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What happens when you feel? What are emotions and what are they for?
Psychology
Psychologists Jesús Matos and Elena Huguet explain what the functionality of emotions is and why they are all necessary
PM2:21Emotions are responses from our body that help us survive effectively. If for example we see a lion, surely an emotion of fear that will help us flee.
Generally speaking, emotions help us to adapt, motivate ourselves, and communicate with others. But each of them has a specific function. For example, him fear helps us escape from possible dangers, go to motivates us when we feel that our goals are being frustrated and the sadness accompanies us during losses and helps us process them.
When we feel an emotion, our body responds through three different systems. The cognitive response system, the physiological response system and the behavioral response system.
Within the cognitive response system, when we feel an emotion, changes occur in our thinking, our attention, and our memories. For example, we do not think in the same way when we are happy as when we are sad. We do not pay the same attention to possible dangers as to others stimuli And when we are angry with our partner, we tend to remember other situations in which we have also been angry.
On a physiological level, when we feel an emotion, our body is activated or deactivated to mobilize all our resources to cope with the situation in which we find ourselves. For example, if we feel fear, our heart will race to send more oxygen to our muscles, so that we can escape.
And on the behavioral plane, when we are emotionally activated, depending on the emotion we feel, our body will ask us to carry out one behavior or another.
If you realize, our body is a perfect machine that has been polished over thousands of years of evolution to help us stay alive as a species. Let’s banish the idea that some emotions are undesirable for once. They all help us.
Jesús Matos and Elena Huguet are part of the team of «In mental equilibrium» (evidence-based psychology). Huguet is, in addition to being a registered psychologist, an expert in Brief Strategic Therapy and combines her activity with research in the UCM doctoral program. He participates in numerous international congresses and in scientific publications.
For his part, the psychologist Jesús Matos has a Master’s degree in clinical and health psychology (UCM) and in Legal and Forensic Psychology (European Foundation of Psychology). He is the author of the book “Good morning, Joy” (Zenith), director of the website enequilibriomental.net, collaborator of specialized scientific media and speaker at numerous national and international conferences.