Emotions
Understanding Emotions
How Emotions Are Generated
Most of your emotions are the result of the interpretations you make of events taking place around you. The only exceptions are emotions that result from interference with the normal functioning of the brain or central nervous systems, such as injury, illness, mood-altering drugs, and inherited, genetic abnormalities. This process can be diagrammed as follows:
Event 
Interpretation Emotion Action
A part of your mind constantly evaluates events in terms of your needs and wants. This process of assigning meaning to events is usually done automatically and unconsciously. If a need or want is or may be satisfied, you experience the various positive emotions such as joy, excitement, or satisfaction. If a threat is present you experience anger (ranging from irritation to rage) or fear (ranging from apprehension to panic). If you encounter a loss you experience sadness, grief, or depression depending on the nature of the loss. Of course, events are often complex. They can satisfy some needs and frustrate others. This is why we often experience mixed emotions.
Why Do We Have Emotions?
As you can see from the above, the function of emotions is to move us to take action that will satisfy our needs and protect us from danger. However, for them to work properly, one needs to be perceiving events in a rational and realistic manner. When emotions are being generated by distorted thinking they often generate self-defeating behaviors. This distorted thinking can be due to faulty habitual thinking habits, events from the past intruding into the present, inaccurate core beliefs, or biological factors. Thus, an emotion is a complex response that has cognitive, physical, and subjective components. Emotions are triggered by the perception that the fulfillment of a need has been either satisfied or threatened, or that a loss has occurred. Once triggered, emotions push us to take action.
Healthy Emotional Management
Popular self-help books often state that it is important to be “in touch” with your emotions. Unfortunately, this often means that it is important to be more emotional or use emotional reasoning. The healthy management of your emotions involves the following four steps:
- Accurately identifying the emotion you are experiencing.
- Accurately identifying the need or want that is generating the emotion.
- Evaluating the beliefs that are contributing to your emotional response.
- Developing a plan that meets the need or want in an appropriate and realistic way.