We would not be human without emotions. They are essential to our survival. Without them it’s almost impossible to communicate, maintain relationships, and navigate many of the challenges we face. Our emotions allow us to recognize situations in our environment that we need to address and can provide us with the motivation to take action. However, our feelings can also be very confusing and there are times when we all wish we could change how we feel or eliminate our emotions entirely.
When we’re young, we learn how to identify and express our emotions based on feedback from our environment. We label our feelings with help from the people around us, usually our parents or caregivers. This means that our life experiences impact our ability to recognize and display our emotions. If our early years are spent with caregivers who are emotionally responsive, it’s usually easy to interpret our emotions. However, if our caregivers are not emotionally responsive, or if we’re discouraged from expressing certain feelings, it may be difficult to understand our emotions. Certain cultural beliefs like “boys don’t cry” and “it’s not ladylike to be angry” add additional complications to this process. We may be told that our feelings are “too much” or inappropriate. This is not to say that others are always to blame if we have difficulty expressing or managing our emotions. Even in a supportive environment, we can struggle to understand why we feel the way we do or how to express our feelings constructively. If we’ve been discouraged from expressing our feelings or experience emotions as overwhelming and unproductive, we may develop unhealthy coping strategies or learn to avoid our feelings altogether.
Emotional numbing or avoidance can create an additional challenge. Emotional numbing can help us survive a difficult or traumatic situation but can leave us struggling to understand our feelings or lead to responses that are confusing to others. Emotional avoidance consists of conscious and unconscious strategies that we employ to escape emotions that we feel ill-prepared to cope with. Emotional avoidance may simply consist of forcing away thoughts that elicit uncomfortable feelings or may involve habits that help us distract or distance ourselves from our feelings.
It’s not unusual for individuals to identify “being happy” as a goal. While feeling happy is certainly a wonderful experience, there are some significant disadvantages to feeling that way all of the time. Our feelings can help us examine our lives and recognize and respond to situations that need our attention. We only need to recall a time when a sudden feeling of fear helped us avoid an accident or when feeling lonely caused us to reach out to a supportive friend to recognize how our feelings can help us. Our emotions are also critical for successful social relationships and making choices about what is important to us. Getting through life without the full range of emotions would be like trying to navigate a complicated journey without a compass. This is not to say that we should not try to influence our emotions. So, even though our emotions are constantly changing in response to our internal and external environment, we certainly influence them through our thoughts and behaviors. Our interpretation of the events in our lives can influence our feelings, as do the behaviors we choose.
The basic emotions that we’re born with include:
Sadness
Sadness tells us that we’ve lost something important. Situations that may trigger sadness include: failing the exam for your promotion at work, the end of a relationship, or the loss of a valued possession.
Anger
Anger tells us that our expectations have been violated. Anger can surface in situations such as: getting cut off in traffic, others who disregard rules or regulations, and being ignored.
Fear
Fear is designed to help recognize and respond to threats. Fear may be triggered by a physical threat to ourselves or our concern for the safety or well being of another person.
Contentment
Feelings of contentment tell us that we’re satisfied with ourselves or something in our environment. This pleasurable feeling makes us more likely to repeat behaviors that trigger this emotional state in the future.
Complex Emotions
Of course, you may recognize more complex emotions that are not listed above like shame, guilt, or jealousy. These more complicated emotions are learned and generally involve a combination of the basic emotions along with your thoughts and judgments about people or situations.
To read more about emotions from the perspective of a trauma survivor, please check out my co-author’s blog post Get up and go.