01. Feelings

What’s the difference between emotions, feelings & moods?

Emotions

Emotions are an immediate, often fleeting, chemical response to our interpretation of a trigger which is released throughout our body in a fraction of a second, lasting around six seconds.

Psychologist Robert Plutchik described 8 basic emotions: joy & sadness, fear & anger, surprise & anticipation, disgust & trust. I’ve paired each of these emotions with their polar opposite.

Feelings

Feelings last longer and are often enmeshed with emotions, meanings and other mindtalk (that running commentary in our heads). Feelings are more cognitively saturated than emotions.

Feelings are often a mixture of two or more basic emotions: a feeling of optimism is a combination of joy and trust. Feelings are complex beasts to explain! For example envy is often associated with depression, hostility and shame. In my experience, once you have the right word to describe a feeling it is affirming.

Moods

Mood is a generalised, internal state of feeling. Moods linger for hours, days or weeks. They may be influenced by our environment, our physiology or our mental state. Some examples of mood: calm, agitated, sceptical, happy, melancholic.

Note that there are overlaps when describing feelings, emotions and moods.

For the purposes of my book I grouped the three categories of emotion, feeling and mood into a more general description ‘feelings’.

‘Good’ and ‘bad’ feelings

We tend to label the feelings, emotions and moods we like as ‘good’ and those we don’t as ‘bad’. For example: If she is irritable or angry she is in a ‘bad’ mood. If he feels apprehensive or embarrassed he is ‘feeling bad’. Interestingly, we don’t seem to refer to having a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotion.

Feelings and context

It can be helpful, both for you (and for those around you) if you can put your feelings into context. By context I mean the event that seems related to a particular feeling. For example ‘when I hear a dog barking I feel scared because I think of being bitten as a child’ rather than I feel bad around barking dogs.

In collecting and/or sharing more information you can understand more about yourself, your feeling and make sense of what is happening. Here is a useful structure that starts with noticing a feeling:

I feel… (insert feeling)
When… (see what emerges)
Because… (see what emerges)

If feelings aren’t coming easily then switch it around:

When… (insert an event)
I feel… (see what emerges)
Because… (see what emerges)

It can be helpful to have a reference list of feelings: download my feelings list here

Diminishing our feelings

Feelings, emotions and moods come in varying intensities. Sometimes we may use diminishing or minimising words such as ‘just’ ‘a little’ ‘somewhat’ ‘I guess’ ‘I’m sort of’ to downplay how we feel.

I think we use these words as protection or as a way to keep a sense of control. Yet they also stifle our credibility and confidence to feel and be ourselves. Here are some examples:

I get a bit frustrated when you…
I’m just sad
I guess I’m enjoying it

See what happens when you remove the minimising words:

I get frustrated when you…

I’m sad
I’m enjoying it

In my experience I am being more open and authentically myself when I don’t use diminishing and minimising words.

Free Download - Feelings

You can download a free list of ‘feelings’ we tend to like and ones we tend to dislike below.

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