Why You Should Monitor Your Emotions

As humans, we experience a whole range of emotions. There are primary emotions, such as anger, fear, joy or sadness, and secondary emotions, such as; guilt, shame, dread, surprise, and inadequacy — These emotions have functions.

Our minds create thoughts, and these thoughts create emotion, and these emotions influence how we behave. If we don’t experience the feelings of guilt or shame, we will act in inappropriate ways. If we didn’t feel any fear, we would engage in risky behaviours that would probably lead to our demise.

For some reason, emotions have been taboo, and this happens to be on a cultural level. For instance, men have always been encouraged not to show emotion because that would indicate vulnerability and weakness. It’s incredible how humans believe we can defy the biochemical laws that underlie the life of our feelings, even if it’s to our own detriment. This denial of the existence of our emotions only makes matters significantly worse.

Our emotions are there to guide and direct us, however we are creatures with compulsive patterns of behaviour, and most of us fall prey to our emotions without even knowing it. How you feel at any given moment will influence your thoughts and behaviours — its that simple.

There is no way of getting around our emotions, so what should we do about them? — bring awareness to them.

For one, our emotions are like signals of information, telling us that we need to take action on something. When you feel an emotion, its your body telling you that you need to take action on something. Tuning into your emotions helps you cater to your own needs more effectively.

Many people have reported that once they bring awareness to what they feel, the intensity of that particular feeling begins to subside. Perhaps the most crucial function of attention is that once you can pinpoint what you’re feeling, that emotion starts to lose its influence over you.

By checking in and becoming more in touch with what you’re feeling, you take back control over how you want to respond to things in life, without being overruled by your emotional responses.