What is the point of an emotion ?

The concept of emotions has vastly different meanings to people. Even the subtle differences in definition between people can set up grounds for misunderstandings in communication. Connections to others can be severely impacted when the emotions are completely dismissed in relationships, seen as something to be extinguished in favor of a limiting stoic perspective. Another extreme is the potency of experiencing emotions where they have high value without question, leading people to believe that they are powerless to all emotions and only continue to neglect parts of themselves. 

We can look at the functions of emotions to better understand what emotions are, how we relate to our emotions, and then how we want to relate to them the next day. Our relationship with emotions is fluid as we perceive and experience them, making them up to change if we allow them to change. As we understand the purposes of emotions, we can develop ways to both strengthen our physical and mental health. 

So, here are the five functions for our emotions:  

1. Emotions make meaning of our physical state and the world around us. When we first start off in the body, we notice the six senses: sight, touch, taste, sound, and smell, and our sense about what is going on physically inside of use, interception. Based on what we are experiencing in our outside world, our inside world creates a label about what we think is happening. 

   
   

2. The moment we label our senses with an emotion we prescribe it with an action or goals. These actions and goals stem from both our past experiences and from our biological wiring. If we are sweating, feeling flushed, shaking legs, should we run away in fear, or grin and jump up and down in excitement. The answer depends on the meaning we placed on our experience. Are the listed sensations a threatening situation at work or school where there is so much to do with very little time, or is it because we are at a concert and our favorite song is just about to be played live. 

   
   

3. The third function of emotions will require less direct interaction with our conscious selves and it is constantly working almost like a non-voluntary response; it is to regulate the body’s budget or energy. The third function is several meters of how tired, sleepy, thirsty, hungry we are throughout the day. How much nutrients do we have right now for the next bout of thoughts that will go through our mind. When we label what we are experiencing, take action, our body regulates its budget of resources and energy. Should the body release a bit of adrenaline to help us in a state of distress playing a softball game, or maybe release a bit of cortisol to help raise our arms up in the air for a while at a concert. Maybe there needs to be a little bit of serotonin release when a furry friend comes by for a pat. 

   
   

4.  The fourth purpose of emotions is to help communicate our bodily energy budget, state of safety, and what actions the body wants to accomplish. We attempt to synchronize with another person, to communicate our emotional state in our body. The fourth state is the expression through our non-verbal communication in how we are going to present ourselves to others, how we think we are being perceived. Our postures shift, our cadence changes, our bodily language changes to express what we are experiencing with other people. We can communicate in short sharp responses to our family and friends, vague answers, looking away with wringing hands. These expressions can have us come across irritated, feeling rushed, or even overwhelmed with nervousness.

   
   

5. The fifth function is the reciprocal to the fourth function: the attempt to pick up on and interpret another’s state of mind, state of safety within their body. This conversation the body has with other people is created both by our own lived experiences, and understanding of our bodily response, felt sensations, but also by the cultural norms and society we live in. The emotions we detect in another person originally comes from us—from our own bodily experience with emotions. That is how a person who is feeling curious, deep in thought, can look angry to another, or how someone who is feeling embarrassed and very self-aware can be seen as feeling disconnected or shut off to another.  

We are experiencing emotions all the time, as we interpret sensations our bodies experience, predicting how to budget the body’s resources, and what actions to possibly take, based on past experiences. They are the tools we use to put meaning into facts, data, relationships, our goals, and the reasonable mind. They help us figure out what we want to do with the information before we take action. We cannot have total conscious control of our emotions though, when we become more aware of our emotions, how they work with us, they can stop being types of mythical monsters that consume our lives and instead become tools to help us in our daily lives, tools that have unintentionally become masters of our own lives. 

BARRETT, L. F. (2020). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. PICADOR 

Siegel, D. J. (2010). The mindful therapist: A clinician’s guide to mind sight and neural integration. W.W. Norton & Co.   

Schore, A. N. (2015). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Psychology Press.