An emotionally healthy person experiences and expresses a wide range of emotions—not just one or two.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” (The Gospel of Thomas)
“My father was a very angry man. He was always angry. His mere look would frighten us children. Looks like anger was the only emotion he felt. I never saw him smile. And I am like him. I seem to know only anger. I get into lots of trouble because of that.” said Mr. Antony in his first therapy session. “On the other hand,” he continued, “I never saw my mother angry. But she cried a lot. She was a very sad woman. Any one could see that on her face.”
Like Anthony’s father and mother, some of us experience and express only one or two emotions. The range of our emotional expression is very limited. An emotionally healthy person, on the other hand, experiences a wide range of emotions, not only anger and sadness, but also joy, grief, shame, exuberance, fear, gratitude, regret and so on, and feels free to express them—when appropriate.
An essential aspect of what makes us human is our capacity to feel. Healthy persons are in touch with a wide spectrum of emotions, and are able to express these emotions spontaneously and appropriately.
Healthy persons are emotionally expressive, but also have emotional self-control. They know when to express an emotion and to what degree, and when not to. They can be upset by an unwanted criticism, but they do not spend the whole day moody and ill-tempered because of it. They can be joyful and even boisterous, but also know when to be quiet and reflective.
Unhealthy persons, on the contrary, are overly restricted in their range of emotional expressions. They are comfortable only with a few emotions. For some persons, their anger dominates. For others, it can be grief, sadness or resentment. Moreover, emotionally unhealthy persons tend to express emotions in inappropriate ways.
There is an interesting gender dynamic to be noted here. Men are more prone to express anger than sadness. A man feels ashamed to cry, but not to shout! A woman, on the contrary, may weep when she is overcome by anger. Women are frequently socialised to believe that it is all right for them to cry, but not to show anger. Thus, a sister who withdraws to her cell or a wife to her bathroom to cry her heart out after a severe scolding by her superior or husband may be experiencing and expressing anger, not sadness.
Emotional Expression and Health
Emotional expression has positive impact not only on our emotional health, but also on our physical wellbeing. Psychologist Alexander Lowen observes: “A graceful manner, the sparkle in one’s eyes, the tone of voice, an overall aliveness and overall vibrancy expresses who we are more than words or actions.” But we will not experience any of these, Lowen observes, if our ability to experience and express a wide range of emotions is compromised or stifled. This will reduce vitality of the body. Feeling is the life of the body, and unless we let ourselves feel, our body is deadened. Moreover, when feelings are not expressed, they get embedded in the tissues and muscles of the body and give rise to muscular tension and psychosomatic illness. For example, lower back problems often are the result of muscular tensions arising from holding in feelings.
It is important, hence, to express our feelings rather than hold them in. This expression of feelings is important in healing, especially after traumatic experiences. One of the major challenges in psychotherapy is to help a client to feel free to experience and express feelings. Too often we have been discouraged by parents and others from expressing feelings. This becomes a pattern and stifles our vitality.
While it is important to express feelings, it is also important to have emotional control. We need to know when, where, and how to express emotions. Very often we express inappropriate emotions and express emotions inappropriately. For example, if I laugh during my mother’s funeral, that would be and seen by others as very inappropriate. We all have had experiences where we find someone expressing emotions inappropriately. We feel embarrassed for the person, but he or she is quite unaware of the inappropriateness or incongruence.
The purpose of emotional control is not to inhibit or limit feelings, but to make their expressions effective and appropriate.
The saying attributed to Jesus in the apocryphal book, Gospel of Thomas is very true. If we bring out the feelings locked up within us they will save us. If we do not, they will destroy us from within. The challenge for us is to recognize them and bring them forth in appropriate and constructive ways.
Emotion and Feeling
We often speak of emotions and feelings as though they are the same reality. The two are closely related but different. The English word emotion comes from the Latin root meaning “to move out.” Emotions move us physically. According to Antonio Damasio, a leading neuroscientist, emotions are complex reactions of our body to internal and external stimuli. They originate in the subcortical (lower, more ancient) regions of the brain, and cause hormonal, neural and muscular reactions. Thus, when I am angry, my adrenal level rises, heart starts pounding, mouth goes dry, breathing becomes rapid and the muscles of the body harden, and increased blood flow turns skin red and purple. When I am fearful, flow of blood to my skin is restricted and I turn pale. When I am joyful, my facial muscles relax, pupils dilate, and lips turn up. The body is the theatre where emotions play out.
Many researchers have accepted psychologist Paul Ekman’s classification of basic emotions into six: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. (However, not all agree on this list.) There are a number of secondary emotions flowing from these basic emotions, such as excitement, melancholy, panic, shyness, remorse, embarrassment, jealously, guilt, shame and so on. All these emotions have their body manifestations.
According to Damasio, feelings are mental experiences of body states, which arise as the brain interprets the emotions. Feelings originate in the neocortical (more recent and advanced) regions of the brain as our awareness of the body changes that happen during an emotion. This awareness is colored by our personal experiences, beliefs, memories, and thoughts linked to the particular emotion. In other words, a feeling is the product of our brain perceiving an emotion and assigning a certain meaning to it. While emotions are bodily reactions, feelings are perception of those reactions. Feeling, thus, is the conscious subjective experience of an emotion. Thus we can speak not only of an emotion of fear (the bodily felt impulses) but also a feeling of fear (the perception and interpretation of those impulses).
This description of emotion and feeling tells us that when we speak of emotions, we are actually referring to feelings, and not emotions per se. In this sense, it is quite all right for us to consider emotions and feelings as synonymous or interchangeable, even though technically speaking they are distinct. Even some reputed neuroscientists do not care much for the technical distinction between emotion and feeling and use the words interchangeably. Moreover, the lay person and the scientist use the same words for both the emotion and the feeling. What is important is that we experience a wide range of these emotions/feelings and express them appropriately.
Introspection
- What emotions do you more commonly experience?
- What emotions do you find easy to express? Why?
- What emotions do you find difficult to express? Why?
What do you need to do to bring more balance and appropriateness to your emotional expressions?
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