People throughout our lives experience infinite feelings, which tend to manifest in the polarities of positive or negative feelings. Feelings make us human, make us people and therefore understanding their meaning and the types of feelings we can experience will help us better understand ourselves and establish closer and healthier relationships. Therefore, in this Bigmatrimonial article we will explain what feelings are: types, list and examples of them.
Feeling and emotion
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What are feelings and emotions? It is common to place emotions and feelings on the same plane and it is not surprising, since there is a close relationship between the concept of feeling and emotion, however although the two processes depend on each other, they are different states . Therefore, before being able to understand feelings and their types, it is especially relevant to know what differentiates them from emotions.
What are emotions?
The definition of emotion is a reaction of our organism, psychophysiological, cognitive and behavioral, that leads us to react in a certain way to an external agent, such as being happy to receive good news or internal, like being sad when remembering a bitter memory . Emotions appear instantly in the face of the event and have a short duration, tending to be in polarities of positive emotion or negative emotion.
What are feelings? Definition
Feelings are a state of mind that occurs in relation to external inputs, considered the mental expression of emotion. Where do the feelings come from? When emotion is processed in the brain and the person is aware of that emotion and the state of mind that it produces, it gives rise to feeling, therefore the origin of the feelings are the emotions defined and valued rationally that will determine our state of mind.
Feeling and emotion: difference
Although both emotions and feelings are the result of an irrational process in the face of the subjective way of perceiving a certain situation, emotions maintain a basic and primitive one-way pattern , that is, emotion appears immediately and spontaneously after the presentation of the stimulus. On the contrary, in the feelings reflective processes intervene, on which the person becomes aware of his state of mind and what it is that he is feeling, allowing him to be valued. Having understood the difference between emotions and feelings, we will focus exclusively on feelings.
Types of feelings
People can experience many feelings that lead us to different moods, however their division has focused on their polarity, establishing a classification around positive and/or negative feelings based on the response they provoke in the person.
Types of positive feelings
Positive feelings are pleasant feelings that produce a perception of well-being in the person and carry feelings of pleasure. Positive feelings contribute greatly to preserving our physical and mental health, because they help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. On the other hand, they help to alleviate the appearance of negative feelings.
Types of negative feelings
Contrary to the positive, negative feelings produce feelings of discomfort in the person and are unpleasant. It is convenient not to confuse negative feelings with bad feelings. Negative feelings are also useful and functions. Sometimes, we try to get rid of them, although they are necessary for our development and progress as people.
However, it is important to correctly manage negative feelings, since unlike positive ones they can be precipitants of high levels of stress and anxiety and with this, generate physical or mental health problems, such as the development of a depressive disorder and/or anxious.
Feelings list
Let us now know the main feelings grouped into the two classifications: positive and negative feelings.
List of positive feelings
There are many positive feelings that we can experience throughout our lives, which broadly can be grouped into the following feelings:
- Happiness : happiness is a primary emotion that is understood as a feeling of absolute satisfaction, which is born from another emotion and makes us value the environment around us in a positive way.
- Love: love is a feeling towards someone or something and the desire is born that that person or thing has everything good that it can have, brings out the best in ourselves.
- Euphoria : Euphoria is the maximum expression of joy, which involves an increase in our energy and makes us contemplate life in a much more positive way.
- Hope : having faith in achieving what you want.
- Motivation : reaction of enthusiasm and energy to a duty or an action.
- Passion: feeling that is intimately related to love and tends to appear in the sexual sphere.
- Satisfaction: feeling that occurs after doing something well done, which stimulates confidence and security in ourselves.
- Fun: focus our attention on an action that makes us spend time in a pleasant way and brings us well-being.
- Well-being: state of balance between the somatic and psychic levels of the person.
- Enthusiasm: feeling that arises when motivated by an event.
List of negative feelings
In the same way that in positive feelings, there are many negative feelings that we can experience, however we must not forget that learning to live with negative feelings and give them the importance and dedication they deserve, will help us grow as people. The different negative feelings that we can find in broad strokes are the following:
- Anger: feeling of disgust towards someone or something, which causes a bad disposition towards the object that generates anger.
- Anger: it is a primary emotion that is due to a high intensity of anger.
- Fear: Anguish caused by the perception of a danger that can be real or imagined.
- Concern: state of concern that appears in the face of a problem or circumstance.
- Sadness: feeling that is emotionally painful and causes great discomfort, which can trigger pessimistic thoughts and a tendency to cry.
- Guilt: responsibility that the person assumes on a fact or action, which carries a negative connotation.
- Stress: state of mind overwhelmed by the perception of feeling overcome by a certain circumstance.
- Frustration : feeling that arises from the impossibility of completing what was needed or wanted.
- Indignation: feeling that is annoyed at considering a fact or action as unfair.
- Shame: discomfort in the face of a fact about which the person has felt humiliated or in anticipation of fear of being able to make a fool of himself.
- Vulnerability: feeling that encompasses feelings of fragility, impotence, sensitivity and insecurity, which trigger a global feeling of perception of vulnerability.
Feelings: examples
Let us now see some examples of very frequent feelings that can appear in our daily life:
- We receive an e-mail where our boss tells us that on Saturday we must go to work. First, we may experience an emotion of anger, but after becoming aware of what we are feeling, feelings of sadness may appear for not being able to do what you had planned with your partner or anger for having to go to work on a weekend.
- We learn that two of our friends have been invited to a party to which we have not been invited. First, emotional responses of outrage may appear, but after understanding the situation, feelings of vulnerability may appear, where we feel insecure and wonder why we have not been invited.
- They notify us that they will promote us at work. For example, it could happen that our expressed emotion is not what is expected, reacting with a rather apathetic tone. By processing the news and understanding how we feel, we can be aware of the feeling that it gives us, which can be a feeling of stress and fear, facing the challenge that is presented to us.
These are some of the many examples of feelings that we can find ourselves in, where we can observe that emotions and feelings are two different processes, about which the initial reaction, the emotion, may not have the same emotional tone as the feeling, once the information has been processed and we have become aware of how this information or fact makes us feel, which is where the feeling is born.
This article is merely informative, in Bigmatrimonial we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.