Just kidding.

There is no “science” – well at least there is no scientific consensus yet.  There is plenty of scientific research going on around them.  We just aren’t that sure how to define them yet.

Does it amaze anyone else that such a critical, all-inclusive part of the human condition is so poorly understood?  If you think that’s bad, you should try looking up the research on “consciousness”…  Is it any wonder we have such a difficult time with our emotions?

Here is what I know about emotions, or “feelings” as we often call them.  Some of this is research based, some of it is wikipedia based, most of it is from my experience as a helping professional for over two decades.

They are caused as a reaction to outside stimuli – the environment triggers and emotion, it causes us to feel.  This could be something we see or experience, or an interaction with another human being.  Of course, emotions can also be triggered internally – they just “appear out of nowhere” and don’t have an external source.

Just because people can trigger your emotions – interactions with other human beings cause us to feel certain ways – those individuals are not responsible for our emotions or our reactions to them.  We are each individually responsible for our own feelings and reactions.  Another way to say this is: we don’t get to blame anyone for “making me feel….”

Emotions are a motivator to act – they stimulate behavior.  The can cause us to behave in positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy directions.  In some situations, emotions stimulate a thought that generates behavior.  This is the “A-B-C” theory of understanding behavior popularized by Rational-Emotive theory.

Of course, there are other situations where thought isn’t involved.  In some situations that have been repeated over and over, thought is removed and we simply act on our emotions; stimulus-response – no thought in the middle because we’ve experienced the situation so often it has become habituated.

There is another situation where thought is removed from the chain – FEAR.  Our bodies are trained to handle fear the same: fear inducing stimuli (think big toothy critter trying to eat you, like our caveman ancestors did) – adrenaline response – action in the form of Fight, Flight, or Freeze.

Many relationships have been destroyed by the mismanagement, or misunderstanding, or emotions.  Just the aforementioned fear or startle response can ruin a relationship.  Imagine being the stimuli that causes your partner fear!!  Over time, actions that cause our partners to fear us can only result in FIGHT FLIGHT or FREEZE.  You can imagine that one behavior causing fear, over time, can chip away at even the strongest resolve.

The solution?  Sharing feelings.  Discussing them.  Connecting over them.  Seeking to understand the other’s emotions – maybe even looking at what behaviors of yours might trigger these reactions.  These are the “deep” conversations many couples miss when life gets in the way – these are the conversations couples need to have to be connected and to build a healthy relationship.

But how?  Try this:

“I feel insert emotion here when you insert partner’s behavior here” – other person then validates.  (If you need help with validation, see the previous article)

NOT THIS:

“YOU MAKE ME SO ________ !!!!” – that’s just blaming.  Not much good conversation will come out of this.

“I feel like you ___________” – more blaming, but sneaking in the “feelings” word in order to make it sound like you were doing the “therapy thing”.

Give it a try.  When you use the above format, it forces you to communicate in a different, ideally healthy, way.  If you need help with the emotions (“The Feels” as I hear the kids calling it these days), I’ve left a little list below.  (From https://wire.wisc.edu/quizzesnmore/emotionwords.aspx)