Emotions seem to stir within us without much warning; some are easier to recognise than others – especially the ones that are more socially acceptable. We often try to extend those we perceive to be pleasant and avoid the disturbing ones. Wanting to avoid certain emotions has to do more with misunderstanding our relationship with emotions rather than the emotions themselves. Psychologists themselves can add to the confusion by dividing emotions into negative and positive ones, thus suggesting that some are more desirable than others.
There are a few theories about what emotions are and there are several definitions, each aligned with a specific theory. The general tendency is to consider emotions as a source of information about external and internal changes, both physical and psychological. There is, according to some theories, a cognitive stage that helps to make sense of raw sensations converting them into feelings. According to this view, feelings are a subjective representation of emotions; this distinction becomes less useful when we struggle to make sense of complex situations. In this post, I refer to emotions and feelings interchangeably as they not always distinguishable.
Lisa Feldman Barrett of North Eastern University in the US believes that an emotion is the brain categorising sensations and making them meaningful. These sensations are our responses to our immediate external and internal environment.
It is not unusual for people to struggle to identify some feelings, some can be complex and contradictory at the same time. We can feel sad about the ending of one relationship and at the same time excited, guilty and fearful about new possibilities, to give one example. Those feelings that we find hard to name are also hard to understand and can therefore be overwhelming and confusing.
If you cannot tell what you are feeling, it can be a lot more difficult to know what to do. While naming a feeling or an emotion is not necessary for its purpose, it can help to put a frame around them, to understand the experience and to make the experience meaningful. In a way, labels can be liberating, they might not change our feelings, but they can give us the possibility to choose our response.
This is not without caveat, once an emotion has a name, cultural rules start developing regarding when it is right and desired to feel what. Sadness has definitely got a bad name in a society that obsesses about happiness, the same may be true for fear, doubt, grief and despair to name a few.
If we treat all emotions and feelings as equal, we can get a much richer picture of what is going on for us most of the time; more so, we can enrich our relationships, especially with those closest to us.
Studies (e.g. Kashdan and colleagues, 2015 ) show that naming our emotions can help us to master them and our inner life. They write that “being able to carefully perceive and distinguish the rich complexity in emotional experiences is a key component in psychological interventions”. I would add a key component in our wellbeing and the wellbeing of our relationships. They found that labelled emotions become easier to regulate and they either become irrelevant or facilitate personal striving, for example anger propelling a person to defend him/herself.
When a person struggles to regulate intense emotion, such as distress, important life aims become secondary and that influences our relationships. By and large, our relationships probably have the biggest impact on how we feel. People who are close to us can make us feel loved, acceptable and that we belong. They can make us feel rejected as well. Getting to know our emotions can have far reaching benefits to our social life. For a relationship to work, we need to let others influence us.
The idea in practice
- Emotions are a useful source of information about what is going on around us and within us, they can tell us whether our environment is safe, nourishing and enriching or hostile and harmful to our wellbeing. Accepting emotions and feelings as such can help us to engage in richer, enduring and nurturing relationships.
- If you don’t find it easy to identify feelings, try identifying body sensations, they are a good place to start. Tension, pain, shallow or deep, slow or fast breathing, fast heart rate etc can be tell a lot. Because conceptual knowledge is embodied, it can also serve to modify internal sensation and reduce intense emotions.
- Build a vocabulary as you would for a new language. Feeling sad for the loss of one thing and hopeful about the prospects of something new can take place simultaneously. Richer labels offer more flexibility and potential less social pressure. Psychotherapy can be useful in identifying emotions and feelings and linking them to people and situations. It can also be useful in learning to regulate them and get a true sense of managing our responses.
