Differences between emotions and feelings

These two types of subjective and irrational experiences can be distinguished if you know how.

The difference between emotion and feeling is something that often causes confusion in understanding how the human mind works. in understanding how the human mind works.

The concepts of emotion and feeling can be easily confused and, in fact, even within the world of psychology they are often used as if they were synonyms.

However, some authors defend the idea that there are differences between emotions and feelings and that, therefore, they are words used to label different mental phenomena.

Distinguishing emotion and feeling

When we talk about this topic it is important to keep in mind that there are different theories about emotion. there are different theories about emotionThese provide different explanations about how our emotional and emotional facet works and, from the perspective of neuroscience, about how the part of the brain in charge of producing emotions works: the limbic system.

However, among the authors and researchers who separate the concepts of feelings and emotions (such as Antonio Damasio, for example), there is a certain consensus when it comes to indicating that the concepts of feelings and emotions are not the same, there is a certain consensus when it comes to indicating how they differ from each other..

First of all, let us see how these two words are defined.

What is an emotion?

An emotion is a set of neurochemical and hormonal responses that predispose us to react in a certain way to an external stimulus (such as the sight of a spider) or an internal stimulus (such as a memory of our childhood years).

That means that an emotion is what is generated by the limbic system of the brain when groups of neurons related to certain experiences, so that we are predisposed to act in a certain way.

This happens because, throughout our life, our brain does not limit itself to "memorizing data", but also learns certain ways in which to react to those experiences. In a way, information about what we experience goes hand in hand with information about how we react to it. to it; they are not two separate kinds of information.

That is why, if we learn to associate insects with bites, when we see one we will tend to experience the sensation of fear: our body will have learned that, with that visual information, that is the appropriate reaction.

What is a feeling?

A feeling is similar to an emotion and is closely related to the limbic system, but in addition to this spontaneous, uncontrollable and automatic predisposition, it includes the conscious in addition to this spontaneous, uncontrollable and automatic predisposition, it includes the conscious evaluation that we make of this experience. That is, in a feeling there is a conscious evaluation of the emotion and of the subjective experience in general.

For example, if we see a spider, we will be able to self-examine what we feel and what we think in such a situation and reflect on what other experiences that situation reminds us of, what are the different ways in which one can react to that stimulus, to what extent is the disgust or fear we feel rational, etc.

What is the difference between the two?

As we have seen, both emotions and feelings have to do with something irrational that has to do with the subjective way in which we experience a situation. Neither of the two phenomena can be faithfully translated into words without leaving many nuances behind, and it is the other person who, making an effort of empathy, must construct in his or her mind and from his or her own experiences how we should feel.

However, the fundamental difference between emotion and feelings is that the former is totally basic, primitive and primitive. the former is completely basic, primitive and unidirectional (in the sense that it is something that appears automatically when a stimulus is presented) whereas feeling includes the capacity to think and reflect consciously about what one feels and, therefore, has to do with the capacity to think in abstract and symbolic terms.

Works of art, for example, are the classic characterization of feelings, because they are abstract sublimations of emotions. In a poem there are not only emotions, but necessarily there must also be feeling, something that allows to express in a symbolic way what is felt.

Thus, feelings are bidirectional, feelings are bidirectionalThere is something that goes from the most basic and primitive mental processes to the consciousness, but there is also something that goes from the consciousness to the way in which that situation is valued and experienced in a holistic and global way.

The two are inseparable

And here comes an apparent paradox: although the concepts of feeling and emotion refer to different things, in practice, where there is an emotion there is always a feeling (or several). (or several). The two are presented at the same time, and the words we use to separate them conceptually only exist in theory to allow us to understand more precisely what part of the conscious experience we are describing.

In the same way that where there are genes there is an environment that influences the way in which they are expressed, emotion and feelings cannot be presented separately (in the conscious and healthy human being) and will therefore overlap. The distinction between the two is more virtual and theoretical than material.

That is why the difference between feeling and emotion is only used because it is useful in certain cases and because each of them could explain different neurological processes that work in parallel, not because we can effectively isolate a feeling and separate it from the emotion with which it is presented.. In psychology and neuroscience, for better and for worse, things are not so simple.