The most important thing ever said about emotions is all of us would know what our emotion is until we are asked to describe it
Emotions are the brush strokes of our mind. When they surge with happiness, they express delight around us and also everywhere - from the inside out. Everything, therefore, becomes sweet-smelling - because, without emotional fragrance nothing sweet can be produced, or experienced. But, what if your emotions displayed the reverse effect? You emote dull, sad, or unhappy feelings. Put simply, our emotions outline our 'selves' - when we are not pleasantly tuned we don't relish happiness from our good emotions, too.
Emotions are the wires that hold our mental life together. They define who we are in our mind's eye and in the eyes of others. Isn't it appropriate, therefore, for us to recognise our emotions in the best manner imaginable - of why and how they make us happy, dejected, negative, disturbed, startled, dismayed, or elated?
Our brain has over 10 billion neurons connected to each other in extremely complex ways. While the electrical circuits within, aside from the chemical exchanges between these cells, achieve a plethora of incredible and composite things, the formation of our emotions stands out as one of nature's most remarkable and mystifying pieces. When you look deeply at your emotions, you find them, at once, apparent and also varied. They are the states we know best and recall with the greatest precision. You may not know where they come from. You know them, yes, because they can change things, slowly, or all of a sudden.
We are all conditioned to doing certain things every day. Yet, the fact is, we may not always understand what makes us get up in the morning. Or, why we can be kind, or unpleasant - even when one knows what is really guiding our actions. You may, likewise, respond to danger before you know there's peril lurking in the corner. Or, you may relish certain soulful melodies without consciously understanding what it was that you liked. The point is: our emotions are at the centre of who we are; they also seem to have their own 'schedule' without our factual involvement, too.
It's difficult to picture our life without emotions. We live for them, looking at situations that offer us moments of joy and contentment, while trying to dodge circumstances that lead to vexation, or disquiet.
It is often thought that our emotions are bodily responses that echo our struggle to survive. Or, they are mental conditions that emerge when our physical reactions are detected by our brain. Research embraces the view that emotions are actually bodily reactions that are close to a feeling, with the process taking place primarily in our brain. They may be conscious impulses, or unconscious resolutions. Our emotional feeling, as psychologist Carroll Izard puts it, is a phase of neurobiological activity, the key component of emotions and emotion-cognition interactions.
Philosophers believe that emotions are thoughts about situations in which we find ourselves in. Or, they may be the consequence of social patterns that occur within us. This helps therapists to grasp as to what could have, perforce, gone wrong when a part of our mental life goes bonkers. It's also agreed that emotions are nuggets of our thoughts and actions. The most important thing ever said about emotions is all of us would know what our emotion is until we are asked to describe it. As the legendary philosopher Bertrand Russell articulated, "The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts."
Put simply, emotions that engage and impact us are loaded with a certain clarity, or haziness. They are as distinct as our signature. You'd define them as 'molecules of our feelings.' They are biological responses of our subjective state that emerge with physiological and psychological underpinnings. Research suggests that they are also objective signs of our psyche - even if one cannot measure their bandwidth with precision. Picture this - when we are enveloped by emotions, they mirror not only our emotional history, or biology, but also the physics of our conscious awareness, although mind researchers affirm that such attributes are sometimes as subtle as the 'small is big dose' in medical practice.
The best part is - the 'mindful' realm of psychology that connects our emotions to feelings encompasses a triad of natural responses - viz., action, cognitive processes and physiological feelings. This triggers the question as to whether one should include motor acts, or muscle systems, within the framework. This is, of course, a complex equation - with no easy answers. A school of thought that provides an amicable 'mode' out of the impasse suggests that we ought to trust our mind to perceive the first form of our responses through restrained thought built on a set of scales and also ideas. This would help establish the strength of our emotions.
The idea of security, as another school of thought puts it, is, likewise, well ensconced in our mind - right from infancy to old age. Besides, there is yet another school of thought that does not fancy human imagination, but places its argument on dependable, observable facts, where causes, consequences and contextual constraints could be examined. This is akin to the Baconian paradigm of separating the chaff from the grain, or peeling the truth from the inside out.
It's agreed that all of us need reliable facts before we analyse, or distil, anything, including experimental work. This is because, for every intellectual effort, from the arts to the sciences, we need to balance ideas, theory and truth. One can certainly checkmate a new supposition, yes, but one cannot disregard certain eternal truths that have stood the test of time, despite the fact that we have come a long way from the dark ages into the dazzling present - the age of astounding scientific and technological advance.
Nidamboor is a wellness physician, independent researcher and author
