What Are Emotions? – Brainstorm
What is an emotion to you? Share your preliminary definition and/or characteristics of emotions.
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Emotions is an experience, accompanied by sensations in my body, and thoughts, with a feeling tone of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. It’s my body’s way of alerting me that something important to my well-being/survival is going on. The emotion and my relationship to it… whether it creates other emotions too depends on my personal past, my socialisation, what I learned in social groups etc. as well as on the human evolutionary history relating to our needs for safety, satisfaction (pleasure) and connection (social supply). I can experience seemingly opposite emotions at the same time.
For a long time I had no idea what emotions were. But now I think of them as my unconscious mind communicating with my conscious mind.
Just like my body communicates with my mind by making the feeling of hunger to say ‘I need food’, my unconscious mind communicates with my conscious mind by making the feeling of anger to say ‘A line has been crossed’.
These feelings are ‘honest’ in the sense that they are the best attempt at communicating what is perceived. But they might not always be ‘right’.
An emotion is a physical state and process that comes up within us in response to certain stimuli from either our environment or from within (internal stimuli such as memories from the past or fantasies about the future). They often influence and/or are accompanied by a particular style of thinking, so they are a personal experience that is both physical and mental. Emotions can also be influenced by certain habitual thinking styles. Emotions–thoughts are a body–mind experience.
An important characteristic of emotion is that they are intensely personal – they may be expressed externally, but they happen or start internally. No one can make another feel an emotion. Other people’s behaviour may trigger an emotion, but that behaviour is not the cause of the emotion – ultimately, we choose our emotions (even if this choice is below conscious awareness, as in the case of feeling fear upon seeking a snake). I think we are often mistaken about this, saying things like, “You made me angry.” This is a case of blaming another for our lack of emotional regulation.
Another important characteristic of emotion is that they are temporary – no emotion lasts forever. When an emotion appears to be permanent, it is no longer an emotion but has changed into a mood, trait or disorder. Trouble is, they feel intensely permanent sometimes and we can have a tendency to project into the future the belief that we will always feel how we are feeling during a particularly intense emotional episode.
Emotions are essential for our survival, helping us to navigate the perils and havens of the world: fear and disgust prevent us from interacting with things that could be dangerous; happiness, peace and joy attract us to places that are healthy for us.
Emotions are also essential for helping us to form bonds with other people and with our environment: love encourages us to care for each other and the planet; sadness prevents us from mistreating each other and our material wealth.
Emotions give our lives a sense of meaning and purpose, helping us to navigate the world in a way that is enriching (if we have emotional balance) or debilitating (if we have emotional imbalance).
A lot of my emotions I feel on the body language.
Or maybe it’s already feelings?
Well, I bet it is very comunicated one with another. So when I feel a goospamps, it’s normally excitement or a pleasant surprise. Or when I feel overwhelmed in my body, that comes close to my throat, normally it’s anger. Maybe its a bit silly, but for me it’s really very difficult to recognise my emotions.. So lately I focus on the body. To find out better how does it works.
An emotion is often an immediate thing that emerges in my heart or my stomach, and it is defined by what it is in my mind…what I “make up” about its meaning.
I’m really not sure how I sense that I’m experiencing emotion. I watch my mind a lot so I see the thoughts and emotions as they arise. Emotions seem to be the way in which I feel myself in the narrative of my life, they’re my reaction to everything that my senses take in.
I think it’s the “organic” reaction of our body to circumstances we are in. Emotions can be caused by both “real” circumstances and the ones we imagine.
Emotions are mental states which change and can be positive or negative.
emotions are physiological and psychological states that have a function of “moving” us towards or away from something. For example anger might tell us that our boundaries have been broken and give us energy to fight for them. Fear might tell us to run away from danger.
I know the above from what i’ve learn from psychology, but to be honest I’m a bit confused about happiness and love. Maybe they just move us towards what gives us a sense of connection, fulfillment and satisfaction, thus informing us about what really matters to us. They would then be like maps that lead us to the very center of our being.
Emotion is how I feel about myself and the world in a given moment. It’s easy for me to get lost in emotions, lose a big picture and completely buy the image of the world and myself they are selling. I can sometimes recognize when it happens, but often need time to do it and struggle to not identify with them.
Many good examples. You’re also talking about the “Refractory Period” a central component in how emotions work that we dive deep into.
Emotions are innate physiological reactions to some level of stimuli that inform our thought processes and tend to hold at least some influence over our behaviors, but often much more. As much as they can be associated with a state of “feeling,” they also inform the body towards some behavior that instinctively would seem to benefit the individual if subsequently expressed to an appropriate degree.
For me I think emotions begin to form when we are in our mothers womb.
They are a fusion of our environments, circumstances, moods, experiences, and our relationships with others and they can govern our feelings and how we receive the world around us and the people and whatever else we are in contact with and how we respond, is through our emotions.
I believe emotions should not be ranked or be stated that one is better than the other. They’re our teachers – each emotion has a reason they’re presenting themselves and each provide a lesson in that moment we feel them.
Emotions are natural reactions to stimuli that are assessed as significant to our well-being and/or wholeness. They are complex reactions of a psychophysiological nature. They are usually accompanied by physical sensations, thoughts and tendencies to act. They can be pleasant or unpleasant.
Emotions are internal sensations that we think, feel, and react to. They can impact how you feel about yourself, how you react to the world and in your relationships.
Emotions are – it so bizarre not to have a ready answer or even a considered one.
Emotions are a way of being and feeling, and thinking that is coloured or characterised by a particular set of qualities; e.g. happiness is a positive emotion, inclining us to smile, laugh, release endorphins, relax, feel well.
I am over 50 years old and have had a lot of emotions through out my life, in fact I also know the feeling of not really feeling a whole lot as it has been described here before. Being cut off feelings really makes you wonder about the worthwhile living. Despite all these experiences I have never spent a thought on definition or even how emotions work. I am familiar with the biochemical aspect of Joy, Fear and Sadness but all the other basic emotions I cannot remember having heard about their pathways in the brain and the programms which get activated by being released.
In fact, there is a whole new world to dive into and I find myself emotionally uneducated. What a revelation! Thank you for that🙏
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