Emotions are physical reactions to your ‘thinking’. So a reaction of the brain to something that happens outside yourself. You register something outside of yourself, then your brain thinks about it. The brain may associate it with an old pattern, stored pain, fear or pleasure.
After the reaction of your brain, you experience emotional energy in your body, which we call an emotion. You may get a faster heart rate, spots on your neck, or maybe butterflies in your stomach. This is because your brain has made a connection with something that was stored before. So it’s an old reaction that doesn’t necessarily have to be true in the moment and yet you experience that emotion.
Emotions never just happen to us, they almost always come from a belief. So our belief determines our emotion. The situation itself is less important than our idea of the situation.
So yes, emotions are not the same as feeling. Feeling is earlier. It is also registered in your body, but is already there before your brain can find anything about it. Feelings come from within, your compass, and therefore a very good counselor. Your feeling is something your body tells you and not your brain. Emotion is a feeling caused by a thought or belief. Positive thoughts cause positive emotions, negative thoughts cause negative emotions.
Feeling is a container concept with multiple meanings. We use it for everything: “That’s what my gut tells me. I’m not feeling well. I feel what you say. I felt I had to leave!” Usually we use feeling to explain that we don’t mean our mind. But most of the feeling comes from the mind. We call this feeling emotion.
So ‘emotion and feeling’ are different things and come from different ‘sources’. The way of your emotions goes through your brain (and therefore your ego) and that of feeling from your body.
And what is the difference between feeling and intuition? Intuition is based on feeling and on logic, there you have the brain again. That’s not to say your feelings aren’t important. You should always take it seriously. But before you act on it, it is useful to check first: what is behind it? It’s good if you can step on the brakes if your feelings are taking you for a ride.
And what is the difference between Feeling, emotion, intuition and instinct. How do you know what you’re dealing with? And what helps you best when making a choice? Most of the feeling comes from the mind. We call this feeling emotion. Intuition and instinct do not come from the mind.
What is intuition?
Intuition is also called gut feeling or sixth sense. It’s a feeling we can’t explain with our normal five senses. Somehow our bodies and consciousness pick up signals from the energy around us:
What is instinct?
Instinct is a reflex. It’s everything your body does automatically and unconsciously. You hardly have any control over it. We all know it : the doctor hits your knee with a hammer and your lower leg comes up automatically.
And now I hear you thinking what am I supposed to do with this information.
Well how would it be if you could disconnect your emotions from your gut feeling, wouldn’t your intuition be a better counselor?
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