Table of Contents
A. What are Feelings?
Our cells, brain, and body coordinate with each other with the electrical and chemical messaging systems.
Feelings are the brain’s perception(linguistic classification) of overall CHANGE in the body’s state(vitals, hormones, chemicals, atoms).
Example:
a) When you are in a room and there is a load shedding, the fan is off, the temperature changes from normal to high, and you say “I am feeling hot”
b) When you read my LinkedIn post, YOU MAY FEEL like LEARNING, and if that learning challenges what you already believe, then YOU WILL FEEL IRRITATED.
So, change in the state of belief, knowledge, safety, love, temperature, energy, well-being, sleep, sweat, hunger, thyroid, liver enzymes, dopamine, and any such change can lead to different feelings.
B. Why Feelings are Grossly Misunderstood
a) Feelings are the linguistic context of a bodily state change. Languages are developed and matured in humans regionally.
b) Language is part of the genetic cultural, and geographic memory.
c) We are at this moment communicating in multiple languages, English being the top, which has no genetic trail in us.
d) Hence, due to genetic discontinuity in language, our brain’s cognition pathways do not have etiological development of meaning, and so the misinterpretation rate is high.
Example:
a) “I am feeling depressed/low.” depression is a state of low energy for at least 6 months. ONE IS FEELING ENERGY-LESS when one thinks he/she is feeling depressed.
C. Why Understanding Feelings is Important?
a) Our memories are formed with feelings, and so misinterpreted feelings lead to memory loss.
b) Feelings also work as the brain’s reward-punishment pathways, which are key to learning. So, misunderstanding feelings lead to decision anxiety and learning impairment.
c) Empathy is an assessment of others’ feelings and then modeling one’s behavior accordingly. Misunderstanding feelings leads to empathy impairment, which leads to secondary psychopathy.
D. Feelings vs Impulse
We already discussed that feelings are the comprehension of the current state after the brain has experienced a change in the state.
Amygdala is a small Almond size section in your coconut size brain. Amygdala is part of our limbic brain system, which is also called our lizard brain. Even before feelings are comprehended by the executive function of the brain, the change of state is sensed by the amygdala, and accordingly, the Amygdala regulates some hormones such as Norepinephrine, Adrenaline, Dopamine, etc.
The state change is detected very fast, within a second, and then the brain makes some preliminary classification of the change such as danger, reward, pleasure, pain, anger, and so on.
This first level classification of the transition of feelings is called an impulse. In the current time most people interpret their impulses as feelings. Furthermore, we always take certain actions against the detection of a feeling change, as well as impulse change.
An action(like freeze in fear, fight in threat, flight in threat, chase in reward, smile in pleasure, scream in pain) is generated against any feeling change. If the body and the brain take action immediately as it detects the feeling change, such an action is often called an impulsive reaction.
When feeling is decoded by the cognitive circuit of the brain, the action it takes is more measured, and delayed. Such an action against the response of decoded feeling is called an expression or response.
E. Start With the Method to Understand your feelings better
Step 1: Whenever you are feeling intensely(low/high/happy/sad etc) write the feeling(FC) with the date and time.
Step 2: Write the 5 events(EX) of the last 2 days that you remember with average feelings(FX).
Step 3: Write 10 Reasons of why you think you are feeling(RC).
Step 4: Write 5 Actions that you want to take over the next 24 hours to either maintain your feelings(+ve ones) or alter(-ve ones) (FA)
Step 5: Get on with whatever you are doing. Read your writing after 1 hour.
Step 6: Now without saying try to say “I was feeling FX, then events EX happened, now I am feeling FC, because of RC reasons, and I will take FA actions to maintain/change the feelings.
The above is just a preliminary start to your better understanding and decoding of your feelings. As you keep getting better, you may want to adopt a more detailed process to decode and analyze your feelings.
F. 💡Detailed process to better your understanding of the feelings
a) Literature reading.
b) Suffering.
c) Philosophy and theological understanding.
d) History.
e) Neuroscience
f) Physiology
g) Endocrinology.
h) Science, and Mathematical modeling.
i) Linguistic development study.
Of course, it is impossible for common people to dedicate 20 years of life to various non-connected domains to decode feelings.
G. 💡Untold reasons why a majority misunderstands their feelings today: Flawed Parenting and Schooling
When I talk to the patients, my heart screams with pain about how little our society has tried to teach even basics to the children:
1) How to cry
2) What is shyness?
3) What is happiness?
4) What is satisfaction?
5) What are love, respect, care, pain, and pleasure, and how they are different?
F. Conclusion
When you try to implement the methodology(Point F), you will realize how little you care for even your own feelings. But, if you can overcome the resistance of your brain, and do this for 6 months, you will know how little people hurt you, and how much you have destroyed your feelings.
💡Country Struck in Feelings
The amount of “I feel” being used in discourse is so hilarious to witness. It takes days, at times months to simply understand the feelings of an event. But people jump in with “I am feeling this and that” in no time. A majority appear to look to find someone to dump their feelings(in reality, pass on their laziness of not understanding feelings to others).
There is no shortcut to understanding your own feelings, don’t claim “I feel for you,” “I empathize with you.” Learn your feeling first.
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