Happiness is something that each person has spent an amount of time in their life searching for, though it is unlikely that even the happiest people will be cheerful all the time. Positive psychologists have a goal to increase overall happiness in everyone, yet that is a difficult task when happiness is a very subjective emotion, it means something different to many people. The definition of happiness can even differ depending on culture, “ In North America One other goal for positive psychology is for psychologists to put as much effort into nurturing happiness rather than focusing solely on reducing feeling of unhappiness. “The emergence of ‘positive psychology,’ whose proponents urge fellow researchers to study happiness as seriously as they did pathological states such as depression.” (Begley 455) However positive psychology, often times place more negative emotions in a category of being harmful. While happiness is a key component to a healthy and balanced life, experiencing negative emotions such as; sadness, anger, and fear are just as important and can even be beneficial to an extent.
Negative emotions
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For example, in Sharon Begley’s, “Happiness: Enough Already” She begins the article with introducing Jerome Wakefield, the author of "The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder," whose students have been speaking with him after a break up with a significant other because they need a recommendation for a therapist. Many of the students’ parents are pressuring them to see a counselor and recommending other medical interventions. (Begley 454) However, it is common to feel extremely down after a break up and is an emotion that the person should be able to feel, rather than trying to push it aside. If anything it is unrealistic that someone wouldn’t feel sad when dealing with an experience like