It is important to know the difference between thought, feeling and emotion:
- Thought is a rational psychological phenomenon. However, thoughts can activate feelings.
- The feeling is the result of an emotion, through which the person who is conscious has access to his or her own emotional state.
- For Jean Marie Robine, at the starting point of every experience there is always a physical, bodily sensation. This is what we call emotion. In the baby there are sensations that, by ignoring the way in which she should express them, she will do so in the form of crying or screaming. The “good mother” will give meaning to what the baby is expressing in such a way that in the interaction between the mother and the baby the sensation can become, for example, emotions or, in any case, meaning.
Feelings are not always accompanied by external events
Healthy feelings allow for fluid brain dynamics, resulting in a happy state of mind. But they need a reason or channel to be satisfied and make us feel balanced. There are never two identical situations nor two people who express exactly the same intensity of the feeling triggered by an event common to them.
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Feelings are not always accompanied by external events. A feeling could be activated by a thought. For example: the feeling of sadness over the death of a loved one. We remember that person and as a result of that thought we feel sadness.
The thought produces the feeling in the same way that an external event would produce it. But it is not the thought that needs to be processed but the feeling. Furthermore, what needs to be released is the emotion, which arises because of the feeling.
Feelings and emotions allow us to become aware of the environment in which we live, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Basing behavior on the moment of the emotion or while the feeling lasts can help us a lot. But the moment they fade or change, if we have not been able to manage them, they can become enemies.
A thought, feeling, emotion, behavior or circumstance can also be considered an opportunity to grow. Feelings and emotions are not something to be afraid of or silence to avoid pain. To truly grow you have to feel the pain, you have to let the emotion arise, observe it and then release it.
Past and present are connected. The experience of the past directly or indirectly makes us feel what we feel in the present moment. Those who look at the past do not always live in the present, they simply relive the past. Reliving the past can produce stress since we experience emotions (in the present moment) from a trapped feeling, a consequence of a past experience.
We can also consider them an opportunity to grow
What happens if we don’t work on the feelings and emotions that have trapped us? We may feel stress, loneliness, anxiety, worry, depression, fear, exhaustion, rush, insecurity, feeling of being a victim, lack of control. A whole series of physical symptoms.
We put off messages we don’t want to face, for fear of pain.
Clotilde Sarrió is a therapist specialized in Gestalt Therapy, you can continue reading her articles on her famous blog
Photography: on Flickr.