Understanding your Feelings and Emotions

So much time is spent wanting to discuss feelings.  Your feelings can be influenced by many factors.

  1. Hormone levels changing in the endocrine system and throughout the body.
  2. Availability of certain neurotransmitters in the nervous system. 
  3. Blood sugar
  4. Sleep pattern disturbance 
  5. Pharmaceuticals

 

After all those physical possible reasons for feeling one way or another, then there are a whole lot of other possible reasons for a feeling.

 Transference of a routine of relating from one of your family members growing up to the person you are dating or in a romantic relationship with in the present.

A habit of thinking the opposite of what authority figures told you so as you realize something about yourself and get feedback on it, you can find yourself rebelling against your own goal and happiness.

  1. Simple fear of abandonment distorting the situation.
  2. A sense like a smell or sound, perhaps a kind of touch that makes an emotion from the past flood your mind, thereby influencing your reactions to now.
  3. The notion that you want to agree with the consensus or for that matter always disagree with it.
  4. Shame fear even when there is nothing to be ashamed of..
  5. A routine of moving ahead then feeling stressed then falling back into old patterns.

There is a real phenomenon in the brain that is called “State dependent memory”.  This means basically that people remember different ideas and opinions even what they like or don’t like based on the mood that they are in at the time the memory is formed.  It works a little bit like the reason why people have black outs on booze.  That means that what you do and don’t remember is not just a choice, some of it is happening to you.

Your rationalizer in your head will be making a kind of internal legal case for whichever way you went.

Also, feelings change and are temporary.

So, when we believe we need to discuss feelings we are frequently discussing a temporary notion that will be different in a very short time.  

Yet, we will be giving a person views of the other people in our lives that may be temporary, not accurate, or just to win.  Do we think about the real consequences of who we may be throwing under the bus?  Do we think about the trust we may be creating in a person or the lack of trust depending on what we say about a third party?

What does it really do to the mind of the listener when they believe us when we might be just blowing off steam?

If a person is better at keeping the outcome that they want long term in their mind it regulates the emotional reactions in the short term much better.  If a person is instead just judging or perceiving what is taking place today then their outlook is much too short to have a way to regulate mood in the same way.

The important routine.

  1. What is my outcome in the long term, medium term and short term?
  2. What is the outcome that serves the other person as well?
  3. Will this really matter in a week?  A year?
  4. What actions will I take to be effective, loving, making progress?
  5. How will my discussion impact the other person, will it be bad for them or good for them?