Whilst recently completing a morning of personal study, I came across a segment of my book which led me to a truly paradigm-shifting moment. What I discovered is that there is a difference between the concept of 'feeling' and that of 'emotion'. Looking back, I realised I had probably spent the majority of my career (and life!) using these two words interchangeably. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to better educate myself on the two. In this blog, I'm hoping to pass on some of that knowledge to you.
Firstly, let's define the two words...
Emotions come from your subconscious - they are raw and instinctive. As your body processes sensory information, it produces sensations that show how your body is responding to the current situation. Waves of emotion come over us which make us want to cry, make us feel angry or give us butterflies in our stomach. Emotions are essentially our bodies processing what our senses are telling us and then preparing us to deal with what could be happening next.
Feelings, on the other hand, are experienced consciously. They are influenced by our interpretations of the emotions we feel at the time, or have felt in the past. The problem with the latter is that over time, our reflections and recounts of events can change. They themselves are influenced by emotions as time passes. As a result, this can mean that our ability to take all of this information and label our feelings accurately can be difficult.
An example of 'feeling' in action could be if you are about to attend a large event for the first time. The trigger in this situation could be the large crowds or the prospect of meeting new people. The sensations that might follow could be butterflies, increased heart rate or sweaty palms. At this point, your brain begins to 'connect the dots' and will think about the last time you had these sensations. Depending on your interpretations of the last situation and your reflections since, you could either choose to feel excited at this opportunity or awkward thinking about the potential social situations ahead.
Under pressure, these responses can feel very fast and furious. Your brain is relying on what it already knows to make decisions about how you are feeling, but ideally you would need to take the time to consider a few things before making these decisions...
Some questions to consider at this point might include:
What am I experiencing at this moment?
Do they match with fight, flight or freeze?
Have I experienced this before?
What happened last time?
How can I deal with this?
"Name it to tame it" comes from this final step of the process. As you explore the questions above, it's about taking time to really connect with the physiological sensations and tying these together with the truest interpretation of your last experience. From a calm place, you can come to conclusions and name your feeling with the best accuracy. Then you can decide how best to restore your body using the shake, stretch, sigh method.
As always, I hope that you have found this post useful! I'd love to know if you had any content ideas I could develop further and so if you think of anything, please get in touch! I am always studying and researching so if there's a concept you'd like me to cover, I'd be happy to. Keep an eye out on social media for the infographic above and a couple of others, too! Any questions, get in touch!
Believing is just the beginning!
Miss Tinks X
References
Book Inspiration-> High Performance Habits - Brendon Burchard
Neuroscience-> Psychology Today