Not only do emotions guide our behaviour in the moment, they also influence how we’ll behave in similar situations in the future (the consequences). Our brains learn really quickly how to keep us out of situations that are dangerous or that make us feel “bad” by speedily alerting us to things in our environment that might be threatening or that were previously associated with negative feelings. While warning us of true “fires” is extremely adaptive, false alarms can keep us from learning that other situations are actually harmless or that you can cope with it quite well without anything horrible happening.
Thus, it’s important to also be curious about how your emotional reactions contribute to your future behaviour.
Consider this situation: You quickly leave a party because you are feeling anxious and worry about embarrassing yourself. In the short term you experience relief and feel better. Long term, though, when you’re next invited to a party, you might decline or make up an excuse because you remember how uncomfortable you were at the last party. This example shows how emotions can have both short and long term effects on what you do and how you behave.
Or take this example: Your friends have been bugging you to go out with them because it’s been weeks since you last went out, so you agree. You get home from work and feel exhausted and depressed; the last thing you want to do is go out and be social, so you call to cancel. In the short term, you feel good – you don’t have to go out and put on a facade or answer any questions about “What’s going on with you.” You end up spending the night at home watching Law and Order reruns, thinking what a pathetic life you have, which makes you feel more depressed and unlikely to even agree to go out next time because, you think, “What’s the point, I’ll just cancel.”