We are humans, we have emotions. There are times when we feel sad and times we feel happy. But the most confusing feeling to me is the one that mixes both sadness and happiness.
I don't know if you've ever felt that way before in your life. I'll give you a perfect example. The Kind of feeling that a parent gets when he or she sends her child off to college or even give their daughters hand in marriage.
Parents that have created a deep bond between themselves and the child will experience both happiness and sadness at that time. They're Happy their child is all grown up and leaving to college or getting married but at the same time they're sad they want to seeing them as often as they do.
From a science perspective I wanted to figure out what's going on in a person's brain during that moment.
Scientists are starting to do their research into how we can feel two totally opposite emotions at once. They found out that the brain doesn’t treat these feelings like a simple switch. There are certain parts of the brain, like the anterior cingulate cortex that actually manages these complex, mixed feelings.
That part of the brain is able to balance out the mixed emotions that we feel. I'm not an expert at this but that's what I've learned so far and I'm glad I could share it with you. Maybe these parts of the brain is the reason why we can reflect on painful moments and not feel the pain like it felt before, I'm just speculating I could be wrong on this one.
