Basic Human Emotions

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There are six basic emotions:

- fear

- anger

- disgust

- sadness / sadness

- joy / happiness (happiness)

- interest / surprise

Emotions are "sewn" into our brain as neural programs. All of humanity feels them equally. Differences can only be in the intensity and frequency of the manifestation of emotions. The intensity and frequency of the manifestation of emotions, as well as depression, is initially determined by a genetic predisposition. The states that we experience are formed from several emotions, taken in certain proportions - for each person in different ways.

Fear

The most powerful and primary, ancient (basic) human program. Why do we experience negative experiences more often than positive ones? After all, as you noticed, there are four emotions that can be called “negative”, and only two “positive” ones. From birth, we have more negative emotions. In the brain there is an organ - the amygdala, which is responsible, in particular, for the fact that we are afraid 24 hours a day. In people, different activity of the amygdala is observed: in some it is more active, in others it is less. What is the positive purpose of fear? Safety, self-defense, survival of the species. Fear is the result of an ancient program in the human brain, despite the fact that in the modern world, 95% of our fear signals are meaningless. If in the old days a person had to defend himself constantly in order to survive, now there is no such need.

The hormone of this emotion is adrenaline. We often confuse adrenaline with norepinephrine. The release of this hormone feels good. We will look at its effect later, as it corresponds to a different emotion. Our brain is equally fond of both fictional fears and real ones. We can form a lifelong fear in just a second - get scared … and fear from now on all our lives! Fear is embedded in us so deeply that sometimes we cannot resist it. Often we refuse to take action because we are scared, perceiving this as a hint of intuition. However, fear is just a reaction of the brain, which always shies away from everything new and thereby informs that we are in unknown territory, and there are no ready-made scenarios here. The more familiar and familiar one or another action becomes to us, the less the intensity of fear. Fear can act in two ways: either a person must pretend to be dead (it used to be so) and for this he becomes immobilized, in which case the emotion of fear paralyzes a person, or must flee, be saved, in our case - act decisively. This emotion is always associated with fears about the future. It is important to learn to act "through fear."

Disgust

There is a center of disgust in the brain. The positive function of this emotion is to distinguish what is harmful to us from what is useful to us. Disgust is a kind of warning signal. What triggers this intense emotion could potentially be unsafe for us. This emotion is always a signal that there is a critical point of no return ahead, when a person "explodes" and stops doing what he is doing. Physically, disgust may be accompanied by nausea. Reflex - pursed lips: a person subconsciously restrains the feeling of nausea. If you feel an emotion of disgust for a person, it is undesirable to enter into a relationship with him, since you will not be able to cope with this emotion and it has a cumulative effect: you will get tired of experiencing it someday, and you will end this relationship. Morally "vomiting" can be caused by various things, and it is important to recognize this emotion, because it always signals possible troubles and harm.

Anger

We mistakenly consider this emotion negative, while it is very resourceful and useful.

The hormone of this emotion is norepinephrine, which gives a positive feeling. This emotion is associated with achieving a goal. It is almost impossible to achieve quality goals without anger. This emotion is removed by physical actions. Anger either comes out and is transformed into actions - this is good for a person, because we are not talking about beating something or someone, but about taking steps to achieve your goal; or it can be directed inward, and then it will destroy you. If no physical action is taken in the moment of anger, this emotion turns inward. It is important to express anger, to transform it outwardly. The energy of this emotion "getting stuck" at the level of the body leads to psychosomatic disorders. Anger is removed only by accelerating the psyche, and not by inhibition; through deceleration, anger enters the body even more and takes root there. Anger is a liberating and healing emotion. It is important to learn a qualitative manifestation of anger, and therefore you should not suppress it in children: they must learn to show anger in such a way as not to harm themselves and others. Excitement = joy + anger. There are situations when a person is forced to defend himself psychologically, in such cases the emotion of anger mobilizes a person's energy, helping him to defend his rights.

Sadness

A person begins to grieve when he loses something meaningful for himself. Thus, this emotion is always associated with the past. In sadness, it is impossible to achieve goals, improve your financial situation. Anyone who talks about the past all the time is not moving forward. Depression is based on this very emotion. It can be summoned even by the most successful person in two hours, if there is someone nearby who will talk without interruption about the past, about missed opportunities, complain about how good it was then and how bad it is now.

Depression is a cocktail of four emotions This is fear (we are afraid of the future), anger (we are angry with ourselves), sadness (we are sad about the future), disgust (towards ourselves).

The emotion of sadness can lead to falling into "learned helplessness": when we have failed to do something several times, we can refuse to try further. The thought “why try if it still doesn't work out” is already the starting point of depression. Hands drop automatically.

The positive function of sadness is to gather resources and recover. It helps to cope with the loss. To do this, you need to give yourself time to consciously grieve, having outlined the exact time of exit - no more than 10 days (except in exceptional cases). To cope with sadness, to get out of this state, you can only on your own. Staying in nature, any physical activities associated with mental inhibition, relaxation help.

According to the results of scientific research, it has been repeatedly confirmed that a new neural circuit becomes stable within 21 days. If you stay in sadness for 21 days, the hormone of joy will cease to be released, and the center of pleasure will "dry up", since it is gradually deactivated. The brain works in such a way that gloomy pictures, if seen often, knock its positive attitude almost certainly. This is because there are more negative emotional pathways in our brain. Pessimistic images are immediately assimilated by our unconscious. Fewer paths have been allocated for positive emotions; the positive must be helped. This is why it is important to limit watching depressive movies and listening to this kind of music, minimize communication with people who bring attention back to the past, and do anything that brings joy.

Sadness and depression are different things. Depression is a combination of different emotions. Sadness is an adequate response to certain events in life, every person experiences it, as well as mild forms of depression, when the emotion of sadness is mixed with either shame, or anger, or a feeling of loss. The difference is that when depressed, a person thinks they cannot cope with it, whereas sadness is not synonymous with powerlessness.

Joy

Our brain has a pleasure center. Its function is to produce hormones oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin. For some, this happens as a reaction to reading, for others - as a reaction to sports, food, etc. Our emotions depend not only on external circumstances, but also on hormonal levels. In order for emotions to depend as little as possible on life's upheavals, you need to “choose” in advance what you will feel. For example, you need to be sure to chat with a person who, for some reason, you don't like at all. There are two options: torment and repeat as you “don't want to”, languish from the inability to get out of a situation that promises such an unpleasant meeting, or present the inevitable as a raid, reconnaissance of hidden useful qualities of your opponent, search for common interests and points of interaction. Indicator - a change in the internal state. But when we have too much joy, it can provoke disgust towards us in other people. It has also been observed that motivation with constant joy turns the "lucky" person into a very lazy person. After all, laziness is different: one "attacks" when there is no strength, no desires and a person is sad; another laziness comes when everything is good, everything is there, but there is nothing to do, and it remains to lie, enjoy, etc.

When scientists opened the pleasure center, it turned out that our body literally asks for the hormones of joy, and especially dopamine as a stimulant for vigorous activity. He receives these hormones in response to the awareness of the correctness of actions to achieve goals, as confirmation of their success. This can be described by the formula: “I want - I do (with enthusiasm) - I get, I achieve (with pleasure and joy!)” … It is important for us to learn to “want”, because dopamine, which is formed in the process of activity, is the most important engine in our life. Its high level allows you to do a hundred things a day, move without interruption in the harmonious dance of life, and the energy does not decrease. All you need is to create these dopamine "want" for yourself! When a person says that he does not want / cannot want, it means that he has not dreamed for a long time, has not fed the pleasure center with positive images, and all energetic activity has moved to the sadness center. Here a choice arises: either to continue to fall (into even greater sadness, and when there is already too much of it, the “death program” may start. The program will stop immediately as soon as the person leaves this state, but it is important to get out as soon as possible!), Or choose which one - any desire (any!) and plunge headlong into activity, taking responsibility for the future and life into your own hands. For this, in your mind, you can draw pictures for yourself that allow you to experience a strong desire, make them alluring and colorful, so that you want to realize them - to live, create … This is how dopamine chains are created. “I want - I do - I get - I rejoice” - this is always the result of the work of dopamine. I see a mental picture - how much I want to make it a reality on a scale of 1 to 10? And how to increase the attractiveness of the picture for yourself? In this sense, the emotion of joy is the driving force. If there is enough drive and buzz inside, people feel them. The brain is so arranged that the more dopamine it allocates to a target, that is, the brighter the pictures you draw in your mind, the more chances you will achieve this goal. The goals are achieved not by you, but by your brain through the body. If we help him understand where he can get what he longs for, the brain builds and generates the correct chain of events. It is worth creating a visible image of the desired reality for the brain to invent a way to create this reality.

Astonishment

We are so arranged that we prefer information that surprised us with something that made us happy. The emotion of surprise helps us develop. The more we are surprised, the more the emotion of surprise stimulates the production of a still unknown hormone - there is a lot of it in children and very young creatures. The more this hormone, the longer the lifespan. As soon as a person ceases to be surprised, he grows old. So be surprised! Surprise as much as possible and you will always look younger than your age.

The theory of basic emotions often includes:

• interest (excitement), which helps to learn, develop skills and abilities, and realize creative abilities;
• grief is an emotion that reduces a person's energy potential, associated with a feeling of loneliness, self-pity;
• contempt - anticipates anger or disgust, or manifests itself with them;
• feeling of guilt - an emotion that arises when a person feels his personal responsibility for non-compliance with moral norms;
• shame - either helps to maintain a sense of self-esteem, or provokes a desire to hide.