Finding Common Language to Understand & Discuss Emotions
What are emotions and emotional states? Everyone has their own concept regarding what emotions are what it means to have and express them. Some people openly share their emotions with the world, while others keep them very private. The fact is, we all have them. Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Anxiety, Fear, Love, Joy (etc, etc). These are all emotions we experience in our lives, and yet we don’t always have a shared understanding of what is happening in our brains and bodies as we move through various emotional states throughout the day. In the emotion research world I have found the term emotion is commonly used in two distinct ways, either being referred to as a physiological response to stimuli or as the conscious experiences accompanying these bodily responses (often thought of as “feelings”). Furthermore, it is often left undefined in many studies, adding to the confusion. My intention for this post is the briefly provide a framework for these terms so that it becomes easier to talk about emotions and emotional states with one another and to deepen our understanding of our brains and bodies.
Emotions/Emotional responses are physiological responses constantly occurring when central nervous system (CNS) detects negatively or positively valanced stimuli throughout the day. In cortical and subcortical areas these responses involve changes in arousal levels and in cognitive functions such as attention, memory processing and behavioural strategies. Within the body emotional responses involve endocrine, autonomic, and musculoskeletal responses. This is a full brain and body response, involving multiple body systems.
Feelings are often defined as the conscious experience of these autonomic, somatic and cognitive responses.
Emotional States then, encompass the emotion/emotional response and it’s associated conscious feeling.
The term “mood” can be defined as a persistent emotional state, or in other words, the internalized state of emotions and their associated feelings.
The term “affect” is the external expression of emotion, often observed in facial or bodily reactions and speech.
Conceptually, and for example, fear and anxiety have been regarded as emotional states that are caused by external or internal stimuli and that underlie a specific set of measurable behavioural, physiological, hormonal, and autonomic reactions. Fear and anxiety can be either transient or persistent emotional states depending on chronicity, and the outward expression of these emotional states are the individual’s affect.
When we take some time to understand and reflect on our own emotions and feelings, and how we express these emotional states in our lives and to others, we can begin to understand the role our emotional states play in our day to day functioning, how we think and how we feel, and the influence this has on how we move our bodies.
References:
Kandel, ER, Schwartz, JH, Jessell, TM, Siegelbaum, SA, Hudspeth, AJ, and Mack, S. Principles of neural science. 5. United States of America: McGraw-Hill; (2013). 1079–1093.
LeDoux, JE. Feelings: what are they and how does the brain make them? Proc Am Acad Arts Sci. (2015) 144:96–111. doi: 10.1162/DAED_a_00319
Tevote, P, Fadok, JP, and Luthi, A. Neural circuits for fear and anxiety. Nat Rev. (2015) 16:317–31. doi: 10.1038/nrn3945
