Table of Contents
A. Feeling Driven Decision Making
What is Feelings
Feelings are the change in the hormonal levels experienced by your brain. Change of different hormones produces different feelings. Such as Dopamine levels increasing from low to high gives us positive feelings, and when dopamine goes from high to low, it gives us negative feelings. When the hormone cortisol becomes very high from the low range, we experience high stress, and when the hormone cortisol level comes down from high to low, we experience relief. Similarly, the hormone Oxytocin provides us the feelings of social attachment, and social detachment when it becomes low to high, and high to low respectively. When Testosterone goes higher, we feel more courage, and when testosterone comes down we feel vulnerable.
You can read more about Feelings and emotions in the resource provided under the “further reading” section.
So far over 50 hormones have been identified in humans. Feelings are not explicit to each of the hormone levels, but there are complex feelings that are associated with the state of change of multiple different hormonal levels.
💡Important to remember here, experiencing any feeling means a contrasting change in the associated hormone levels; if the hormones stay at the same level for a long period of time, we don’t feel anything;
Why and when do we stop feeling?
Therefore, in order to feel positive, you have to first feel negative. Let’s say that you won a prize in your pursuit of life(say sports or target achievement). You will feel good because not having achievement to a sense of achievement gives you good feelings. However, if you win the prize daily, you won’t feel anything. This is because you will stay in the achievement state continuously and there is no change in the feelings.
Same way, when law enforcement agencies use third-degree at the time of interrogation, the interrogated suffers unprecedented pain every day. However, if the interrogation continues day in and day out for subsequent days, the interrogated doesn’t feel anything as there is no change in the state.
One can’t feel day if there was no night, and one can’t perceive night if there was no day; in the same way, there is no such thing called continuous bad feelings, or continuous happy feelings. In order to feel positive, you have to feel negative first. If there is no change in your state, you won’t feel anything, you won’t feel pain, and you won’t feel any pleasure too.
