Why do People Find it Hard to Express Their True Feelings and Emotions?

A. What is an Expression?

The way we use words, sentences, and essays to share our thoughts, and knowledge with the world, in the same way we use expression to share our emotions and feelings with the world.

Therefore an expression is a means and language to represent our feelings and emotions.

Examples of some basic expressions:

1. You cry when you are sad.
2. You laugh when you feel funny.
3. You smile at a person when you feel good to see them.
4. You become silent when even after repeatedly telling someone your concerns one doesn’t pay attention.
5. You nod your head when you understand what other is telling.
6. You raise your hand in the class to seek permission to ask doubts.
7. You close your ears when you are unable to take the toxic monologue by other person.

Basic Expression	Feelings/Emotion	Feelings or Expression
Cry	Sadness	Emotion
Laugh	Funny	Feelings
Smile	Good/Positive	Feeling
Silent	Not being heard	Emotion
Head nod	Understanding	Feelings
Raising hand	Curiosity	Feelings
Closing ears	Unable to take what other is saying. Feeling negative	Feelings.

Feelings vs Emotions

Feelings

Feelings are sensed changes in the body’s state. When the body senses some rewards you feel positive, and when the body senses punishment, you feel negative. Other feelings are pain, pleasure, anger, surprise, afraid, enthusiasm, euphoria, and so on.

Feelings are momentary changes of hormones in the body that our brain can sense and can classify in a word.

You can watch our episode on understanding the difference between feelings and emotions. You can read our article on how to decode feelings better.

Beginner’s Guide Understand Feelings Better

Emotions

An emotion is a persistent feeling over a long period of time(often at least 6 months). Emotions can be attached to a person, relationship, overall life, or a dimension of life(like social life, or professional life), and there is general emotion that represents overall feelings of life.

You may start liking a person, which is your current feelings for another person. But if this feeling continues over a period of time, you interact and like the interaction, you spend time and like spending time, you grow together, and like growing then over a period of time this liking gets converted into an interdependency and you start loving the person. Here, like is a feeling which is momentary and love is an emotion that is persistent.

You can listen to our Podcast to understand the difference between feelings and emotions better.

Intimacy Laws Episode 3: Difference Between Emotions and Feelings

An expression is a reaction to feelings or a response to an emotion. Just like the feelings and emotions, a reaction is instant but temporary, whereas a responsive expression is persistent.

B. What are the different types of expressions?

An expression can be a gesture, posture change, muscle movement(like facial muscle movement that creates a facial expression), behavioral change, a change in interactions, vocal sounds, touch, or a creative representation such as painting, music, sculpture, books, blogs, and so on that can be detected by others(people or intended audience, or simply a person you are interacting with).

Following are some examples of different types of expressions and their categories.

Expression	Category of Expression	Feelings or Emotions
Love Letter	Writing	Love
Critic Blogs/Articles	Writing	Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction for a particular event, action, person, product ad so on
Instant messages like “hey where are you?”	Writing	Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction with a particular event, action, person, product ad so on
Silence	Conversation	deep interest, Focus or Don’t care.
Jokes	Conversation	Desire for attention.
Makeup	Physical Objects	Desire for Attention, attraction
Fashionable Dress	Physical Object	Desire for attention, attraction.
Bending forward and nodding	Posture	Interested, paying attention.
Leaning back, not nodding	Posture	Not interested in the conversation.
Shouting	Reaction	Aggression/Enthusiasm(during sports)
Screaming	Reaction	Fear/Threat/Aggression
Moist Eyes	Reaction	Happiness/Sadness/Pride
Throwing Objects	Reaction	Frustration, Aggression, Irritation
Locking eyes with someone with dilated pupil	Facial Gesture	Liking someone, or being attracted to someone
Shrinking facial muscles, nose, eyes	Facial Gesture	Anger
Waving Hands	Hand Gesture	Separation: Saying someone goodbye or seeing off, or Reunion: while spotting an acquaintance in the crowd.
Throwing Feast in Air	Hand Gesture	Determination, Oath, Encouragement, Achievement
Listening to loud music	Behavioral	Pleasure, not feeling so good but searching for pleasure.
Eating Junk food	Behavioral	Depression, Gluttony, Pleasure
Using Vivid colors in painting	Art	Using Vivid colors in the painting
Painting lifeless objects such as buildings	Art	Feeling dead, disconnected, aspiration

It is clear from the above table that there are thousands and thousands of possible expressions for one feeling or emotion, and many times, these expressions can be used in contradictory feelings and expressions too.

C. What are the key determining factors for the way one chooses to express?

From the above table, we understand that expression sets are huge, and people may use them differently. Furthermore, though some of the expressions are common, many expressions are specific to the individuals. There are no guidelines or vocabulary as to how one should or should not express an emotion or feeling.

Some of the common factors that shapes the way one expresses(or try to express) are:

1. Cultural factors: For example, Japanese, Indians, and Americans nod their head in different ways to represent different meanings during conversation.
2. Social Protocols: Two friends may hug each other when they meet, whereas they would be shaking hands in a business meeting. Many times social context sets the expression context.
3. Development Environmental Factors: Not everyone is brought up in an environment where parents and other elders showed too much interest in understanding and decoding the emotions of children. In many homes expressions such as crying are considered bad omen. Based on one’s environment one chooses to express, not express, and different ways to express.
4. Love: Different people love different things. They express themselves based on their love, such as arts, crafts, writing, music, and so on.
5. Genetic: Many times children start expressing themselves exactly the way their parents express, them due to genetic memory.
6. Company: We are social animals who have a very high amount of mirror neurons by means of which we can mimic others. The way one expresses himself/herself often is shaped by their company, and often they may adopt similar expressions as their circle to create a common understanding ground and make it easy for others to understand them.

D. Why expressions are hard to decode at times?

One sentence gives different feelings to different individuals

For example, in English, you can not write a sentence like “Are how you?” you will always write “How are you?” because there are fixed sets of alphabets, words, and rules for framing and forming the sentences.

However, when it comes to expression, when one expresses using the same fixed language pattern, it is hard to standardize.

For example “How are you?” can be written by someone who genuinely wants to know your well-being, for starting a conversation, or simply a mocking when one knows you are going through tough times and just wants to rub salt in your wounds and so on. Thus you can ensure the integrity of a sentence, but not how one understands the feeling attached to the sentence.

In the same way, not everyone has the knowledge of art or music to understand something expressed in the form of art or music.

Examples of contrasting expressions and feelings

1. Hans Zimmer, a multiple academy award-winning composer uses a lot of Wind instruments that have been historically used in Opera or by the Church, or the army. This is a way to connect the past with the present.
2. Another academy award-winning music director AR Rahman compositions have a silence and chorus, giving a sense of peace and sharing.
3. Another good example would be the Image of Monalisa. Everyone sees the same image. The image has been analyzed for the last 600 years by various art experts, computer programs, and the scientific community and there hasn’t still been a single accepted understanding of the image of Monalisa.
4. In the sport of cricket ex-Indian cricketer, Rahul Dravid played with a straight bat, showed great resilience and defense, and expressed stability, composure, and detail to fundamentals. Another ex-Indian cricketer Virendra Sehwag scored quick runs, but had great timing and never appeared to try hard. He expressed timing, flair, and fearlessness.
5. There are several blogs and websites on the internet that tries to elaborate on this topic. You may find most of the blogs insightful, as they attempt to provide you with the right information. However, when you read this article and other articles on the site, you may connect with the articles with a higher degree of emotions, as these articles represent my desire to teach children and make them understand concepts. So, you will find a lot of practical examples. which may be part of your life too. Thus this site expresses childishness, attention to detail, focus, and happiness by using a lot of sarcasm, denouncing the norms by using a lot of strong words, and so on.

Some of the key reasons why feelings are hard to decode?

1. Lack of expertise: There are so many different ways, styles, constraints, and individual touches, for the expression of the same feelings and emotions, and not everyone is an expert in all the fields.
2. Lack of common vocabulary for expressions: Unlike languages which define alphabets, word-forming rules, fixed words, and grammar, no such standard exists for expression.
3. Lack of reference point: When listening to a song we listen to it from start to the end. When reading a sentence we read it from the start to the period. While reading a book, we may read different chapters in different orders, but always based on some index. However, when watching a painting, we have no common ground on how to interpret the painting, from which point to start, and so on. And it is exactly the same for decoding feelings.
4. Cognition: Of course, everyone has different levels of mental capacity to comprehend sensory data. Because people’s cognition levels differ, their ability to decode feelings too differs.
5. Sensory ability(Observations): A microexpression of a smirk may represent underneath passive aggression of a person for you, who may hurt you at any given opportunity. However, not every eye is trained and focused enough to detect such a microexpression that lasts less than a second.
6. Lack of interest: This is the most common reason why people do not decode others’ expressions correctly. Mostly because decoding is a mental process that needs tremendous focus, attention, cognition, attention to detail, and so on and an average person doesn’t have that level of mental ability. Therefore they are not interested to decode anyone’s expression.
7. Lack of empathy: Empathy is one’s quality to understand another’s emotions and reciprocate or model his actions and behaviors accordingly. Empathy is largely genetic, and environmental. Not everyone has high-quality empathy(everyone including psychopaths have empathy, but that is very primitive and functional. For instance when one see another cry, they assume it is due to sadness.)
8. Struck in self: Modern day is all about “I, me, myself.” People are so struck in their own thoughts and feelings that they don’t even know that they too need to decode other’s expressions to understand the emotion.

Our brain works with priorities. Anything that is not important for us to survive, thrive and reproduce is always put on the backburner by the brain. A hunter’s life depends upon decoding the expression of the animals and predicting the probability of their attack. However, an IT engineer doesn’t have to understand the emotion of the animals because his life doesn’t hang on it.

C. Why it is hard for some people to express themselves and their feelings in a way that others understand?

The way the ability to decode depends on several factors, the ability to express also depends upon various factors. One has to first understand their feelings and emotion with absolute clarity. Then one has to understand the context of the emotion. Then one has to understand the purpose of the expression in that context. One has to know the social, environmental, relationship, and several other contexts to be able to express their feelings.

Therefore, feelings even though appears simple word, and expressions even appears a linear and easy thing, the sheer complexity, and interdependency with other variables are so high that the brain is not always clear about the whole process of

Event->Interaction->Observation->Cognition->Feelings->Reactive Expression->Memory->Emotions->Responsive Expressions

Mostly people prefer to believe that they are more emotional than others; some people even withdraws the emotions and prefer to believe that they are stronger than others.

How one expresses feelings comes later than the decision to express them at the first place. This is where many people find themselves in a dark black hole as they do not understand if they can, or should, express in the first place.

Following are some of the common reasons why one fails to express:

1. Insecurity: Lack of confidence in one’s own emotions and expressions.
2. Fear: Fear of being judged and punished for expressing feelings.
3. Social conditioning: Society teaches one to control their feelings, and conceal their true emotions (because average society is lazy and doesn’t want to decode and deal with others’ emotions as everyone is stuck in their own world).
4. Social Anxiety: Not being sure of a social situation, or protocols, and having social anxiety, one often gets into an eggshell and finds it hard to interact with people. As they don’t interact often, they are not comfortable or confident in their expressions.
5. Physical limitation: We may express our liking for someone through our eyes. But one may have a vision disability and therefore even when one wants to express, he/she can’t.
6. Psychological Disorders: When one’s different personalities lose coherence amongst themselves, and the same event creates contradictory feelings and thoughts in the brain, one fails to express.
7. Lack of practice: Like everything, expressing true feelings and emotions is a skill. The more one practices the skill, the better one gets. In our societies, no children are taught to understand their feelings, transform them into emotions, and then express them well. Therefore as the child grows up as an adult, one can not express.
8. Self-Disassociation: When one finds it hard to deal with their emotional stress, one just disconnects from the self. Thereafter they can neither express nor decode anyone’s expression.

Here again, feelings, emotions, and expressions are all related to mental capacity, confidence, practice, social intelligence, company, environment, and such metrics. Each of these takes hours of studying, years of practice, and mastering, and requires one to go through several failures before one starts to get their emotion and expression right.

D. Why do we desire others to understand our expression and therefore the real feelings?

Whether we are mindful enough to practice and master the art of expression, understanding our emotions, decoding others’ expressions or not, whether we are capable of expressing or not, we desire others to understand and decode us.

This is a symptom of a lazy brain. The majority today don’t want to work hard and improve their brain capacity. People find complaining an easy escape from reality and responsibilities. When we transfer the need to understand our emotions and express them correctly to others in the form of an expectation, we transfer our energy utilization onto others.

People today are so preoccupied with themselves, that they exhaust most of their mental energy into fantasy, thinking, and playing opera in their brain as connecting to reality is hard work.

However, if no one understands our true feelings and emotions, how can they empathize with us? And empathy is the foundation for any relationship. If there is no empathy, there is no relationship. We are social animals. Irrespective of how much one claims to be an introvert, and not needing others, we desire relationships. This is our biological and survival need. No one wants to die and live alone.

Because most people are lazy and don’t want to take the accountability to learn, understand and express their feelings and expression, most find themselves lonely; one can pretend to be happy being alone for some time, but the sheer pain of loneliness engulfs one slowly. Hence most people expect others to decode them, without them having to work on their expressions.

E. Why people can’t hide their feelings no matter how much they try?

In the Bengali Detective Novel “Har Har Byomkesh” by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, the protagonist Byokesh Bakshi investigates the murder of a Maharaja. There are several suspects and everyone seems to have their own motives, strong motives, and opportunities to murder the Maharaja. However, he sees a painting by the young queen. The queen was a painter who painted several portraits. Byomkesh finds the portraits odd, and something out of place. He then sneaks into the Rajmahal to observe the paintings.

Careful observation reveals that in each of the paintings, the queen had drawn the eyes of the male character as blue eyes. She drew Krishna, Shakuntala and Bharat, and in all the portraits, there was a depiction of romance, and the eye was a blue eye. This lead to the discovery of the young queen’s affair with a blue-eyed man, and helped Byomkesh to uncover the murder mystery.

Everyone expresses. They express their love, their hate, and their true emotions. They leave behind the traits for others to explore and discover. Humans are wired to express themselves. No one hides their emotions. Even a seemingly autistic child expresses the expression.