Have you ever wondered what your life would be like without emotions? Totally dull, without pleasure, to say the least. Quick and personal, emotions represent the brain's first opinion on a subject, they are our responses to environmental stimuli, an essential part of our lives. Have you been paying enough attention to your emotions? Do you know how to identify them? Do you know their origins and the consequences they cause?
Emotions are biological responses provoked by the brain that reflect what is perceived in the environment and indicate to your brain how you should act. Currently, neuroscience accepts that emotions are the body's quick way of expressing and highlighting events that have an impact on our lives, guided by the brain. They are a quick and efficient way of drawing our attention to important issues and getting them resolved in the best possible way. The first consequence of emotions is that we become better able to deal with what is happening.
Before I continue, I need to differentiate between emotions and feelings. Emotions are fleeting, as they serve a specific situation. Feelings, on the other hand, consist of how you react to emotions, how you behave in relation to them, and these can last longer. If you've seen the movie "Amusing Minds", you'll know that we have five basic emotions: joy, sadness, disgust, anger and fear. The first is directly associated with pleasure and happiness and generates impulses that strengthen a person's energy. The opposite of joy, sadness signals that something needs to be taken care of and that there are wounds that need to be treated. Disgust generates repulsion or the need to reject something, creating a clear sense of displeasure, and is related to a question of survival. Anger induces manifestations of violent movements of attack or defense, increasing your bodily strength, to obtain energy and thus circumvent adversity. Finally, fear is essential for teaching human beings about the importance of limits and self-preservation, and contributes to evolution.
Everything that moves us triggers physical reactions in the body, even if we don't know why, such as a smile or tachycardia. Similar situations produce similar or even the same responses, which serve as markers for the brain, which makes it act in a compatible way automatically, without wasting time on complicated analysis of the situation. So-called somatic markers can be a problem, as in cases of anxiety disorder, but most of the time they are a blessing, such as increasing the heart rate when climbing a flight of stairs and favoring peristaltic movements after a meal. Even so, learning to listen to your body is necessary, for example, to know when you need to eat or go to the toilet.
Although they are known as irrational, emotions are actually the logical expression of the brain's first evaluations based on its previous experiences and are therefore rational. Therefore, experiencing an emotion is a very particular experience, so you may feel it in one way, and someone else may show it in a different way, according to each person's experiences. Therefore, listening to your emotions allows you to learn to understand not only their meanings but also the way your own brain works.
Managing our feelings and emotions is very important so that we can understand ourselves better, re-signify bad feelings and respect our own limits in different situations. You need to think rationally to know what caused the emotion and how it affects your behavior. The body will automatically prepare itself to deal with the situation in the best way known to it, directing our behavior before we know why, but you can consciously change your reactions and your attitude in response.
Emotions are completely essential, especially in emergency situations where we need to take quick action without having to think about it, such as a mugging or an object coming towards us. Again, it's the limbic system that kicks in and makes our lives easier, without us having to waste time weighing up our options. In this way, I hope that after reading this text you will start to pay more attention and value your first emotional impressions of new experiences.
There are biofeedback techniques that consciously use the body's responses for their own benefit, such as increasing concentration or inducing relaxation. In addition, keeping a record is essential to help you better understand the patterns and relationships between situations, emotions and your responses. Just as tracking habits is super important, so is controlling your emotions. Today's tool is Cíngulo, an app for managing emotions and feelings (voted the best app of 2019).
Based on approaches from psychology and neuroscience, Cingulum aims to help you overcome the emotional problems that most disrupt your life, evolving more and more on a journey of self-knowledge. Despite having a lot of free content, it is unfortunately an app that has many paid features. Today's focus is on the emotions' diary, which is completely free on Cíngulo, but can also be done outside of it, if you prefer.
Cíngulo has four main parts: the self-assessments, which consist of targeted questions that help you identify your current emotional moment in life based on a complete analysis of your personality and emotions; the sessions, which have important content and practices, such as self-knowledge, anxiety, stress, self-esteem, insecurity, fear, focus, attitude and relationships (unfortunately many sessions are paid for); SOS techniques, which consist of quick practices to quickly deal with critical situations such as anxiety and stress (there are also several paid ones); and the emotional diary, which is totally free and allows you to evaluate your daily state on a scale and gives you three spaces to fill in every day: "what did you do well?", "what hurt you?" and "what did you learn today?". With all this information, it keeps a visual record, including graphs, offers you analysis and even compiles all your answers so that you can easily access them if you need to remember.
To help you fill in the emotion calendar, you can ask yourself about your emotions several times a day. There are various methods that help you notice the signs, such as yoga and meditation. There are two main advantages to consciously listening to your body, a prerequisite for getting to know your emotions. The first is self-knowledge: understanding your internal processes and the logic of your brain. And the second: the possibility of interfering in the course of one's behavior and emotions. In this way, we become more flexible and free not to be guided by our emotions when it is not rationally appropriate. Knowing the cause of an emotion not only helps us to look for it in the future, but also to deal with it better and perhaps even exorcize it, if necessary.
An interesting point to note is that the brain processes stimuli from a real situation in the same way as it does from an imagination or a memory, which is why personal maps are so effective - they trick the brain into giving you chosen reactions. The tip also applies when you need to make an important decision: visualize the consequences of each option and let your body tell you which one is most beneficial for you. For example, if you are undecided between buying a new car, which is more expensive and safer, or between buying a used car, which is cheaper but more likely to leave you stranded, the choice, much more than financial, is an individual one and will take into account previous experiences, such as having already had a breakdown in a dangerous place, whether or not you've ever had very little money in the bank and even current characteristics, for example if you have children you will also think about their comfort and safety.
Intuition really does exist, it consists of the brain anticipating events and setting off alarms when something might go wrong or right. Of course, not all intuition comes true, but those that do are so rewarded by their life-saving role, most of the time (for example, when a bad-looking person gets on the bus, and you get a bad feeling, already alert), that the brain continues to give intuitive cues. Remember that this "something" that tells you things might be wrong has been shaped by your previous experiences, so it's based on a lot of knowledge. On the other hand, wise decisions combine knowledge of emotional responses with good impulse control.
How is your emotional control? Are you aware of the situations that provoke certain emotions in you?
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