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THEY SHAPE US. THEY DO NOT DEFINE US.

DIRECTORY OF WORD LISTS
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FEELINGS & EMOTIONS


​FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS RELATED DIRECTORIES OF LISTS

RELATED GLOSSARIES

Mental Health Guides and Glossaries
​​Glossaries Available:
Psychology ~ Neuroscience ~ The Brain
The Mind ~ Thoughts ~ Memory ~ Motivation Attention ~ Emotion~ ​Love ~ Sex ~ Relationships
Mindfulness ~ Yoga ~ Spirit

FEATURED LISTS


​PONDERING THE PSYCHE
A feature of psychology words and terms related to the brain, mind, and thoughts
PONDERING THE PHOBIA
Complete. collection of phobias to peruse and ponder and if you need help, check the library for the associated content from my books and self care guides on managing fear and anxiety.
CAPACITY FOR LOVE
Our capacity for love, affection & relationships ​
THE STORY OF SOULMATES
DEFINING THE STORY OF A KISS
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​RIDING THE CRAZY TRAIN​
Guide to Understanding Your Emotions
​Your feelings and emotions matter. They mean something to you. They affect your life. They are a part of you. It’s normal. The secret is to own them and not let them own you. They do not define us.
PREVIEW ONLINE | DOWNLOAD BOOK

​SECRETS OF THE HEART​
​Defining and Understanding the Meaning of Attraction, Lust, Affection, Love, Sex
​Love. We think about it, sing about it, dream about it, worry about it. When we don’t have it, we search for it; when we discover it, we don’t know what to do with it; and when we have it, we fear losing it. How to define it? Do we understand it?
PREVIEW ONLINE | DOWNLOAD BOOK

​BE MINDFUL BE WELL
Series of mindfulness centered self care
​Learn the principles of compassionate self care and how to integrate mindfulness principles in the care and growth of your emotional health.
LEARN MORE AND DOWNLOAD
The only time we think about our feelings and emotions are when we are actively engaging with them. Like when you explode in anger, break down in tears, burst with joy, or die from embarrassment. And we don’t analyze these feelings for what they are. We don’t try to find meaning. When we feel bad, we judge and criticize ourselves, our actions, thoughts or behaviors. When we feel good, we can easily second guess ourselves, think we are undeserving or expect something to ruin it. When we feel indifferent, we can feel confused. We think, is there something wrong with me that I don’t care? And finally, when we lose control we can feel like we are riding the crazy train. But you know what? Everybody rides that train with you. Why?

Because that is what our brains do.

You are so hard on yourself
​Take a moment. Sit back.
Look at the wonder of your life
...the love that softened you
...the burdens that wisened you
...the grief that strengthened you
...the hard lessons that taught you
Despite it all, You grew.
THAT’S ALL YOU.

WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?


​EMOTIONS are biological states associated with the nervous system brought on by neurophysiological changes in thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and degrees of pleasure or displeasure. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, creativity and motivation. Emotions are responses to significant internal and external events and are the result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger. From a purely mechanistic perspective, emotions can be defined as a positive or negative experience that is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity. Changes include increased pulse rate, body temperature, activity in the glands, or an increased or decreased breathing rate.

The word emotion dates back to 1579, when it was adapted from the French word ‘émouvoir’ which means "to stir up". The term emotion was introduced into academic discussion as a catch-all term to passions, sentiments and affections. It was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown and it was around the 1830s that the modern concept of emotion first emerged for the English language. People prior to 1830 called emotions "passions", "accidents of the soul", "moral sentiments" - and explained them very differently from how we understand emotions today.

Emotions or Feelings - What is the Difference?Most neuroscientists distinguish between the words “emotion” and “feeling.” They are two separate functions that perform different things.
  • Emotions are physical and qualitative.
  • Feelings are mental and subjective.

DEFINING EMOTIONS
What is an Emotional Response?
Emotion is typically defined as a response to stimuli that causes physiological changes that motivate a person to act. Emotions are lower level responses occurring in the subcortical regions, amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortices of your brain. Brain activity triggers biochemical reactions in your body. At the core of any emotion is a complexity of changes in your body. These changes prepare your body to take action. For example, fear triggers the “fight or flight” response in the amygdala which then prepares your body for defense. Historically, psychologists have disagreed as to whether emotions arise before an action, occur at the same time as an action, or are a response to an automatic physiological process.

Emotions are an evolutionary advantage which helped humanity survive by producing quick reactions to perceived threats in the environment. Emotional reactions are hardcoded in our genes, in our DNA, and vary slightly from person to person, depending on the circumstances. However, they’re universally similar within all humans and even other species.

Emotions come before feelings and they are physical and instinctual. They can be objectively measured by factors like blood flow, brain activity, facial expressions, and body language because they’re physical or biological. Feelings, on the other hand, cannot. We cannot measure anything about a feeling. Emotions are physical. Feelings are all mental.

Emotions can be conceptualized in one of three main ways: as experiences, as evaluations, and as motivations. Emotions have meaning and the feelings they prompt are subjective and differ depending on your mental capacity, environment and past and present experiences and memories. Your beliefs, temperament, and experiences shape your own emotional responses.

Emotions can last from a split second to a few minutes. We experience negative emotions longer than positive emotions. The mood is longer than the emotion. We can stay in it from a few minutes to several days.

Some emotions are occurrences (panic); dispositions (hostility); short-lived (anger) long-lived (grief); involve primitive cognitive processing (fear from danger); involve sophisticated cognitive processing (fear of losing); some are conscious (disgust) and others are unconscious (fear of failure); some have facial expressions (surprise) and others lack them (regret); some involve strong motivations to act (rage) and others do not (sadness); some are present across species (fear) and others are exclusively human (schadenfreude).

It has been suggested that objects (emotions) have representative properties. For example, anger represents slights, fear represents dangers, shame represents failures to live up to an ideal, sadness represents losses, happiness represents progress towards goal, and pride represents enhancement of one’s ego identity.

DEFINING FEELINGS
What Makes Them Subjective?
In Latin, sentire meant to feel, hear or smell. In psychology, the word is usually reserved for the conscious subjective experience of emotion. In psychology, the word is usually reserved for the conscious subjective experience of emotion. Perception of the physical world does not necessarily result in a universal reaction among people. This makes this perception -feeling - subjective.

Subjectivity is that which influences, informs, and biases people's judgments about truth or reality; it is the collection of the perceptions, experiences, expectations, and personal or cultural understanding of, and beliefs about, something specific to you. Subjectivity is contrasted to objectivity, which is described as a view of truth or reality that is free of any individual's biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings.

Feelings are known as a state of consciousness resulting from emotions, sentiments or desires. Feelings are felt, they are abstract in nature and they cannot be touched. Inner feelings can only be suppressed in order to achieve the expression one wants people to see on the outside.

Feelings are the conductors of your crazy train. They are generated by emotions and influenced by thoughts, memories, and beliefs that have been subconsciously linked to a particular emotion for you. It works the other way around too. For example, just remembering a traumatic moment or thinking about a threat can trigger an emotional response in your body like fear. While individual emotions are temporary, the feelings they evoke can persist and grow over time. They are progressive. They contribute to ongoing conditions like depression or anxiety.

Because emotions influence subconscious feelings to initiate even more thoughts, your life can become a never-ending cycle of painful and confusing emotions which . produce more negative feelings. It’s a feedback loop and if the cycle is not broken it continues. You can end up anxious or scared all the time. Your amygdala is to blame for this.

Feelings originate in the neocortical regions of your brain and are subjective mental associations and reactions to emotions. They are influenced by your personal experiences, beliefs, and memories. A feeling is a mental picture of what is happening in your body when you have an emotional reaction. It is a composition of your brain’s perception of an emotion and its assignment of meaning.

Feelings are determined to be appropriate if they fit the current situation. People want to fit in and be seen as “normal”, so we are constantly working on our feelings in order to fit in. Emotion work is more so how we want to feel or how we want other people to see us feel. Feelings are not permanent, but rather they are an ongoing thing. People constantly try to bring up, suppress, or manage feelings.

They can’t be controlled.
​But they can be managed.
Feelings happen after an emotion, they involve cognitive input from the subconscious and cannot be measured.

  • Emotions are physical states arising from your body’s responses to external influence and stimuli.
  • Feelings are interpretations your brain makes of your emotions.

Imagine you are a witness to a horrible event and your safety is threatened. You will trigger the emotion of fear. Your body experiences this emotion with panic driven breathing, a racing heart and sweaty palms. If you see injury or a death from the event and you can feel horror or disgust.

  • The threat is the stimulus (event)
  • The fear is the emotion
  • The physical symptoms are the response
  • The horror is the feeling that comes from your interpretation of the event.

Feelings are best understood as a representation of emotions, private to the individual experiencing them. Feelings are also known as a state of consciousness, resulting from emotions, sentiments or desires. Feelings are only felt and are abstract in nature. They cannot be touched.They don’t provide deep wisdom, detailed plans, or the ability to know the future. Our thoughts have a profound impact on our feelings; our feelings affect the way we behave; and our behavior is responsible for our results. Feelings are simply nudges or urges. That’s it.

Feelings are subjective. Subjective means unique to you. They are the conscious experience of emotional reactions. Originating in the neocortical regions of the brain, feelings are sparked by emotions and are shaped by experiences, beliefs, memories, and thoughts linked to that particular emotion. A feeling is the byproduct of your brain perceiving an emotion and then assigning a certain meaning to it. Sometimes the meaning is clear and sometimes not. For example, the calendar shows you that today is the day your father died. The emotional response is grief. Sadness drums up memories of him that create the feelings of nostalgia. Nostalgia is subjective and it needs your memories and experiences in order to manifest.

GUT FEELINGS
A gut feeling, or gut reaction, is a visceral emotional reaction to something. It may be negative, such as a feeling of uneasiness, or positive, such as a feeling of respect or trust. Gut feelings are generally not regulated by conscious thought, but act as a function of intuition rather than rationality. The idea that emotions are experienced in the gut has a long historical record, and many nineteenth-century doctors considered the origins of mental illness to derive from the intestines.

The phrase "gut feeling" may also be considered as a term for your "common sense," or the perception of what is considered "the right thing to do.” It can also refer to simple common knowledge phrases which are true no matter when said, such as "fire is hot", or ideas of what you intuitively regard as true.

MINDFULNESS CENTERED SELF CARE
​Learn to care for your emotions

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THEY SHAPE US. THEY DO NOT DEFINE US.