FEELINGS ARE NOT EMOTIONS

While all of us use the terms feelings and emotions interchangeably as if they were equivalent, they are not the same. Nor are they synonyms of each other. The truth is that they are two very different phenomena.

Feelings are, at their essence, kinesthetics. That is, physical sensations of the body. If they are inside the body, we call them propriception and if they are accessed from outside of the body, then we call them sensations or feelings. Emotions always entails and involves feelings, but are more than feelings. To have an emotion, you also have to have a cognitive thought as noted in the previous articles.

Kinesthetic sensations consist of a large range of bodily sensations— pressure (soft, hard), oscillation of the pressure, temperature (cool, warm, hot), moisture (wet, dry), movement (quick, slow), intensity (low, medium, high), frequency (often, some, few), rhythm (rocking, up-and- down, etc.), pain (biting, dull, constant, etc.), extent (local, general), duration (short to long). Further, the kinesthetics can be at many different locations in the body. They can have texture, shape, etc.

When we ask, “What do you feel?” if we are using the word ‘feeling’ accurately and properly, we are asking for the kinesthetic sensations of the emotion. We can call attention to the beating of the heart, the pumping of the lungs, and the muscle tension in the legs, arms, face, neck, back, etc. We can invite a person to notice sensations within various parts of the body.

For the General Arousal Syndrome that is commonly referred to as both “the stress response” or the “fight, flight, freeze” response, the kinesthetics of these emotions are pretty much the same. Heart and lungs are highly activated so that there is a definite shift in breathing—sometimes even hyperventilating. Eyes dilate, skin sweats, blood is withdraw from brain and stomach and sent to the larger muscle groups preparing the body for fighting or running. Adrenalin is sent to provide more energy to the body. And the body is overall highly activated. But what do you feel in the general arousal?

The amazing thing is—it all depends. If you think, reason, and interpret things in your environment as threatening, then you will feel fear or anger. Fear if you think it is too much or that you don’t want to get into a fight. Anger if you think you can handle the threat and/or if you have a habit of getting into fights. If it is too overwhelming, you might just freeze. But if you think, reason, and interpret things in that same environment as fun, exciting, a challenge, desirable, etc., then you might feel excited or lustful. Excited if the situation is positive for you (public speaking, bungee jumping, etc.) and fits your values. Lustful if the situation involves

sexual stimulus or arousal.

Four emotions— fear, anger, excitement, and lust—and they all have the same feelings at the kinesthetic level! The difference goes to one’s cognitions. The bodily activation is the same, a state of heightened arousal so that you are ready to respond. But at the cognitive level, the semantics (meanings) are completely different.

Actually, this explains why these four emotions can get mixed up, why fear and anger are so intimately connected. That’s why underneath fear is usually anger and why underneath anger is usually fear. This explains why the fearful move-away from person when he reaches a threshold, and cannot take any more, can become extremely aggressive. It’s why sexual stimulation can become quite perverted—a person cannot get aroused unless chocked or abused in some way. It’s why the violence of rape is not as much about sex as it is about anger.

Emotions have within them feelings (kinesthetics). Feelings, however, may be just that—a feeling, a sensation, and not connected to any emotion. In experiments, people have been chemically stimulated by having epinorphein or adrinalin shot into their arms, and then asked, “What do you feel?” Again, it always depends. In these experiments it depended on what they were primed to expect. If they were primed to expect to feel fear—they felt fear. If anger, then anger; if lust, then lust. The determining factor was not in the sensation itself, but in the interpretation—the semantics that readied them to respond as they did.

“Feelings” and “Emotions”—not the same. Shall we try to pass a law to prevent people from using ‘feeling’ for ‘emotion?” I don’t think so. Nor would it really make that much of a difference. It’s sufficient to simply know that these are two very different phenomena and that you can understand your own emotions better when you know that they have a bodily or somatic base— a base of kinesthetic feelings.