Introduction
This post is about becoming emotion wise. Becoming emotion wise is important because, unfortunately, many of us were formed by our parental adults to be emotion ignorant. They taught us to avoid expressing so-called negative emotions like anger, fear, and sadness, instead of feeling and expressing them. In this post, you’ll learn some basics about becoming emotion wise. You’ll learn what emotions are, how many emotions you have, two types of stimuli that stir up emotions, and what they do for you. Learning these basics about your emotions starts your journey toward becoming emotion wise.
What Are Your Emotions?
To become emotion wise you must know what your emotions are. Emotions are up stirrings of your human spirit. When stimulated, your human spirit produces emotions. You feel those emotions, not in your head, but in your body. Specifically, you feel them in the center of your chest, the seat of your human spirit.
While you might have been led to believe that there are positive and negative emotions, there aren’t. The truth is that some of your emotions are pleasurable to feel and others are unpleasurable. That said, they all play a positive role in your life. There are no negative emotions.
Furthermore, to be emotion wise you must also know that emotions are just emotions. They can’t hurt you. Emotions get stirred up, last a while, and resolve. They come and go as long as you don’t prolong them with your thoughts. More about that later. The next step is to learn how many emotions there are.
How Many Emotions Are There?
To become emotion wise you must know that you have ten basic emotions. Each one is an upstirring of your human spirit. They are fear, contentment, anger, guilt, disappointment, gratitude, disgust, desire, sadness, and gladness. Memorize these ten basic emotions and what they are responses to.
Fear is your spirit’s response to a threat. Contentment is your spirit’s response to being safe.
Anger is your spirit’s response to being wronged. Guilt is its response to doing wrong.
Disappointment is your spirit’s response to desire denied. Gratitude is its response to desire fulfilled.
Disgust is your spirit’s response to what repels it. And Desire is its response to what attracts it.
Sadness is your spirit’s response to undesired loss. And Gladness is its response to desired gained.
Each one of your emotions range from mild to intense. For example, you can feel a little scared all the way up to terrified. Likewise, you can feel mildly content all the way up to totally content. The same is true for the rest of your emotions.
As for your moods, they are emotions that are prolonged primarily by your thoughts. More about that later. The next step is to know what stirs up your emotions.
What Stirs Up Your Emotions?
Two types of stimuli stir up your emotions. The first type are experience-based stimuli. Experience-based stimuli are responses to in-the-moment experiences that you see, hear, touch, smell, taste, or intuit. They are based in reality and are facts.
The second type of stimuli that stir up your emotions are mind-based stimuli. Mind-based stimuli are responses to your own thoughts, beliefs, memories, and imaginings. More often than not, they are not based in reality. They are not factual. They are often fantasies that have no roots in reality. If you’ve ever spent a lot of time up in your own head ruminating on all kinds of thoughts that stir up unpleasurable emotions, you know what mind-based emotional stimuli are. Most of us have had those experiences.
Now that you know what your emotions are, the ten emotions you have, and two types of stimuli that stir them up, let’s talk about what your emotions do for you.
What Your Emotions Do For You
Lastly, for this post, to become emotion wise you must know two essential ways that your experience-based emotional responses benefit you. You must also know how mind-based emotional responses put you and others at risk.
Your Emotions Inform You
First, experience-based emotional responses inform you about what you’re experiencing in the moment. For example, anger informs you that you’ve been wronged. Sadness Informs you that you’ve experienced an undesired loss. Fear informs you that your safety might be at risk. Every experience-based emotion you feel informs you about what is happening to you in the moment.
Your Emotions Fuel Your Response
Secondly, your experience-based emotions fuel your response to what happened to you. For example, anger fuels your response to defend yourself and set things straight. Sadness fuels your response to withdraw and grieve the loss you experienced. Fear fuels your response to keep yourself safe. It drives you to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn.
Being informed by your emotions about what you’re experiencing and being fueled by them to respond are essential to your life, health, and happiness. Your experience-based emotional responses both keep you safe from harm and inspire you to embrace life-affirming experiences.
Problems With Mind-Based Emotional Responses
That said, mind-based emotional responses tend to cause personal and relationship problems. They do you and others harm. Your life, health, and happiness depend on minimizing the influence of mind-based stimuli and maximizing the influence of experience-based stimuli.
Summary and Call to Action
Now that you’ve become more emotion wise by learning what your emotions are, how many emotions you have, what stirs them up, and what they do for you, it’s time to practice what you’ve learned.
I’m here to support your journey toward becoming more emotion wise. Schedule a FREE Online 30-Minute Initial Consult with me to learn more about how I can support you. I look forward to talking with you!