What is emotions really?

[DaveTyler]

Can someone explain me what emotions are, what's their purpose and how come I can turn them off, but not on again?

[Smokefish]

That's something that I've wondered a lot myself over the course of my life. I recently read something that said our emotions are guides to our true selves. If something makes you feel good it is because it is in harmony with your true self, if something makes you feel bad it is because it is not in harmony with your true self.

I spent a good portion of my life repressing everything I felt, to the point that if somebody asked me how I felt about something I wouldn't know, or it would take me weeks or sometimes months to figure out how I felt. At some point I decided that this was not serving me well and I needed to get back in touch with my emotions. It is a lot easier said then done and sometimes it still takes me a bit to figure out how I feel about some things, but not as long as it used to. What helped for me was to start writing everyday, keeping a journal so to speak, I started writing down my opinions of things and it just sort of grew from there. Another thing that has been really useful for me is keeping a gratitude journal, just writing down things that I was grateful for. If I was in a mood where I didn't feel grateful for anything then I'd write down things that I appreciate. No matter how I'm feeling I can always find things that I appreciate, such as a warm sunny day or chocolate or something like that.

I hope this helps!

[Holistic Star]

which emotions can you turn off but not on?


what are you feeling instead when something is turned off?

[DaveTyler]

Smokefish: that's a great method to get your feelings out there, me too have heard the concept of emotions being your guidance, I don't doubt this for a second as I have most of my life been filled with negative feelings which has only brought me more negative things.
See, I don't know if I'm repressing them or what I am doing, I got a stupid disorder called OCD, which makes me believe all retarded ************, ecspecially I get stuck on thoughts about losing things, like a skill, or something.
It's completely absurd, but with LoA and all I wonder if I actually attract it in real life.
One day I felt very numb from worrying too much, then I got a OCD thought like "omg maybe I have lost my soul" then the more I focused on this thought the more "real" it became, and from there I've gone 2 months without feeling ANY real emotion at all.
This is very weird for me as I've been an over-emotional person all my life.

Holostic-star:
It's hard to explain the "feeling" inside me, it's like a "nothingness", I can see or think about the most depressing things without caring. It's really shocking, I can think about my dad who died a year ago without giving a F, which normally I'd be crying over.
I get the SENSATION of tingeling all over my body sometimes, some sort of energy I think, the kind you get when your normally experiencing a HIGH emotion, except the emotion isn't there.
It's really really messedup cause I don't know wtf I'm doing in life anymore without my emotions.
Nothing drives me, I have just been at my house 95% of the time the last 2 months, philosophing and trying to find my emotions, cause nothing interests me, nothing makes me happy, sad, excited, scared, nothing.
The closest I come to a feeling is when I physically experience pain, but I don't feel the emotional feeling, just the phyiscal.

[Holistic Star]

sorry this answer is going to be really quick as it's v. late and I'm about to go to bed.

IMO emotions are to do with our energy system. When you feel an emotion in a healthy way it should 'swoosh' though your energy system easily and simply whether it is a 'positive' or 'negative' emotion. When you feel pain there is an energy blockage. I work with people who have energy blockages and work to release those blockages. Blocked emotions often have a physical painful component too.

Sometimes when something is really painful we put up a shield of energy around that area and can't that emotion. I used to have a huge problem about feeling anger. I basically didn't feel it. I had a healer working on my energy system and she said she could feel a huge ball of rage behind me and was amazed at how calm I was. I really genuinely couldn't feel any anger. It took a lot of energy work and counselling to accept and release the anger I felt in a safe and constructive way.

What I think is that you have shielded (repressed) your emotions. You are getting the physical sensation of them but not feeling the emotion. I would recommend Silvia Hartman's work to understand about energy shields and letting them down. I would also be interested in what treatment you are having for OCD as that seems to be a key here?

I also think that staying in 95% of the time can make anyone depressed and listless. What is keeping you in? What can you do to get out more?

[RT Wolf]

There's a number of answers to this question, depending on who you ask. If you ask a spiritual person, then the answer is what the good posters above me have said.

If you ask a scientist, then you might get an answer like in here:

Emotion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I haven't thought about their purpose or where they come from, but my mental model of emotions is thus: emotions tell me things. If I am feeling rage or anger, then it means I've been hurt. Other emotions mean other things. I've often found that once I accept the causes of the emotions (say, I accept that I have been hurt) then the emotions tend to dissolve and I feel better. Happiness, likewise, tells me things are going well or I am satisfied (depending on the kind of happiness I'm feeling).

Another view I've been experimenting with is the idea of emotions (especially negative ones) being examples of cognitive dissonance, which is uncomfortable tension caused by holding two conflicting concepts. Such as thinking we are whole but also recognizing that we have been hurt. I'm still working out the details here.

[machine]

I have found by my experience that emotions are just your reaction to how you are perceiving what is happening to you.

It is easily possible to have all different emotions to a situation depending on how you perceive the situation (your frame of reference). Let me give an example:

You are interested in a girl or guy and they tell you they will call you tonight. Tonight comes and goes but no phone call.

If you perceive or believe they didn't call you because you think they are blowing you off(negative impact on you), then you feel rejected or maybe angry. If you reframe the situation in your mind and imagine they have gotten into a car accident or something then your emotional state will be very different.

To me the best thought is this - I have no idea why they didn't call so I'm not going to bother framing it negative or positive. This is the true reality. No emotion attached at all.

Now either situation has the potential to be true from your point of view because you have no idea why they didn't call. All you are doing is projecting what you 'think' is the reason. And this projection is most likely based on your past conditioning. (If situation looks like A, then I will react like B)

By this example it is easy to see that emotions are easily manipulated by what our perception of a situation is.

So to me, emotions are just a byproduct of our perception.

[machine]

Originally Posted by DaveTyler

It's hard to explain the "feeling" inside me, it's like a "nothingness", I can see or think about the most depressing things without caring. It's really shocking, I can think about my dad who died a year ago without giving a F, which normally I'd be crying over.
I get the SENSATION of tingeling all over my body sometimes, some sort of energy I think, the kind you get when your normally experiencing a HIGH emotion, except the emotion isn't there.
It's really really messedup cause I don't know wtf I'm doing in life anymore without my emotions.
Nothing drives me, I have just been at my house 95% of the time the last 2 months, philosophing and trying to find my emotions, cause nothing interests me, nothing makes me happy, sad, excited, scared, nothing.
The closest I come to a feeling is when I physically experience pain, but I don't feel the emotional feeling, just the phyiscal.

I just reread some of your second post, sorry, I must have missed that glancing through the thread, but based on what you wrote here you might be suffering from depression. I would definitely get it checked out.

And just to let you know, some of the specifics you talk about I have experienced myself. When I was in my teens I too thought I lost my soul. I remember waking up and asking myself, "If my father died would I cry?"

I found that I was intellectualizing things way too much, combined with some depression and that makes for a funky mix of not caring. Sometimes also you need to just get out and about.

Don't sit in the house trying to answer what's keeping you in the house or what you can do to get out more? Just do it!! Get up and go out. Forget what you hear inside your head (the argument trying to keep you in the house) and definitely don't THINK ABOUT THINKING ABOUT IT.

Try flipping it and spending 5% of your time at home and 95% out and about.

[DaveTyler]

Thanks guys, I'll do my best to get my emotions back.
Cause really as a human being you really need them.

[Sunnybayes]

Best emotional mastery article I've found (though I did not put in any effort into find it, I just randomly ran into it 2 days ago, so there might be a better one out there)

Can Emotions Be Controlled?

This isn’t the place or time to debate the issue of free-will versus determinism, but the simple answer to the question is yes, emotions can be controlled. Just as you can change what you are thinking about you can change your emotional state. Unfortunately while minor shifts in thought are relatively easy, making a huge shift in emotional state can be incredibly difficult. Changing thoughts is like creating a ripple in the ocean and changing emotions is like shifting the current.

From here:
Scott H Young » Introduction - Emotional Mastery (Series)