Do you need help untangling your emotions? If so, you’re likely struggling to sort out what are your emotions 
vs feelings or thoughts.
As a mind-body-spirit coach, I’ve had many clients with precisely this problem. Their entanglement creates confusion, making it difficult for them to shut out external viewpoints, hear their own voice, trust themselves, and make authentic choices.
If this sounds like your experience, untangling this knot is clearly an important first step.
Why Knowing What’s Feelings Vs Emotions Is Key
What’s most important in distinguishing your feelings from emotions are two simple realizations.
- Feelings and emotions are not the same thing, and
- Feelings are actually thoughts.
In your mind, feelings masquerade as emotions and in so doing, they jumble up what would otherwise be a relatively clear understanding of your emotional state and your opinions (or thoughts) about that.
So, let’s start at the beginning and define these terms.
What Are Thoughts
Thoughts are formed from language. And, in very basic terms, language is merely a system of words or symbols that represent experiences, expectations, and/or something to communicate to the external world or other people. As representations, words are only approximate.
You’d probably agree that words don’t always capture well what’s going on outside of you or inside you.
By extension, thoughts are simply conscious language-based ideas comprised of words and produced by thinking. They’re a product of your head brain. And, like words, they too can represent accurate or inaccurate remembrances. They can be incorrect even when you believe them to be true.
What Are Emotions
Emotions are innate neurobiological reactions, but not all emotions are consciously perceived. They provide information about the status of the body to all the different body systems. Because they are essentially bodily signals or information, they are neither positive nor negative. The valences – positivity or negativity – typically assigned to them are merely mental constructs.
Additionally and importantly, emotions express the whole sense of present embodied experiences or states of being. They do this by rising into a person’s awareness as a felt sense – a vague yet significant somatic experience. While not easily described in words or precise phrases, there is information and wisdom that arises from the direct experience.
As such, emotions are a critical aspect of your embodied intelligence or your body-mind. And, they also contribute to the formation of our thoughts and beliefs related to those experiences. Thus working together the head and body-minds for the whole mind. And, it’s important to access both when making important decisions and living an authentic life.
If you regularly pay attention to these sensations arising within you, you’ll begin to see your own personal patterns and what they mean to you. From your direct experience, you’ll be able to independently, authentically, and confidently identify your true emotions.
What Are Feelings
“While emotions start as sensations in the body, feelings are generated from our thoughts about those emotions. Or in other words, feelings are how we interpret emotions and let them sink in.” (Dakota Family Services). To simplify, emotions are sensed and feelings are reasoned. The former is of the body and the latter is of the brain.
Because feelings are thoughts about emotions, pulling feelings and thoughts apart is often extremely difficult. This is especially true if the objective is to gain clarity about emotions or your emotional experience.
This is why, anyone, including you, benefits from remembering how to sense within and access their authentic emotions and not just their thoughts about them. I say remembering because we’re born as sensory-motor little beings, but as our brain and cognitive abilities develop we learn to favor the head-brain over the body-brain.
Untangling Your Emotions
It sounds so simple, but just being able to recognize what is an emotion, thought, and feeling creates a deal of clarity. It builds confidence as well because emotions are by definition self-referenced, leaving less room for doubt.
In addition, learning to turn inward, sense within, and recognize how your body expresses different emotions is critical.
Also, notice when you use the word “think” when talking about your emotions. For example, when you say “I think I’m sad.” These are obviously thoughts that create feelings.
However, the thought process that creates feelings can be more subtle. By their very nature, thoughts can only imperfectly describe a felt sense. In fact, some thoughts that pop into your head when you attempt to articulate a felt sense can actually stem from attitudes, beliefs, and past judgments about a certain kind of sense (a kind of tightening in the center of your chest) or nonembodied aspects of an experience (sounds, colors, objects, etc).
In this way, feelings can be thoughts that actually mask your true emotions.
Next time you’re faced with an important decision and you’re having difficulties untangling your feelings vs emotions, use your full mind – both your head-mind and your body-mind.
For More On Untangling Emotions Or How to Turn Inward, see:
- Mind Body Spirit Blog, in particular:
