotions.

This is why it’s important to distinguish between...

Primary and Secondary Emotions.

🔺 Anger vs Rage

🔺 Sadness vs Rejection

🔺 Grief vs Abandonment

(You can mix and match these combinations, by the way.)

Secondary emotions build on primary ones.

They typically arise when there’s no space for the primary emotion. ❌

No room, prejudice, external pressure…

Or even:

Not wanting to feel it.

In the book “The Fountain” by Els van Steijn, it’s explained that suppressing primary emotions creates room for secondary ones.

It becomes a different way to release what we’re feeling.

➡ So, we blame the ex for everything.

➡ We get angry at our parents for childhood trauma.

➡ We feel betrayed or abandoned by a friend who’s become distant.

Why these secondary emotions?

🔵 Secondary emotions protect us by placing the cause outside ourselves.

🔴 They give us the victim role as a way to cope.

This can work for a while—or even for years... until it doesn’t anymore.

Until the burnout, breakdown, or blow-up happens.

🤔 Maybe you’ve noticed this:

Almost everyone who recovers from burnout says:

"It was incredibly hard, but the best thing that ever happened to me."

No surprise there:

All the primary emotions, suppressed over time and pushed into the background, finally come to the surface.

The pressure was too much...

Still, I’d prefer we intervene earlier.

That’s what I aim to contribute to:

Bringing clarity and tackling the issues before they grow too big.

Before they explode.

Will you join me?