Emotions: what are they for and what do I do if I don't feel an emotion

Crying and laughing are feelings and they do something to you. Emotions such as love, sadness, happiness, shame and joy cause you to laugh or cry, for example. Emotions play an important role in our lives, both long-term and in our daily actions.

In this blog, I discuss what emotions are, what use emotions have, and what beliefs are unhealthy regarding emotions (and what you can do then).

What are emotions?

This question was first posed in science in 1884, and they haven't actually finished talking about it at all. Another study was published in 2005 that tries to answer this question.

The confusion began even with the first question, because William James actually wanted to ask "What is a feeling?"

A feeling can already refer to more than an emotion, as it also involves your sense of touch and possibly abdominal pain.

Emotions can be traced to feelings. With emotions, you often have certain facial expressions, physical symptoms and they belong to a subjective experience. So something happens that you find important and experience in a certain way that causes you to have a certain emotion. That emotion in turn can have a certain consequence in the behavior you express(1).

The usefulness of emotions?

Because emotions cause you to do or not do something, emotions have their uses in survival, among other things. Fear, for example, is a powerful emotion that often prompts people to take action to reduce anxiety, in some cases that is doing nothing, but in most cases it is finding a solution to the subjective experience that anxiety produces.

That subjective experience also shows that people can react differently to the same experience. For example, there are people who like having a snake as a pet while other people run away screaming at the sight of a snake.

You can also do something yourself that triggers an emotion, such as guilt or shame if you steal something or lie.

Evoking the emotion is subject to the beliefs you have, such as what is good or bad. Or just genetic factors, as in tasting food or seeing colors.

Then the emotion helps you elicit the behavior that is appropriate in the situation. So emotions actually also help make your behavior socially acceptable. Because of this, emotions also help you survive because we are social animals.

This process happens very quickly.

This also allows emotions to change as you may experience different things throughout the day. Emotions are a roller coaster, one minute you are super happy and the next you can be roaring with anger. It just depends on how your day goes.

Having a particular mood, such as being cranky, can last much longer.

What if you don't feel some emotions?

Some people block their reaction to some events just to avoid feeling a particular emotion. For example, you once became furious about something and that anger still lurks somewhere, but because you don't want to be furious at everyone you try to block that emotion.

This may be an unconscious decision generally based on fear. For example, fear of hurting someone. Or conversely, fear of being hurt that prevents you from feeling love properly.

The downside of blocking 1 emotion is that you can block all emotions. This can affect you for several months before you become aware of it.

To allow those emotions back in, it is important to let go of your fear of the emotion, or the consequence the emotion may have.

Anxiety can cause you to freeze, and in a less literal sense, this can mean freezing your emotions. By identifying which fear is causing you to stop feeling one or all of your emotions, you can take steps to overcome that fear.

Consider if you are avoiding emotion through fear

You can identify when avoidance of a particular emotion arose. Perhaps after a traumatic event? For example, if you were celebrating a party that was brutally disrupted by a sudden argument or whatnot, this may cause you to find it difficult to be 100% happy (joyful). Because you are afraid that that emotion could be rudely disrupted.

If you have ever found yourself in a divorce, it can cause you to actually not want to feel love anymore because you fear being abandoned or betrayed again by the person you love.

Sometimes it is difficult to consciously check because, for example, you have made an unconscious choice not to feel a certain emotion anymore. In that case, a hypnotherapist can use regression and other techniques to help you figure out why you are blocking some emotions.

Confronting Fear

Reducing anxiety is usually done by confronting fear. With fear of spiders , for example, this is done first in thought and then in real life. This can start with a picture and as those types of triggers trigger fear less, a confrontation with an actual spider can eventually take place.

On the contrary, if you have a fear of feeling grief, for example because you have lost someone, you can also slowly awaken the grief. For example, first by reminiscing about the person, then looking at photos and finally going to his/her final resting place. By doing this, you build up the emotion slowly which makes you more accustomed to what the emotion does to your body. This makes you much less likely to panic .

A hypnotherapist can help you confront fear of an emotion or any fear(3). As mentioned, a hypnotherapist can help you figure out what fear is blocking you. Then a therapist can apply various techniques, such as neuro-linguistic programming or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you deal with the emotion. With CBT, for example, it has been scientifically proven that results are enhanced if you take the therapy while under hypnosis.

Not allowed to feel negative emotions

Another problem that many people increasingly encounter is that they have developed the belief that you cannot have negative emotions, such as fear, sadness, insecurity and also fatigue, when that is more of a physical state.

It has been scientifically proven that people who hold this belief have less self-compassion and are also less likely to seek help when they do experience these emotions or fatigue. They also tend to avoid emotions more often than people who do not hold this belief.

Unfortunately, people with these beliefs are also more likely to experience anxiety and depression than those who do allow themselves to experience negative emotions(2). An ironic fact.

When you do dare to ask for help, the risk of anxiety and depression becomes lower again.

Changing Beliefs

If you suffer from the belief that you should not feel negative emotions, you can change this belief in several ways. For example, you can use self-hypnosis to change the belief by repeating hypnotic suggestions to yourself.

Self-hypnosis for changing the no-negative-emotion persuasion

Sit or lie down in a comfortable place and close your eyes. Take several deep breaths and then try to keep your breathing as even as possible. Make sure you are breathing through your belly. You can check this by putting your hands on your belly. If your hands move you are breathing through your belly.

Focus on your breathing and relax your muscles. You can also do this with a mindfulness body scan.

If you are relaxed, you can repeat the following suggestions to yourself:

Negative emotions are part of life.
Negative emotions are necessary for processing negative experiences.
I may think things are stupid.
I may acknowledge that I am afraid.
I may be tired.
I don't always have to be cheerful.
I shouldn't always have energy.
I may ask for help.
My closest friends may know that I am grieving.

If you find it difficult to repeat these suggestions to yourself, you can record them first and then play them back to yourself.

Regression therapy for tracing the origins

If you have this belief and repeating the suggestions is not helping to change the belief it may help to find out where that belief came from. Perhaps you have once experienced something that makes you think you should always be energetic and cheerful, when this is an unachievable goal.

With regression therapy, a hypnotherapist tries to help you identify the why of the belief's origins. This may be an event, or it may be a combination of other beliefs that created it.

For example, if it was an event, regression therapy allows you to look at it in a different way that can change the belief. The results of regression therapy can be very surprising.

Want to learn more about mental techniques to address problems in your life? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.

Or register directly for one of our training courses.

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