Emotions Are Not Feelings
How We Gain Control of Our Feelings By Gaining Control of Our Minds
Emotions Are Not Feelings
In this article I posit that emotions (bodily sensations) are different from feelings (bodily sensations + thoughts). I also hypothesize that this core difference between the two means that if we can better control our thinking, we will naturally be able to better guide our emotions. I end by outlining a couple of tactics to help us gain more control of our thoughts.
The word “emotion” is regularly interchanged with the word “feeling”, but they are not the same.
Emotions refer to the sensation in the body that is experienced in response to an external stimulus. A feeling is what you get when you add thinking to the emotion.
Emotions are not inherently good or bad, they just are. Our minds add stories and judgements to emotions, making us think things like “sadness is bad”, “happiness is good”, “anger is bad”, “excitement is good”, “fear is bad”, etc.
By harnessing the power of controlling our thoughts we can guide our emotions in ways that are helpful to us, by changing the story we’re telling ourselves about why we’re feeling what we’re feeling.
The six basic emotions (identified by psychologist Paul Eckman in the 70s) are:
- Happiness
- Sadness
- Anger
- Fear
- Disgust
- Surprise
For each emotion we walk through, we’ll describe the impact it has on the body (the physiological impact) as well as how thinking can further influence the given emotion. We’re only going to focus on the first 4 emotions from above.
The Physiology of Emotions
Happiness. When we feel “happy” the chemicals dopamine and serotonin are being released in our brains. Our heart rate picks up. Our face may flush. We might feel a sense of anticipation in our stomachs.
Our breathing can get faster if the external stimulus is highly stimulating (a loud party) or slower if the external stimulus is less stimulating (a walk in the woods) [1].
Sadness. When we experience sadness, our body releases the hormone cortisol [2]. Our bodies also release a group of hormones known as catecholamines, comprising dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline.
The hormones listed above are commonly called “stress hormones” and being stressed has many downstream impacts. Our heart may not pump as much blood to our extremities, resulting in cold hands and feet. We can get migraines. Our muscles tense up and we feel “wound tight” [3].
Anger. When we feel angry our body releases catecholamines, just like sadness! Again, these comprise dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline. Our heart rate picks up, our blood pressure elevates and our focus narrows on the target of our anger. Additional hormones such as noradrenaline are released into our systems. We are ready to fight.
We can find it difficult to concentrate and memories can’t be formed. We feel out of control and our judgement worsens [4].
Fear. When we perceive a threat and feel scared our heart rate and breathing accelerates and our pupils dilate. The stress hormones adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine are once again released into our body. Glucose is released into our bloodstream, giving us energy to run [5]. Our ability to reason to goes down. Our judgement is impaired, and we feel the urge to run away from the stimulus causing us fear.
The thing that stands out to me when analyzing the physiological effects of the different emotions is the high degree of overlap between the specific chemicals released and other physiological reactions linked to the emotions. For example, adrenaline, dopamine, and norepinephrine feature prominently in most of the emotions.
The classically defined “negative” emotions release the stress hormones, yet the feelings associated with each emotion are not the same. Anger is not the same as fear is not the same as sadness.
Additionally, there are often “sub-layers” to emotions that are hard to tease out. Sadness can refer to grieving, mourning, hopelessness, etc. Anger can have subcomponents of frustration. Even happiness can refer to calm contentment and satisfaction, intoxicating love, anticipation, excitement, or many other feelings.
So how is it possible that the chemical signature of our emotions is so similar and yet what we feel is so different?
Enter thinking.
Thoughts and emotions are intrinsically tied to one another. This means that thoughts can cause emotions and emotions can cause thoughts. Thoughts and emotions also combine in interesting ways.
If someone cuts you off in traffic you might feel angry. However, if you learned that your “offender" was driving to the emergency room because their child had gotten hurt, your anger would most likely dissipate. Reality influences our emotions, but our mind creates additional stories about reality that further influence our emotions.
In the “road rage” example, the reality is that someone cut you off in traffic and you don’t know why. The story your mind tells you about the person cutting you off in traffic influences the emotion.
If you pay attention, you can actually intentionally create emotions, temporarily, purely by thinking. If you think about an event that could cause stress (a work presentation going poorly, getting an F on an exam, not being able to pay rent) you’ll probably be able to literally feel the anxiety building in your stomach, despite no external stimulus changing.
So, what does this mean? It means that one of the ways we can guide our emotions is by asserting more control over our thinking. We can also change our external circumstances, but the most powerful combination is influencing the external while also changing the internal.
The two main tactics I’ve found helpful in controlling my thoughts are both designed to create more awareness and bring my thinking closer to reality.
Tactic 1: Meditation
A common misconception around meditation is that the goal is to stop thinking. The goal is not to stop thinking, the goal is to watch your thinking. A typical meditation will have you focus on your breathing. As you focus on your breathing your mind will naturally wander. Thoughts about your life, work, relationships, and self will wander in. As you become distracted you will refocus on the breath. You are quite literally practicing controlling your mind, including what it focuses on. You are also building awareness of what your mind is thinking.
Meditation has made me more aware of how random and frenetic my mind is. Random (mostly negative) thoughts just pop in. Some of them are explainable recurring fears, but some thoughts don’t seem to have a reasonable explanation, they are just there.
Regularly observing the mind not only gives me more control of my thinking, it also re-enforces the fact that I am not my thinking. My thinking is happening somewhat at random and my job is to control it. I like to think of my mind as a highly surgical tool. I am not the tool, my job is to learn to use the tool.
Tactic 2: Intentional (Mostly Positive) Thinking
The human mind tends to be naturally negative. It makes sense. When we were hunter gatherers our minds had to be constantly looking out for danger, since death could be around every corner. In the modern world. even when external circumstances are positive, our subconscious mind regularly feeds us a consistent stream of negativity, homing in on all the “problems” in our life.
I have found that a regular practice of intentional positive thinking helps rewire the overall tone of my subconscious mind. I’m not saying that my mind is a ray of sunshine all the time, but it has moved from a 2/10 positive scale to around a 6/10.
“Positive thinking” can conjure images of “woo woo” thinking. I’ve found the most powerful form of positive thinking isn’t trying to wish versions of reality into existence (“I WILL MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS”) it is simply acknowledging what is already positive in our lives. Having any family that you’re close to, any friends, access to food and shelter, nice weather, good health, the first sip of hot coffee in the morning, the pleasure of watching a cool new show, having a nice interaction with a waiter at a restaurant. There are usually plenty of positive things happening in our day-to-day existence and intentionally acknowledging them forces us to bring positive thinking in our lives. It also makes us more aware of the positive things happening as they are happening, which can facilitate the elusive scenario where we feel joy in the moment.
Referenced sources:
[1] The Effects of Joy on Your Body (healthline.com)
[2] How grieving changes the brain, with Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD (apa.org)
[3] How the Body Reacts to the Loss of a Loved One — TAPS News
[4] Physiology Of Anger (mentalhelp.net)
[5] Fear: What happens in the brain and body? (medicalnewstoday.com)
Hi, if you’ve made it here thank you for reading this thing I wrote! I’m Arjun Arun. I work as a Senior Director of Analytics in healthcare technology and am passionate about writing about, talking about, and figuring out ways to improve society’s (and my) mental health.
As an individual who has made a full recovery from overwhelming, clinically diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder I recognize how much improved my life is because of my focus on my mental health. My articles on Medium aim to help individuals understand the strategy and tactics they can use to improve their own mental health.
I’m always down to chat so don’t hesitate to leave a message.
Much love,
Arjun
