Emotional experience is a fact of human existence, and emotional expression is assumed to be essential for healthy adjustment. It is important to experience and to claim as one's own the capacity to feel the whole range of emotions. The open acknowledgment and genuine expression of feelings often made possible in family, friendships or therapy contribute to enhanced self-understanding, self-acceptance and more adequate personal adjustment. There is sometimes a fine line between this and a preoccupation with self which can be self-defeating, interfering with normal functioning.

Positive relationships may help an individual realize the former and prevent the latter, as growth is experienced in a mutually trusting context. The experiencing of emotions is related to thinking styles and recent writers have suggested that the individual can (or must) come to choose how s/he feels from one situation to another by increasing his or her ability to "monitor" emotional experience, being responsive in acknowledging feelings, and then changing what s/he tells him or herself about what experience means.