The human brain, emotions and behavior

Human nature is bizarre in many ways. We're all emotional creatures and whether we like to admid that or not, our lives circle around emotions in one way or another. Read the following for more explanations.

Naming and sorting feelings

Most of us are able to name and feel a range of emotions. And I say most of us, since children for example aren't able to name their feelings until they are taught to do it. They might be able to describe vaguely how they feel (bad - good) and in what body part they feel something (e.g. bubbly feeling in the stomach), but they don't have the names for all the emotions or the ability to sort one from another (e.g. jealousy - anger), before adults teach them to do it. Emotional education BTW is a huge responsibility in my opinion and all the parents should pay attention to that. Describing feelings isn't always easy for us adults either, so there's no harm practicing that. I claim that most of the people's relationships could be benefitted by emotional practicing, that presumably leads to some emotional growth.

Feelings and behavioral patterns linked to them are very subjective

Even though we have common names and projections for different emotions, we might feel them differently inside us. Our brains are capable of retrieving memories of how we felt during some previous encounter in our lives with a similar situation. It is natural, that these implications trigger similar feelings in us, as in the previous situation. This is also why we all handle emotions differently. Each person brings who they are in the situation and has different ways to react and act in situations, all of which are learnt either by example and/or through previous experiences in ones own life. Some may feel things much stronger than others, and some have better emotional coping skills. These differences can also cause (and usually does) confusion in people's relationships.

Most of our actions consequent from our emotions, since emotions activate behavioral "programs" in us. The way our behavior is influenced by the emotions is linked to our previous experiences, just like I described above. When something happens -or on the contrary doesn't happen, it usually causes an emotion in us and makes us react in ways we are familiar and most comfortable with. Some brush everything off whilst some are obsessed to talk talk talk about the situation. Some might even think it's a sign of weakness to express feelings and for example men (at least in Finland), don't necessarily feel as comfortable talking about their feelings as women. That is mostly because it hasn't always been as socially acceptable for them as for women, and sadly most of us are probably familiar with the saying "men don't cry". If I'll ever get a son, I'll promise to tell him all the time that it's OK to feel and cry and more than OK to talk about your feelings, etc.

Behavior is often related to one's pursues; how we set our goals is usually related to our emotions in one way or another. One might for example go for a new job in order feel more appreciated and that way happier in their life. Tough in that case they'd probably feel less appreciated at that present moment, so we may deliberate which came first, the chicken or the egg... Anyway, emotions affect our behavior and behavior is regulated and modified due to emotions.

After all this chat about emotions, I have totally forgotten my main point. I know I had one, or most likely several points, which made me write about this subject, but I can't recall it anymore. So I'm just going to leave this here. And if you managed this far, thanks for reading.

This picture is totally irrelevant, but I just have to share it, since spotting this "smiley" figure in my bathroom sink couple days ago cheered me up whimsically much. So let it (or this fact) cheer you now.

P.S. Remember that it's totally OK to cry guys!

Yours,