Something that I love about my work as a psychologist is how learning about emotions and the human brain has helped me in my personal life. In grad school, I learned how to effectively LABEL emotions – and it was life changing. Today, I want to share those insights with you.

We have emotions for 3 main reasons.

Emotions:
communicate to us
communicate to others
organize action

It sounds kind of weird, but, yes, our emotions are how we communicate to ourselves! Our emotions also communicate to others through facial expressions and body language. (Let’s put a pin in “organize action” to first discuss specific emotions.)

In the world, there are 10 specific or “universal” emotions. These universal emotions are: Anger, Disgust, Envy, Fear, Happiness, Jealousy, Sadness, Shame, Guilt and Love.

Let’s discuss what a few of these emotions are trying to communicate:

Anger

Anger motivates us to correct a wrong. If you are on the warpath, people might get out of your way! Anger also motivates us to correct an overcharge.

Social justice movements often stem from a deep sense of unfairness and inequity in the world.

Fear

Fear keeps us safe when there is a threat to our life or well-being. If you are scared, your face tells people there is danger nearby. Fear motivates us to avoid or to get out of the way of danger.

Sadness

Sadness helps us withdraw to reflect on our life and contemplate re-building a life that we want in the context of loss. If you look sad, people might offer to help you!

Shame

Shame motivates us to hide a personal characteristic that could get us kicked out of a group. If you think about it, back in the day, we were dependent on groups, tribes or villages. Shame kept us safe in the group, because we couldn’t survive on our own.

Shame can often motivate us to try to find an environment where we *won’t* get rejected.

If you are a tulip in a rose garden - shame can help you find a tulip garden where you fit in or get you to advocate for the roses to accept you just as you are.

Once you know how you’re feeling, you can then ORGANIZE ACTION around your emotions.

We do this by asking, “Is the action I want to take going to get me where I want to be?” Put another way, "Is acting on this emotion helpful?"

If no, then consider doing Opposite Action.

Opposite Action is a skill explored in #DBT, wherein you decide to push against your comfort zone and act opposite to what the emotion wants you to do. (Here’s a helpful video on that from @DrShireenRizvi and @RutgersGSAPP's Jesse Finklestein: )
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For example, we can choose to act the opposite of fear or anxiety, and choose to actively approach a new person or situation.

Whew, what a thread! I hope this has inspired you to engage with emotions differently, and provided perspective on why emotions can be rather wonderful! I'm excited to tweet more about emotions in 2021