When I feel love and hate at the same time

We know what it is to feel love and also what it is to feel hate for someone. But what happens when these two feelings are felt at the same time? Why can we feel love and hate for someone at the same time? These totally opposite emotions are found in every human being.

Surely, you have ever suffered from these types of mixed feelings about someone. We cannot explain it and it confuses us a lot, because They are emotions that are at two different extremes..

But, although it may seem strange to us, we really feel opposite emotions on more than one occasion Have you ever felt happy, but sad, at the same time? Maybe yes…

For example, when we must leave our home for a new job opportunity; or when a loved one leaves, but we know it was for the best because he was suffering. That’s when love and hate become part of the same feeling.

I suffer emotional ambivalence

When we have feelings of love and hate we can begin to consider ourselves emotionally ambivalent.. This does not mean that we feel hate first and then love, or vice versa. Emotional ambivalence is characterized because these two emotions, love and hate do not replace each other, but can coexist together without moving one another.

Can ambivalence be considered a psychological disorder? On many occasions, this ambivalence occurs in people who suffer from a mental disorder.. For example, people with depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, or neurosis may display ambivalent behavior.

But, The most common situation in which this ambivalence occurs is when we suffer from jealousy.. In these, we love the person who is next to us, but at the same time we hate them for interacting with other people or being attractive to others.

Emotional ambivalence is normal, but it can cause us several problems when we relate, since we ourselves would not know how to define what we feel. And what to say if we are in a relationship. Ambivalence can confuse us and cause the relationship to not go as well that we would like.

In the skin of the ambivalent

If you’ve never found yourself in this situation, you probably don’t know how a person whose feelings of love and hate are sharing the same emotion can feel.

The ambivalent feel attraction and repulsion towards a personThe ambivalent person loves a person, but hates certain attitudes they have. The ambivalent person may want to speak and not speak at the same timeThe ambivalent may want to act and, at the same time, remain passive.

All these contradictory feelings that the ambivalent person suffers cause something that many of us hate: when we remain paralyzed without knowing which path we should choose.

Consequences of being emotionally ambivalent

Ambiguity is one of the characteristics of ambivalent peoplewho see their self-esteem hurt because of their inability to decide between two opposing feelings. The person himself feels strange to his own emotions. She doesn’t know how to act and how to stop feeling two emotions that should never merge into one.

This situation of confusion causes their self-esteem to be very low, since they fail to maintain a healthy emotional balance. The ambivalent begins to distrust himself, he really no longer knows what he feels or stops feeling. This sometimes gives rise to anxiety and loneliness that can lead to deep depression.

Emotional ambivalence is not a state that lasts long. At certain moments we feel confused by this fusion of emotions, but it is something temporary and will not always happen. Unless, as we have already seen, we suffer from some type of psychological disorder.

And you… are you ambivalent? Do you move between love and hate?

Ambivalence and psychoanalysis

The concept of ambivalence was introduced by the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1911 and has been widely used in the psychoanalytic current. According to the author, this notion It refers to the emotional attitude where two contradictory impulses coexist and derive from a common source.

However, For Bleuler and psychoanalysis, affective ambivalence does not consist of consciously experiencing two contrary emotions.. That is, except in some cases of obsessional neurosis, one of the emotions is usually repressed.

For example, the love a person feels for his father can be consciously experienced and openly expressed; while hatred for the same object (the father) tends to be strongly repressed and manifested only indirectly.

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