The Purpose of Emotions by Douglas G. Pierson, M.S., LMFT

Have you ever asked yourself “What is the purpose of my emotions?”

As a therapist, one of my roles is to help people accept and sit with their emotions. Yes, that means to feel them. We don’t generally like to feel our feelings, do we? Especially the negative ones. We either shove them down or numb them out with distractions. We might even fear that we’ll get judged if we show them. Or maybe we have experienced that others couldn’t accept our feelings. Most of us didn’t learn how to share our feelings growing up or in school. And we certainly aren’t good as a culture about revealing our true feelings to one another. In fact, we generally perceive vulnerability as a weakness rather than as a courageous action. Some people may not even properly understand what emotions they are feeling as they’ve never really wished to explore their personal emotions, whether negative or positive. This leaves some people unable to realize what they’re actually feeling. The ranges of emotions one can feel can be extraordinary, even a somewhat simplified list such as this https://www.dailyrx.com/list-of-emotions/ doesn’t capture the vast spectrum of emotions that humans can experience.

As Christians, we are more prone to focus on what we are doing than how we are feeling, which leads to neglecting our emotions. And yet, the scriptures, namely the Psalms, are full of emotions, especially the negative ones: sadness, fear, and anger. God is full of emotions. He is a jealous God. Jesus wept. And in Romans, the apostle Paul writes about how the Spirit intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

Simply put, the purpose of emotions is to tell our story, first to ourselves, and then to others. By sharing our experience and revealing our truth, we connect our internal world to the external world. Each feeling word reveals a unique need. If I’m feeling sad, I need comfort. If I’m feeling afraid, I need reassurance. If I’m feeling angry, then I need to be heard.

Many people are familiar with words like “stress” and “anxiety” but they don’t realize that these are very general words for very specific feelings. Psychologists call the practice of labeling one’s feelings more specifically “emotionally granularity,” and by identifying feeling words we are able to more specifically identify our need. In fact, neuroscience shows that we can actually lower levels of stress hormones in the brain, namely cortisol and noradrenaline, the more that we practice emotional granularity. Isn’t that a miracle? Wouldn’t you like to feel less stress and anxiety in your life?

Of course, everyone wants to live a life that is free of stress, worry, and anxiety, as it won’t help you to go forward if you’re constantly burdened with these feelings. Some people who are suffering from this on a daily basis seek to find a treatment path that can help to relieve these emotions, and one of them may be to look at something like this Charlotte’s Web CBD review, to see how CBD can help you to feel better. It has been known to work and could be the reason why many people decide to try this when they have been unable to find something else. Usually, the first port of call for people looking for treatment from their stress, worry, and anxiety is marijuana though. If you are interested in trying this, you can find everything you need – including more dab tools than you can imagine – on fatbuddhaglass.com. But despite having potential treatments, wouldn’t it feel good if this stress and anxiety all but disappeared for good without having to do anything?

First, we have to learn the language of emotions as an internal awareness. I often use a feelings wheel (see below) to help my clients pinpoint the feeling word that best describes their experience. Then we must use that language for connecting to one another’s experience, which develops empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. If you struggle with empathy, don’t worry, it is a learned skill. We talk a lot about emotional intelligence, which is defined as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.”

For those of you “feeling-fixers” out there, the truest way to help release feelings is to validate them. Acknowledge them, label them, and verbalize them. Then empathy can be felt and the emotion can pass. When our feelings aren’t acknowledged, we actually hang on to them more. And then they accumulate inside of us, triggering one another, causing us to displace our emotions in an unhealthy manner. Some might act out, while others might act inward towards themselves, which commonly leads to shame. Shame is the only emotion that I have found to not have a specific purpose. In fact, shame is isolating, darkening, and self-blaming. Therefore, we have to be aware of how we react to our feelings.

Feelings don’t blame or defend. They reveal. They reveal who we are and how we’re doing in life and in our relationships. They communicate what we need. And it’s through feelings that we can eventually find the solutions.

As Christians, we are well conditioned to look at modifying our behavior, but successful behavior change doesn’t occur until the heart changes. And in order for the heart to change, we must understand it. Feeling words are this very language to help us know our experience.

David Benner, author of ‘The Gift of Being Yourself’ clearly articulates this concept. He says “There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God.” Therefore, if we do not accept our full range of emotions (especially the negative ones), then we do not fully know ourselves, and thereby we limit our knowledge of God. Furthermore, we lose sight of knowing how God sees us. Benner adds that “Genuine self-knowledge begins by looking at God and noticing how God is looking at us.”

There’s a difference between doing good and knowing deeply one’s proneness toward sin and darkness. This is all the reason why I encourage Christians to seek understanding of their emotional system. Knowing yourself more fully will allow you to know more how God knows you. And, in fact you’ll know God more by understanding more of what He has saved you from.

Unfortunately, the pain that has been experienced in relationship must be allowed to heal in relationship. That’s why He has given us community and that is why group process is so powerful. Therefore, we must increase our trust in the power of sharing our emotions and commit to refraining from escaping our feelings. Although it is tempting to run for the exits, we must fully embrace the power and wisdom of true feelings.