How Emotions Operate

Hi there!

Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Today, we will continue to unpack: HOW EMOTIONS OPERATE! YAY!

Before we can break down the components of individual emotions like shame, anxiety, and anger (which we will begin to do next week), it’s important to first understand how emotions work in general.

That’s what we will be discussing today.

Ultimately, there are four parts to an emotional experience:

1)    Prompting Event(s)

2)    Biological Changes

3)    Behavioral Changes

4)    Aftereffects

Prompting Event(s) 

Prompting event(s) are what initially trigger an emotion. Prompting events can be emotions themselves, or other things, like thoughts, interpretations, positive or negative situations, or memories.

It’s important to remember that ALL emotions have prompting events that precede them—because emotions never occur without a reason.

If we keep this in mind, understanding an emotion’s prompting event can be helpful, because it can help us identify the root of the problem (importantly, the emotion is never the problem!).

In the coming weeks, we will explore common prompting events for the most common emotions—to help normalize when and why certain emotions tend to arise.

Biological Changes

Biological changes are the physiological changes that arise during an emotional experience.

Emotions start in the nervous system, and the nervous system then generates a variety of physical changes in the body (temperature and heart rate changes, and nausea symptoms, for example).

Every emotion registers physically in its own way, and it’s important to remember that the experience of feeling our emotions is not mental—it’s actually physical!

In the coming weeks, we will discuss some of the biological changes (namely physical sensations and action urges) that arise in response to different emotions, in order to help normalize common symptoms and decode what happens physically when different emotions are being felt.

Behavioral Changes

Behavioral changes involve the actions that we take in response to any given emotion.

Different emotions prompt different expressions of behavior.

Sometimes behavioral changes are voluntary, and sometimes they are not.

Behavioral changes can include physical reactions (i.e., changes in posture or facial expression), or words and movements in response to an emotion and its prompting event.  

In the coming weeks, we will explore the behavioral changes that tie to different emotions (based on their adaptive function), and clarify what behaviors are normal and to be expected in response to various emotions.

Aftereffects  

Aftereffects are the end result of an emotional experience.

All emotions are adaptive and have evolved to serve us in some particular way—but different emotions affect us differently, according to their unique purpose.

Understanding the aftereffects of different emotions can help demystify their influence on us (and increase our capacity to regulate our feelings more effectively!), once we understand how our emotions operate.

Therefore, we will explore the aftereffects of different emotions in the following weeks, to help unpack the means by which our emotions result in powerful outcomes that inevitably influence our daily functioning overall.
  

We will begin to break down the individual primary emotions and their corresponding Prompting Event(s), Biological Changes, Behavioral Changes, and Aftereffects next week—starting first with the emotion ANGER!

Stay tuned and see you then—

Happy Thursday, Everyone!