In the past few months, millions of people around the world have faced anxiety. An unknown disease, an invisible danger that takes lives, which forced us to sit within four walls, made most of humanity feel fear.
Fear is an unpleasant emotion. It is felt in the body like a lump or hole, squeezes the heart, makes your hands tremble, and makes your legs wad. Nobody wants to feel fear, just like irritation, sadness, disgust.
We are ready to give a lot to get rid of an unpleasant feeling.
You might be surprised if I tell you that you cannot get rid of emotions. Even if you train for a long time, meditate for years and be a very enlightened person.
And this is great, because our emotions are our integral part, an innate function of our brain. The ability to experience emotions is a sign of a normal person. Only a very small number of people are emotionless. And this is just a sign of mental trouble.
Unfortunately, not everyone is able to recognize what kind of feeling we are feeling right now. This needs to be learned and taught to your children.
A natural question – why do we need this?
Let’s find out how we can use our emotions.
Imagine our emotions are an evolutionary mechanism necessary for survival. A human baby is born with a dowry – innate, basic emotions.
Higher animals also have such a mechanism. Animals need emotions in the same way as humans. By scanning posture and facial expressions, the animal determines the mood of the met fellow. A dog, for example, knows perfectly well what to expect from another dog, judging by bared teeth, raised hair on the nape, or, conversely, a wagging tail. As a matter of fact, we can also understand by the expression on his face what a person feels – whether he is glad to meet or not. A furrowed brow or a wide smile – you see it and you know how they treat you.
Ancient man was in the same position as animals are now – he had no speech, the main means of communication. Emotions and body reactions to them – facial expressions, gestures, postures – showed fellow tribesmen what could not be said in words.
It was a universal language that everyone could understand, which made it possible to communicate long before a real language appeared.
But our emotions, in addition to the function of external communication, have a much more important function of communication with oneself for a modern person.
What we feel helps us understand exactly what we need right now.
Each emotion represents a different problem.
Fear signals possible danger and prompts us to take action. For an ancient man, it was a “fight or flight!” Now this is a reason to figure out what exactly we are afraid of and draw up two plans: plan A will contain steps to prevent a frightening event, plan B provides steps to get out of the crisis if it does happen.
Anger speaks of the violation of boundaries and the need to protect them or achieve what you want. Someone encroaches on our property, time, resources. Or does not give us what we are trying to get (the same resources or time). In the ancient world, the boundaries of the territory were quite real, they had to be protected with a cube or spear in hand. Now these are rather personal boundaries. But building and protecting them is equally important.
Sadness shows us our vulnerability, signals that we are in dire need of something. And he encourages you to find this vital “something” and give it to yourself. This is some value that is extremely important to us. If we are not in contact with her, we are sad. For ancient man, sadness was a necessary emotion of communication. Indeed, who will give you their resource if you are cheerful and active? It was necessary to show with facial expressions and behavior that a person really needs something. Now sadness makes us slow down, slow down, perhaps cry alone with ourselves. And this is great, because only by stopping and looking inside ourselves, we can realize what we are missing.
As you can see, emotions are not just annoying experiences! The ability to distinguish and understand them helps us every day of our hectic life.
Don’t ignore your emotions, don’t try not to feel. Treat them like your best friends and main advisors.
Your emotions will tell you more than once a way out of a difficult situation and will help you to “survive” in the urban jungle, as they once helped our ancient ancestor to survive in the jungle that is quite real.
