Aren't emotions and feelings just reactions to certain stimuli?

Question

If you think about it, emotions and feelings are just specific reactions to specific stimuli. For example, the feeling of love is just a reaction to the actions of your loved ones. Doesn't this just mean that your emotions are "forced" upon you? We really have no choice in controlling the way we feel. It seems as if we are just made to feel a certain way. It's a scary thought but doesn't that just make emotions feel "purposeless" and "artificial" ? It makes emotions seem less special and it's a very scary though. This really bothers me and it seems to make life seem less "authentic" ...

Answer 1

You are right. Life is chemistry, and the feelings and emotions we experience are chemically based. However, don't despair. It's all we've got, so we might as well take advantage of it and enjoy the go-round.

I think you might reconsider your conclusion that we have no choice in the way we feel, though. We can control our responses to things, and response is EVERYTHING. As another contributer here stated, thoughts precede the emotional flow, and we can direct our energy into asking ourselves WHY we are emotionally responding as we are, and perhaps thus avoid a painful or destructive emotion. Some things are just too big for an individual, that is true. The rush of chemicals when so-called (and beautifully put) 'True Love' whacks us often gets the best of us, but countless other things, such as whether or not to become enraged because a neighbor left his trash in the hallway, or waste a day feeling slighted by a co-worker, or hate a whole race or nation because of historic battles lost or won are certainly within our capacity to handle. Take heart.  

Answer 2

The ancestor to every feeling is a thought, unfortunately most miss the thought because they are unaware of their thinking much of the time.

Blessings!

EDIT:  I have found that thought leads to emotion, but yes then a loop can be set up & it becomes a vicious circle. Yet trying to change how you feel without changing what you think will be a losing battle, it leads to denial of feelings rather than actually dealing & changing them.

Blessings!

Answer 3

It sounds like you can't see the forest because of the trees; you're not looking at the whole picture, just a small part of it.

Just because our feelings are chemically based does not diminish they're worth. At least not too me. We are after all only animals ourselves, but what separates us from other animals is how we react to our feelings. We have the ability to think rationally. Feelings may be instinctual in nature, but we evolved the ability to override our basic animal instincts, and that is a part of what makes us human.

Answer 4

A very intelligent question indeed.

                There is no easy answer to this questions, because there is so little that we know about emotions or feelings, about what they really there. There are as many definitions as there are heads.

                        If emotions are reactions - with suspension of reason, it does sound like determinate and dependent on stimuli. They have their roots in our long genetic history. When found in such and such condition , evoke such and such response. Love, hatred, awe, fear and many more. Our brains seems to suspend our reasoning facility and take these short cuts to behaviors ( depending on each individuals nature- different genetic makeup ).

As to the questions of whether any emotions or feelings are forced upon us, I have a question that might give you some idea of the level of helplessness that our conscious brain feels - because so much is taken care of on an unconscious level. When we are sad, and we know that we are sad, and we know that its painful and we do not want to be sad, If we truly have Free Will, why cant we just WILL ourselves out of sadness?

                     So much can be said about any topic that relates to our brains, our consciousness and the workings of our thought processes. There are just too many ways to look at them all . But one of the sum points is that, Free Will is not what we take it to be.

                 Life operates essentially.  

Answer 5

Emotions are the most important thing we have. They are our inner guidance system. When you are going somewhere & get a bad feeling about a place they show you to either be careful or just leave, etc. So they are your intuition. When you tell someone about the work you are doing & they put you down you learn something about sharing your work ideas with this person or you can see them as a mirror of you &  ask yourself why you are not being more supportive of your ideas & clear those emotions. I work with people in healing their emotions. When a person cry when a loved one dies it isn't because they are being negative, it is because they love so much. Actually, they can get to a point of not crying from looking at what they are thinking & actually seeing those thoughs as negative & turning them around but that takes time. So if a person dies & a person wants to stop feeling bad they would take each thought & change it to a more posiitve thought. Oh, I could write a book for so I will stop here & just leave it that emotions are E=energy in motion. If you don't express them they will turn into resentment/cancer or high blood pressure/anger or depression/diabetes. So learn about them & they will help you live the life of your dreams. That is what they have done for me. We choose our emotions but sometimes it takes a long time to change what we may have choosen a long time ago. A person grieving the loss of a loved one may decide they are not going to get upset around the holidays but ever year they do anyway. This will happen until the person has really healed the emotions & if they don't heal them it is going to happen no matter how determined they are to not get upset.

Answer 6

Yes.  But the stimuli can also be generated from within the self.

Answer 7

feelings are a lot more complicated than that...for instance for one person whose parents show love to him can either reciprocate that love back or get mad at their parents for no obvious reason. Specific stimuli may get specific results in certain people but one stimuli doesnt get the same result in everyone. Feelings are distinct to each person and many people fall into broad groupings, but everyone is a little different. The way you feel by thinking about even this topic could be unique to you. A cute puppy can get drastically different results from different people. Some may think its cute, some may thinks its just a dog who cares, and others may think im runing late for work i dont care about a dog. Emotions and feelings make us unique not limit us.