FEELINGS ARE NOT EMOTIONS

 

While all of us use the terms feelings and emotions interchangeably as if
they were equivalent, they are not the same.  Nor are they synonyms of each
other. The truth is that they are two very different phenomena.

Feelings are, at their essence, kinesthetics.  That is, physical sensations
of the body.  If they are inside the body, we call them propriception and if
they are accessed from outside of the body, then we call them sensations or
feelings.

Emotions always entails and involves feelings, but are more than feelings.
To have an emotion, you also have to have a cognitive thought as noted in
the previous articles.

 

Kinesthetic sensations consist of a large range of bodily sensations-
pressure (soft, hard), oscillation of the pressure, temperature (cool, warm,
hot), moisture (wet, dry), movement (quick, slow), intensity (low, medium,
high), frequency (often, some, few), rhythm (rocking, up-and-down, etc.),
pain (biting, dull, constant, etc.), extent (local, general), duration
(short to long).  Further, the kinesthetics can be at many different
locations in the body.  They can have texture, shape, etc.

 

When we ask, "What do you feel?" if we are using the word 'feeling'
accurately and properly, we are asking for the kinesthetic sensations of the
emotion.  We can call attention to the beating of the heart, the pumping of
the lungs, and the muscle tension in the legs, arms, face, neck, back, etc.
We can invite a person to notice sensations within various parts of the
body.

 

For the General Arousal Syndrome that is commonly referred to as both "the
stress response" or the "fight, flight, freeze" response, the kinesthetics
of these emotions are pretty much the same.  Heart and lungs are highly
activated so that there is a definite shift in breathing-sometimes even
hyperventilating.  Eyes dilate, skin sweats, blood is withdraw from brain
and stomach and sent to the larger muscle groups preparing the body for
fighting or running.  Adrenalin is sent to provide more energy to the body.
And the body is overall highly activated.  But what do you feel in the
general arousal?

 

The amazing thing is-it all depends.  If you think, reason, and interpret
things in your environment as threatening, then you will feel fear or anger.
Fear if you think it is too much or that you don't want to get into a fight.
Anger if you think you can handle the threat and/or if you have a habit of
getting into fights.  If it is too overwhelming, you might just freeze.  But
if you think, reason, and interpret things in that same environment as fun,
exciting, a challenge, desirable, etc., then you might feel excited or
lustful.  Excited if the situation is positive for you (public speaking,
bungee jumping, etc.) and fits your values.  Lustful if the situation
involves sexual stimulus or arousal.

 

Four emotions- fear, anger, excitement, and lust-and they all have the same
feelings at the kinesthetic level!  The difference goes to one's cognitions.
The bodily activation is the same, a state of heightened arousal so that you
are ready to respond.  But at the cognitive level, the semantics (meanings)
are completely different. 

 

Actually, this explains why these four emotions can get mixed up, why fear
and anger are so intimately connected.  That's why underneath fear is
usually anger and why underneath anger is usually fear.  This explains why
the fearful move-away from person when he reaches a threshold, and cannot
take any more, can become extremely aggressive.  It's why sexual stimulation
can become quite perverted-a person cannot get aroused unless chocked or
abused in some way.  It's why the violence of rape is not as much about sex
as it is about anger.

 

Emotions have within them feelings (kinesthetics).  Feelings, however, may
be just that-a feeling, a sensation, and not connected to any emotion.  In
experiments, people have been chemically stimulated by having epinorphein or
adrinalin shot into their arms, and then asked, "What do you feel?"  Again,
it always depends.  In these experiments it depended on what they were
primed to expect.  If they were primed to expect to feel fear-they felt
fear.  If anger, then anger; if lust, then lust.  The determining factor was
not in the sensation itself, but in the interpretation-the semantics that
readied them to respond as they did.

 

"Feelings" and "Emotions"-not the same.  Shall we try to pass a law to
prevent people from using 'feeling' for 'emotion?"  I don't think so.  Nor
would it really make that much of a difference.  It's sufficient to simply
know that these are two very different phenomena and that you can understand
your own emotions better when you know that they have a bodily or somatic
base- a base of kinesthetic feelings.