Where the upsides you described above were quite particular (e.g. "my parsimony protects me from bad financial decisions and demonstrates that I'm prudent"), Nesse discusses upsides of negative emotion from an evolutionary perspective. These evolutionary upsides are in some respects personal and particular like the above (e.g. "my relationship anxiety shows I care about my partner and is trying to tell me that they have not signalled their commitment satisfactorily") but also have a suprapersonal or naturalistic dimension (e.g. "my relationship... (read more)
Your brief example of positive reframing reminded me of Randolph Nesse's Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (which I heard about through the wise Peter Hase).
Where the upsides you described above were quite particular (e.g. "my parsimony protects me from bad financial decisions and demonstrates that I'm prudent"), Nesse discusses upsides of negative emotion from an evolutionary perspective. These evolutionary upsides are in some respects personal and particular like the above (e.g. "my relationship anxiety shows I care about my partner and is trying to tell me that they have not signalled their commitment satisfactorily") but also have a suprapersonal or naturalistic dimension (e.g. "my relationship... (read more)