When Good Intentions End in a Quagmire
Imagine an office worker—let’s call him Antonio—who detects an irregularity in his company’s accounting. Convinced he is doing the right thing, he shares his opinion with a colleague who is on good terms with the boss. He doesn’t understand what he did wrong when, shortly after, he begins to suffer harassment from several colleagues and the boss himself. After weeks of poor sleep, losing his sense of humor, and feeling genuinely unwell, he ends up resigning.
This scene is recognizable in many environments. Sometimes we act with the best of intentions and, without realizing it, we step onto slippery ground. What follows is not easy to manage, and much of our well-being depends on how we handle it. In this second installment, we pick up where we left off: expanding our repertoire of coping strategies to live a little better.
Do I Really Have a Problem?
When faced with something we interpret as a threat, the brain immediately goes to work to neutralize it. This activation can be useful—it pushes us to respond quickly—but it comes at a cost: if the situation becomes tangled and prolonged, the body remains in tension for too long, and that is where the risk of alterations, ranging from mild to serious, appears.
That is why it is advisable to know the phases we usually go through, so we can have alternatives at every moment. And the first step is the least intuitive: asking yourself if the problem is real or if our perception is magnifying it. It seems trivial, but it is not. We all remember an occasion where an apparent calm fell apart due to something unexpected; precisely for that reason, paying attention to changes—in tone, in treatment, in who stops telling us things—is key to detecting what is brewing in time.
The circuits of human communication are often barely visible, and that is where one can inadvertently hit the key that leaves them out of the game or gets them labeled. Carefully observing relationships between people and the flow of information helps to understand the terrain before making a move.
Emotional Coupling: When Something “Doesn’t Add Up”
Another useful resource is to observe your own reactions to people and situations, because many responses are automatic. It is well documented that the brain processes an enormous amount of information without us being aware of it, and that emotions arise from this processing that surprise us because, rationally, we would not know how to explain them.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone and noticed that “something weird is going on” without being able to point out what? That has to do with so-called emotional coupling: in a conversation, depending on the topic and context, the emotional responses of the interlocutors tend to synchronize. When that coupling does not occur, the brain detects it and warns us that something is not going as expected. From that signal, many misunderstandings and conflicts are born.
That same mechanism is the basis of empathy: the ability to place oneself in the other’s frame of reference and view the situation from their point of view. This is where some people attribute a particular role to cannabis, associating it with a relaxation of habitual perceptual filters and a greater sense of “attunement.” It is advisable to take this with caution, and we will return to this in the critical reading.
From Soothing Discomfort to Facing the Problem
The next step is to evaluate options—that is, to consider possible solutions. It is common for emotional distress to push us to look for something to cushion it, and it is not rare for cannabis to be used precisely with that regulatory function, as a way to lower the tension generated by the situation.
The problem is that soothing the symptom does not resolve the cause. It is more sustainable to adopt an active attitude toward the conflict and deploy varied resources: training in stress management, informing yourself about the specific situation, sharing it with trusted people, or seeking the accompaniment of a psychology professional. These are tools that act on the origin, not just on the discomfort.
Emotions and What They Are For
Facing discomfort well matters because it can be the precursor to bigger problems. Emotions affect how we receive information, how we process it, and how we respond, so sometimes they drag us along. They are largely automatic processes with pre-established manifestations, and little can be done about them if one has not “trained” themselves to observe and modulate them.
The underlying idea is simple but uncomfortable: although some emotions are unpleasant and we want to avoid them, they are all programmed into the organism and serve a function. That is why they all deserve to be attended to and processed, rather than silenced. Following the classic model of primary emotions—popularized by Robert Plutchik—three major functions are usually described:
- Adaptive function: They prepare the organism for action. For example: surprise guides exploration; disgust, rejection; joy, affiliation; fear, protection; anger, self-defense; sadness, reintegration.
- Social function: They communicate our mood and regulate coexistence, whether verbally, non-verbally, or even artistically. They facilitate interaction, influence the behavior of others, and promote prosocial behavior.
- Motivational function: They drive motivated behaviors. Their most interesting contribution is to decouple motivation from the immediate perception of the stimulus, which allows for reconsideration before acting.
In future installments, we will address specific emotions and ways to manage them in a beneficial way.
Critical Reading
The association between cannabis and “greater empathy” or “opening of filters” is part of the experience that many people report, but it is best not to take it as a closed physiological truth: the response varies greatly depending on the person, the dose, the context, and the starting mood, and the evidence regarding its effects on social cognition is limited and heterogeneous. In states of euphoria or “good vibes,” it is easy to be more benevolent than necessary with ideas or decisions that, with a clear mind, we would not accept. Hence a reasonable guideline: do not give weight to conclusions—neither emotional nor practical—made under the influence, and let time pass before acting on an important conflict.
It is also not advisable to lose sight of the risk of using any substance as a habitual regulator of discomfort. Resorting to it recurrently to avoid feeling can consolidate a pattern of avoidance that, in the long run, leaves the problem intact and adds psychological dependence. If the discomfort is persistent or interferes with sleep, work, or relationships, the most useful resource is not chemical, but seeking professional support. None of the above is clinical advice: it is an invitation to observe, to doubt easy certainties, and to take care of yourself.
For those who want to delve into the theoretical framework on the functions of emotions, the original refers to the work of Fernández-Abascal and collaborators on emotion and motivation (2003), a classic academic reference in the psychology of emotion in Spanish.
