Examples Of Emotions – Brainstorm

[Unknown Member]

Emotions I feel most regularly are anger, frustration, contentment, joy, appreciation of beauty… yesterday I saw a double rainbow! I was sitting in my living room and throw the trees, ( I looked up because it was suddenly bright after being dark and rainy) and noticed what looked like a rainbow. I got excited, jumped up, grabbed my camera (phone) and raced upstairs to the terrace where I would be able to see it well. I spent many moments appreciating it. The photo was not so important, simply to be a trigger afterwards to cheer me up and perhaps send to my 2 adult kids! I really marvelled at it and noticed how on the one side there was a double rainbow , the second going to almost half of the length of the first one underneath. The main complete rainbow was more than a semi-circle. I let myself be drawn into the lines of color, noticing the different thicknesses even in each color. I felt like time stood still, like I was part of something awesome, and moved. I felt energized afterwards and serene.
Today, I saw a post in the facebook page of the municipality I live in with their picture of the double rainbow over the municipal building. There was an invitation to post one if you had – but I decided not to. On the one hand I was excited and wanting to share … then I got ‘shy’ and didn’t.

Just thinking about it now connects me to that joy again.

[Unknown Member]

my other rainbow picture. it seems like the first post took both but is showing only one for me. so here is the single rainbow that appeared first (rainbow2 … got labels mixed)

[Bodhi 心 Schier-Paine]

I often feel a lot of confusion around which emotion is which – I feel like I lack the vocabulary, but also, emotional experience is so often a matrix of emotions, not just a single one that can be pinned down with any single concise label.

I also feel like having this (conceptual) vocabulary is secondary to having (experiential) awareness of whether an emotional experience is destructive or constructive, and knowing this is usually a result of reflecting on the kinds of thinking that the emotional episode triggers.

Getting a sense of how to modify that triggered thinking usually brings me back to a sense of emotional balance without having clearly known which of the various emotions I had been experiencing.

If I had to pin a few emotions down I would say I most frequently experience the anger spectrum, ranging from mild annoyance and frustration through to rage and fury on the very rare occasion. I think that as my compassion practice deepens I am beginning to feel sadness more often, which I see as a sign of progress.

I have known for a long time that there is a deep well of sadness inside me, but I have rarely actually felt it – I think this repressed sadness expresses itself as a sometimes-quite-short temper. I learnt from a crisis helpline recently that anger is often a secondary emotion, and that sadness is often the primary emotion that underpins it. It is hard to feel sadness and anger at the same time, which is why I feel like I’m making progress to be in contact with the sadness more often. By allowing the sadness to rise and dwell and fall away (as all emotions can and should be allowed to do), I hope there will be less fuel for the (misplaced) anger.

I sometimes feel happiness and even joy but, having seen through the illusion of the hedonic treadmill some years ago, these experiences rarely arise in direct response to anything that has actually happened – they are moments of wellbeing that well up in the midst of things, rather than in response to anything in particular. These moments are rare because I am yet to replace the hedonic treadmill with a suitable eudaemonic alternative, so there is yet a void left behind where the treadmill was.

I do sometimes feel joy when I am swimming at the creek because it’s a beautiful natural setting and it feels good to just be in my natural habitat. If this is a hedonic pleasure, then so be it. I feel happy when I am studying or doing hobbies and when I have had enough rest and solitude to be present with others.

I was going to say that I rarely feel disgust or contempt, but then I remembered that during and after especially difficult experiences and their attendant destructive emotions, I often feel a deep sense of self-contempt and disgust, even suicidal ideation although thankfully never to the point of suicidal intention.

I try to respond to these very painful emotions with self-compassion exercises, and they help, but there is still a lot of training to be done before I feel confident I will be able to catch the spark before it ignites the flame of self-loathing. Practising the preliminary meditations of the Tibetan lojong is helping with the suicidality because it reminds me that whether I believe in reincarnation or not, the human experience is of extraordinary value and should not be terminated out of self-loathing.

I would like to learn more about the vocabulary of emotions, but more than that I would like to develop a stronger and more-reliable experience of the “inner felt sense” of emotions. I feel like that “visceral” vocabulary would be more useful in the long-run, because the limitations of language might end up clouding the issue if I think I have the right vocabulary, but actually don’t, whereas the body doesn’t lie. I would like to feel emotions more than I think about them, because thinking about them seems to be usually what gets me in worse trouble than if I were able to just feel them and let them fall away.

[Nataliia]

It’s very difficult to recognize and spell what emotions I feel and if they are emotions or feelings in general. Sometimes I am guessing. But it’s definitely what makes us alive. Lately I even like to feel whatever comes, is it joy, or anger, or sadness, or curiosity. All spectrum makes me feel alive. It’s showing who I am at this moment. Unfortunately, I was hiding a lot of them for a long time. It was so ruin. At some point, I felt like an empty body, who react just based on experience a and pure mind. Life became so dry… Meanless walking thru the spiral, unable change anything. But everything is changing

And emotions are the tool to live our life fully.

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  Nataliia.

[Pamela Patton]

I see in myself a lot of jealousy, disappointment, sorrow, anxiety, and resentment. I also see a lot of happiness with nuances of awe, satisfaction, rejoicing for myself or others, and connection to others. All the feelings I have throughout the day are a kaleidoscope–there is so much going on in my mind. I was watching my son play really well in a baseketball game yesterday–I felt pride, great joy for myself and for him, and disappointment that he has been ill and can’t plan consistently. I was taking a walk this morning, and I had to keep bring my mind back to the feel of the cold weather, the flitting birds in the woods, the pull from my dogs in their enthusiasm, because I kept having thoughts about all sorts of things that made me feel various emotions.

[Claire Steichen]

I often feel confusion, then shame about my emotions. There are things like jealousy, boredom, frustration, that I can’t accept. When that happens, I slip right into confusion. What is right and OK to feel? Am I supposed to be able to rise above my emotions? Or can I be like a spoiled child? And there is the confusion.

[Dr. Filipe Rocha]

What would be important to understand here is – why can’t those emotions be accepted? Why do you feel shame about them? What taught you so?

[Aleksandra Szymczak]

I think of emotions as those impulses that are the most natural reaction to the situations we are experiencing. I often feel sadness, mostly related to how the past impacted my present. I also often experience anxiety, I worry about the future and therefore I get overwhelmed by the feeling of the need to be better prepared for the future and all the decisions and actions I need to take for the future to be safer.
There are also obviously positive emotions, like joy, awe, happiness, and peacefulness. I feel that the older I get the more rare it is for me to experience those. But when I do, it’s usually over small things. For instance, I feel happy when I sit at the beach and the sun is on my face, or when I ride a bicycle and I see crowns of trees above me, or when my dog is playing with other dogs. Then I feel this deep inner happiness, that is also very fleeting.

[Shelley De Leon]

Emotions are states of being which can be positive or negative. Positive include joy, happiness, contentment, excitement, hopeful, fulfillment, trusting, curious, confident, and loving. Negative emotions are fear, bored, unfulfilled, worried, resentful, frustration, stressed, regretful, and ashamed. There are more of each kind, but I think there are more words for negative emtions than for positive emotions.

[Kasia Morks]

Joy, sadness, anger, shame, fear, resignation, despair, numbness, happiness, peace, calm. I guess I most often experience emotions on the “negative” spectrum although i think it’s partly due to habit of my mind to be in these states. I’m able to experience something else, sometimes surprising and new, when I manage to successfully direct my attention outside, so it’s not in the feedback loop of what’s inside me – and in those moments I feel more free to experience also a sense of connection, love and awe for beauty.

[Noni Eather]

When I was younger I think I found it more difficult to identify the different emotions that I was feeling at different times, with my different life experiences and I felt each of them so strongly, some of the emotions I felt more than others I was confused and mislabeled emotions as well.

I noticed in high school some people would see my emotion of fear as anger.

Over time, as time has gone, I notice the various emotions that come through like the seasons,

I’m still practicing to identify them. Some emotions I have yet to know what I would call them.

Some of these feelings have come through as Happiness & joy, sadness, emptiness & sorrow, anger & frustrations, cool calm and contempt, fear & shame, disgust, resentment, interest, confident

[Dr. Filipe Rocha]

Great awareness. Fear very often does lead to anger, by the way 🙂

[Marta Lopes]

Some of the emotions that com to mind right now: Joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, shame, guilt, melancoly, tranquility, peace, euphorya, despair, anguish, happiness.

[Teri Barnett]

Positive feelings include joy, excitement, happiness, and optimism. Then there are feelings that cause anxiousness such as worry, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Feelings when you are angry, rage, and resentment.

[Monica Raphael]

Gosh any emotions, so many I think, but perhaps a lot of repetition of a few haha let’s see:

pensiveness, delight, warm-heartedness, boredom, impatience, annoyance, affection, gentleness, humility, arrogance, tedium, excitement, fear, anxiety, resentment, benevolence, anger.

Not sure if these are emotions, but we say, “I’m feeling … today.”:

hopeful, charitable, repressed, stuck, trapped, regretful, spontaneous, lively, silly (to relax and lighten the mood sometimes 😉 )

[Dr. Filipe Rocha]

Good list! In the next lesson you will learn how to define emotions and you’ll be able to come back to your list and distinguish which ones are indeed emotions and which ones aren’t.

Also notice the difference between feeling and emotion: just because we say we feel it, it’s not necessarily an emotion 🙂

[Almaz Rustamova]

Fear, anger, sadness, joy, love, gratitude.

[Heinz Brasch]

There are many emotions, that come into my mind. The general (as far as I know) ones are fear, anger, disgust, joy, sadness, suprise, contempt.

And a lot of other names that connects to this categories you can e.g. resentment, annoyed, f**cked, hatred, horrified, disappointed, lost, hurt, pride, joy, amused, pleasured, excited, euphoric, disagreed, against, rejected, frozen, uncertain, inhibited, cautious, overwhelmend…

Maybe concrete names are Frustration, Fury, Bitterness, Aversion, Resignation, Peace, Love etc..

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by  Heinz Brasch.