Our emotions are an important part of who we are, but understanding them isn’t always easy. According to an American psychologist, these misinterpretations are particularly widespread.
Our emotions can basically help us to cope with our life and to find our personal path. The prerequisite for this, however, is that we have some knowledge of how we understand our feelings. This, in turn, is sometimes much more difficult than we might think. In the online magazine Psychology Today, psychologist Alice Boyes describes five common misconceptions that can occur when interpreting our feelings — and that recognizing and avoiding can sometimes make us happier and healthier.
5 typical misunderstandings when dealing with our feelings
1. We think our feelings are triggered by our current situation, when their origin lies in our past.
As adults, we can hardly perceive and experience a situation completely unbiased and for itself. We associate memories of previous experiences with most situations – sometimes we are even aware of this, but more often we are not even aware of it. Therefore, it can happen that a situation in the present triggers feelings in us that are actually based on an experience from our past. For example, in an otherwise healthy and stable friendship, under certain circumstances we may suddenly feel insecurity and acute fear that we will be abandoned because of past experiences of rejection and loneliness. Most of the time, our emotional memory wants to protect us from having to go through pain we suffered in the past again. However, it often makes it difficult for us to feel the present. Even if we think we do. (You can read more about this in our article Emotional Triggers)
2. We think another person’s feelings relate to us.
Like our emotions, the feelings of those around us are shaped by their past. And many other factors that we don’t know anything about, for example her physical well-being, worries about her father, her dreams and longings and, and, and. So if a person reacts angrily or indifferently or otherwise to something we do, it doesn’t necessarily mean that reaction is really meant for us – just that we get it.
3. We think our feelings are a signal that we need to do something to stop them.
Many people interpret unpleasant feelings such as fear or frustration as a signal to avoid situations in which they experience such feelings. If you’re afraid of tight spaces, you don’t use the elevator. Anyone who is frustrated when colleagues make mistakes prefers to work alone. The problem with this interpretation, according to Alice Boyes, is that this way of dealing with emotions means that the feelings become bigger and bigger and take up more and more space in our lives, so that they ultimately cost us our freedom. For example, avoiding elevators can eventually turn into avoiding subways, basements, certain restaurants, and working alone can become an addiction to control or a lonely life.
In fact, our feelings are not there to imprison us or block our path. In this respect, this understanding of emotions will usually be a misinterpretation.
4. We evaluate our feelings as rational or irrational, justified or unjustified.
Most people tend to evaluate their feelings, for example by comparing them to what other people are feeling. For example, if I’m worried about my mother because she’s ill, but everyone around me, including my siblings, stays cool and doesn’t seem to be worried at all, I may tell myself that my worries are exaggerated, that I can’t control myself and way too scared and insecure. But does that give me security and confidence? Does that help me decide how to act in the situation? Probably not.
Instead of judging our feelings or those of other people, the psychologist recommends that we try to adopt an accepting, open-minded and interested attitude. In this way, our chances of decoding the true messages of our emotions and acting on them would be significantly better.
5. We fixate on a feeling.
According to Alice Boyce, many people have a dominant emotion that they are particularly used to feeling and can therefore most easily and clearly identify. For some people it may be fear, for others anger, for others overwhelmed and for some sadness. We then often concentrate on this emotion, while we neglect and ultimately hardly notice other feelings that we may also feel at the same time. For example, as I focus on anxiety for my mother, I may overlook the love and connection, need, and sense of ability to care for her that is burgeoning within me.
In many situations we feel more than one emotion and the more feelings we recognize and identify, the broader our perspective on a situation and the more impulses we get to act. So instead of holding on to our dominant feeling, we can try looking for other sensations in our feeling.
Do we always have to interpret every feeling correctly?
It is certainly not necessary or even advantageous in every situation in life to trace all of our feelings and to question every single emotion and tap on its origin. We’re also allowed to just have a bad day and be in a bad mood without being able to explain what childhood experiences are playing into our mood – and we’re even allowed to find it irrational. However, since our emotions can have a major impact on our lives and our actions, it can be fundamentally useful and enriching to be interested in them, to deal with them and to beware of hasty interpretations. Misunderstandings usually lead to conflicts. And the better we understand each other, the more (self-)confidently we can live.
Source used: psychologytoday.com