How does the monkey act when it is hooked on smoking? The monkey will initially be overjoyed having found relief from its greatest foe: physical and emotional pain. Painful emotions such as stress, boredom, sadness, shame, guilt, and fear, just to name a few, are also referred to as negative emotions or painful emotions simply because they don’t feel good. The empty tank indicator in a car can be considered a painful or negative indicator because it indicates a need for fuel. The empty tank indicator is a positive indicator if we consider that it motivates us to refuel before we get stranded on the highway. It all hinges on our perspective. There is no such thing as a negative emotion. All emotion are positive emotions. A painful emotion is basically any emotion that is not a pleasure-emotion and are generally there to motivate action. The pain of a stubbed toe motivates us to avoid stubbing our toes and be more careful. Feeling heartache motivates us to build and maintain relationships and avoid certain death. Isolation, through lack of relationships, from other humans is equal to death and given enough time will lead to death, the body simply gives up on living without relationships. We need relationships like we need air and just like the air we breathe relationships need to be free from pollution. The monkey lives in a world where the highest priority is avoidance of pain, first physical pain and then emotional pain, pleasure seeking is only secondary to pain avoidance for the monkey. We could argue that emotional pain is more intolerable and severe than physical pain, if it weren’t for the fact that emotions and feelings are highly subjective, and that no two humans will have the exact same intensity of emotions in any given situation. A broken bone will be more painful for a child than for an adult, because the adult has had more chances in life to experience pain and has built up a tolerance for pain. Given a choice most of us would prefer the temporary pain of broken bones than the seemingly intolerable permanent pain of loss of loved ones.