Emotions are the signs that indicate the path to follow in the treasure map of our lives. Imagine that you are travelling and you can not read the map, difficult huh? You would not know how to get to the place you want to go or you would get lost.
Nowadays, many studies support the fact that emotions are our best allies when it comes to making the most accurate and beneficial decisions. How to know if I am with the right person? Does the professional direction I have taken make me feel fulfilled? Thus, being able to interpret how we feel and what we need in each moment of our lives is paramount, since they will be the signs that guide us in the search for the treasure of our lives.
Maybe you have not learned to read your emotions for yourself, or maybe nobody has taught you how to do it. Maybe you have heard about emotions but you have not given them importance, or you have even decided that it is better to make rational decisions, which would not be surprising given the situation.
From the time of the Enlightenment, eighteenth century, our society has given more importance to our intellectual faculties than to the emotional ones. Reason and emotion would be presented separately, reason prevailing as the basis of all true knowledge and science. The right decision would always stem from the laws of reason and logic. Thus, emotion would be underestimated and the people who were guided by emotion labeled as unstable or weak. Therefore, in this time of socio-cultural dominance of reason, emotion have often been ignored and rendered invisible. In fact, until very recently emotional education has not been given importance in schools, families and other social-cultural contexts, not teaching us to pay attention to our emotions.
However, with the rise of the neuroscience from the second half of the twentieth century, and having in our hands the results of increasingly consistent and revealing studies, science has surrendered to the evidence: that the human being takes most of the decisions using thought and emotion in an integrated process. What’s more, for decisions that require a faster response we use emotion since it gives us better results, this is the so-called “intuition”.
Can I learn to read my emotions? Yes, of course. The first thing we need to do is to become aware of how we are feeling in our day to day. Open that window and look through it. Stop a moment to observe ourselves and read our signals. Only then can we realize where we are and where we want to go. When we are doubting what decision to take, our thoughts and emotions together will be put to work with all the information of our emotional responses, which are the signs that indicate us if someone repeatedly upset us, if a new job opportunity excites us or disappoints us, if we feel happy or nervous, among others. Situate yourself on your own map and train yourself in the skills to read your emotional signals, identify your needs, your desires, evolve, self-actualise. If you can not do it by yourself, find a clinical psychologist to help you, it will be worth it.
If we realize how we feel, we can go to places where we can live more according to ourselves… and we know it because we feel it.
References
- Damasio, A. R. (1996). El error de Descartes(Descartes’ Error). Barcelona: Grijalbo Mondadori. (Orig. 1995).
- MacLean, P. D. (1993). Cerebral Evolution of Emotion. In: Michael Davis and Jeannette M. Haviland (eds.), Handbook of Emotions (pp. 67-83). New York: The Guilford Press.
- Martín Jiménez, A. La retórica clásica y la neurociencia actual: las emociones y la persuasión. (2014). Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Retórica, I.S.S.N.: 1853-6034.
- Simón Pérez, V. M. Emotional participation in decision-making. (1998).Psychology in Spain,ISSN-e 1137-9685, Nº2, 1998, 100-107.
Author: Ana Moreno Herrero. Clinical Psychologist. www.anamorenopsicologia.es
