What Causes Our Emotions?

What are Emotions?

Emotions are created when we put our feelings (body sensations) that are caused by our active beliefs into context.  Our beliefs are assessments about our experiences that our brain automatically comes up with given our past experiences.  As we live our lives and observe what is around us and our brain does the following automatically:

• Interprets or assesses what it sees, hears, smells, tastes and feels.
• Initially assess if there is a threat present or not.  This could be a physical or social threat.
• It then tries to predict what may happen next based on what we have experienced in the past.
• It prepares to react to what it has assessed by preparing to implement a behavior in order to elevate our level of well-being.

The stories that our brain comes up with are what causes everything.  If our brain comes up with a story about danger and we believe it, then our body reacts and we feel this.  We place context on what is happening in our experience and our body and then we assess this as fear.

It’s All About What We Believe

These stories that we believe to be true make up our belief system. These beliefs can be conscious or unconscious (subconscious and very automatic) and they can even be real or imagined.  No matter what kind of beliefs get activated or how they get activated, any active belief creates our emotional states.  These emotions, in turn, influence out behaviors.

Identifying our emotions can be tricky, especially when it’s not that clear what active beliefs are causing them.  We may not be aware of these active beliefs if they are unconscious and automatic, and/or imagined.  It’s no wonder that sometimes we are unaware of why we feel the way we do.

Are you still not convinced that it’s your beliefs that cause your emotions?  Here is an exercise that you can do to help you see the linkage.

As you go about your daily life, you will notice emotions cropping up all the time. You are aware of them because you feel your body sensations; your feelings.

• Are your emotions good or bad?
• What are your thoughts at the moment when you are feeling good or bad?

Try it for Yourself

This example depicts both a positive and negative scenario.

Positive Scenario:  Imagine a place where you would love to travel.  Picture the surroundings.  What are you doing there? What is the weather like?  How does it smell?  Are you with anyone?  When you picture this scenario in your mind you will be generating some sort of emotion about this place as well.  You cannot help but generate emotions related to your thoughts.  What are they?  What are your feelings? Write down three emotions that you are feeling when thinking about where you want to travel.  Now take these emotions and write down the thoughts you were thinking of when you were feeling these emotions.  For example, if you were feeling warm, comfortable, happy, or joyful, then you will likely have produced thoughts of “the temperature in this place is warm and pleasant.”,  “the people are friendly”, “this place is clean”, “this place is exciting and vibrant,” etc…

Now that we have experimented with a positive scenario let’s look at a negative one to demonstrate the difference.

Negative Scenario:  Imagine a place you do NOT want to go to.  Imagine the surroundings of this place.  What are you doing there? What is the weather like?  How does it smell?  Are you with anyone?  Once you picture this negative scenario, you will again generate various emotions.  What are you feeling?  Write down three emotions that you are feeling when thinking about where you do not want to travel to.  Now take these emotions and write down the thoughts you were thinking of when you were feeling these emotions.  For example, if you are feeling discomfort, fear, or irritation, then you will likely have produced thoughts like “this place is cold”, “this place is crowded and unfriendly”,  “this place is riddled with crime”, and “this place smells”.

While you’ve examined yourself as you’ve conducted these exercises for positive and negative scenarios, did you notice a difference in your feelings?  When you examined your own thoughts, did you notice a difference in your thoughts?

Most likely, you noticed positive feelings and thoughts in the scenario where you were picturing a place you would like to travel to and negative emotions and thoughts in the scenario where you were picturing a place you would not like to travel to.

Remember that not every thought causes emotions.  For a thought to cause an emotion, it MUST be a thought that you believe to be true (the story is likely or plausible).  Look back at your thoughts in the previous exercise.  Were these thoughts all true facts about that scenario that you believed true?

Once you see the link between thoughts/beliefs and emotions/feelings, you can see a way out of feeling bad.  It is now possible to change your feelings by changing your thought/beliefs.  More balanced thinking leads to more balanced emotions.