The Difference Between Feelings and Emotions
Picture this: you get a text from someone you’ve recently started seeing and they ask if they can call you to talk about something. You feel your stomach drop and your heart starts pounding. Maybe you feel yourself start to sweat and you get tunnel vision. You find it difficult to focus on anything other than what this person could possibly want to talk to you about on this now dreaded phone call. You may try to calm yourself down by talking it out, by trying to tell yourself you’re being silly for assuming the worst. You spend the rest of the day oscillating between trying to do anything to not think about this phone call and thinking about this phone call. Congratulations, you’re a human being going through an emotional experience!
What Are Feelings?
When we consider evolution, we learn that humans, like all other living organisms, developed senses that have allowed us to move through the world in as safe a manner as possible. Our brains, the organ responsible for all internal coordination, have evolved to identify whenever something is happening outside of us that disrupts this internal coordination. This is what we mean by feelings. Because our bodies are constantly sending sensory data back to our brains, we are constantly in a state of feeling. It’s one of the properties of consciousness, a normal and natural part of being a living, breathing human.
How Are Emotions Different Than feelings?
If someone, say your therapist, were to ask you how you are feeling during that experience, there’d likely be many responses - you may be feeling nauseous, sweaty, nervous, or having difficulty focusing. Notice that this doesn’t necessarily include the emotional experience you may have been going through, which could include emotions of worry, fear, irritability or anxiety. That’s because emotions are more than just how we are feeling, they are a full system response. This means they can include not only the way we feel but the way we think, which can include images, memories, or urges. Emotions can trigger physiological reactions that cause changes in body chemistry and body language. Simply put, emotions are formed from the meaning we are making from what we are feeling.
Your brain registers how receiving this unexpected text made you feel and considers past experiences you’ve had with dating, texting, and uncertainty to form the emotional experience of anxiety. Then, based on the meaning your brain has made from this information, your brain does what it deems necessary to keep you alive and well. So, you may decide to respond to the text, demanding the person get on a call right now and tell you what is going on. Or maybe you decide to call them instead of waiting, telling them it’s messed up to send something like that out of context in this day and age! Or maybe you decide to turn your phone off and throw it across the room to get it as physically, and hopefully figuratively, away from you as possible. Whatever your response is, your brain determines that response will return you to a sense of safety. This is why our emotional reactions can sometimes feel automatic.
Because emotions are data that tell us what’s important about what’s happening to us, we do not have to use them as directives that determine our actions. Even though emotions can feel incredibly painful at times, they play specific roles and are there for a reason. That is why I often gently challenge my clients who judge or criticize themselves for feeling emotions in the first place. I find that those who judge themselves for feeling emotions are more so judging themselves for how they are reacting with their emotions. It’s important to remember that humans are primed to avoid or move away from anything that is causing them pain. It’s only natural that when we experience an emotion we deem painful, we jump to do whatever we can to move away from it. However, through this process, we teach our brains that certain emotions are to be avoided, which can be harmful in the long term.
Knowing the difference between feelings and emotions can help you gain a better understanding of your internal experiences. This can help you build emotion regulation skills and respond differently to your emotions overtime. Together we can work to help you gain insight into this difference and develop a new relationship with your feelings and emotions!