Emotions 201

Emotions: Why do we have them?

Last time we chatted we reviewed the basics of emotions. We learned that emotions are the result of our interpretations of internal and external events, which in turn are the result of our beliefs. Our beliefs are formed, shaped, and handed down to us through our experiences with the world, our cultural upbringing and environment, and our personal narratives, or the stories we tell ourselves. When I refer to internal and external events, I basically mean evvverything you can perceive.

External events are things that happen outside of your body:

•  Someone cuts you off in traffic
• You witness someone crying
• A puppy runs towards you

Internal events are things that happen inside of your body:

• You feel nervous before public speaking
• You feel excitement at the thought of a meeting with a friend 
• You feel embarrassed at being stood up on a date

As mentioned in the previous post, the emotions that are generated from our interpretation of these events are often layered. Primary negative emotions are the first reaction and usually are of a powerless nature (e.g., fear, pain, sadness). Secondary emotions layer on top of those vulnerable primary emotions in an effort to make sense of the interpretation and protect you (e.g., anger, frustration, self-righteousness).

As we gain a better foothold into respecting and honoring our emotions, I’d like to review some basic information about why we have emotions. At the most fundamental level, emotions ensure that we survive. When we first experience anger at injuring ourselves as young children, we learn that we don’t like to feel pain. Similarly, when we experience fear of our caregiver’s scolding after we reach towards the stove, we learn to do what our caregiver says so as to avoid the fear of another person’s anger. These early emotional experiences are part of our emotional survival mechanisms. Without emotions, we wouldn’t know to run away from a tiger in the middle of the jungle. Without emotions, we wouldn’t learn to avoid walking into traffic and to seek love and affection, thereby securing social bonds.

Commonly, if you ask someone how he or she feels about an event or situation, their answer will be “good” or “bad.” And this level of specificity is just fine much of the time. In the United States, a common social greeting is to say, “Hey, how are you?” with the typical expectation that the answerer will respond something brief and nonspecific such as “good,” “fine,” or “just dandy.” This cultural practice was a disheartening learning experience for a Turkish friend of mine who moved to the U.S. for college. He would be greeted in passing with, “Hey, how are you?” by an American classmate and he’d often find himself chasing after the classmate, trying to fully express and explain how he was doing, while the American classmate seemed confused about all the specificities. In these culturally-laden circumstances, it’s completely appropriate to identify your feelings as merely “good” or “bad.” However, when we’re really trying to understand what’s going on for you with regards to a certain situation or event, more information is very necessary. Let’s talk about some common emotions with some more specific examples. 

Anger is an emotion that often arises when we interpret a situation in a threatening manner and feel the need to defend ourselves. For example, let’s say you have an employee named Bob who is a little more than lackluster in work performance. He seems to be completely disregarding your wishes and is spending the majority of his time at work shopping for his next rim upgrade for his car. This can be interpreted as threatening on a number of different levels. First, Bob is disregarding your authority in this situation (threatening your position in the structure of the company). Second, he is wasting company resources (threatening your ability to move the company forward). Third, he is taking up your time and energy (threatening your work morale). And so on. Often when we experience these thoughts and the emotion of anger, our response is to defend ourselves. And so anger shows up, asking you to pull the plug on his computer and kick him out in the most shame-inducing manner possible. 

 

Jealousy arises when we see something that someone else has, and believe that we can’t also have that thing. Often jealousy arises due to an interpretation that includes a filter of the scarcity mentality. The scarcity mentality orients us to perceive the world from a glass-half-empty stance, believing that another’s successes and victories take away from our own ability to be successful and victorious. So, if your other co-worker, Janice, gets a promotion, you might experience jealousy if you have adopted the view that your company has finite promotion resources and her success crowds out your own. 

Many, many other negative emotions can arise due to our interpretations, such as regret, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, envy, fear, anxiety, and more. These emotions are difficult to experience and, due to a lack of training in tolerance for these emotions within many industrialized cultures, we often seek to run away from these experiences. Fortunately, we often can experience multitudes of positive emotions that are resultant from our interpretations, as well, such as contentment, bliss, joy, gratitude, appreciation, and inspiration. The ability to increase our experiences of positive emotions requires that we first recognize and gain awareness into when we do experience negative emotions, and then work to understand and examine the interpretations that led to the development of those emotions.

So, for the next week or so, I recommend that you simply ask yourself five times a day (yes, all five), “what am I feeling? How am I feeling it?” Set an alarm if you have to. This may take a few minutes initially, but eventually you’ll gain speed with your ability to identify different feeling states. Notice how each feeling state feels at an emotional, physical, and mind level.

             

Ask yourself: 

• what feelings am I having right now?
• Where do I feel those feelings in my body?
• What is my mind doing in response to these feelings? 

At this point, there is no need to try to change your emotion, though if you’re feeling down, chances are you’ll be pulled in that direction automatically. No matter; you can let your emotional processes continue to function as typical for you and we’ll talk about that in later posts. For now, just increase your ability to identify what’s going on for you at least 5 different times in the day. The goal of this exercise is to raise your awareness of your emotional state, as well as its fluctuations throughout the day.

Use and even print out the feeling list I’ve posted here as a guide. You may find some feelings show up more than others. That’s useful information. You may also find that you experience some feelings that are included on this list – what are those? I’d love to hear in the comments.