They are natural reactions to things in the environment, either internal or external, that motivate behaviour. For instance, you would likely feel fear if you walked into a store and found a robbery was in progress. Your fear would likely drive you to leave quickly. Or, you might feel anxious when you notice your heart beating quickly and you have difficulty breathing for seemingly no reason. The anxiety might compel you to leave the room for fear that you will have a panic attack.
Identifying what you’re feeling in a particular situation can be hard. Sometimes emotions can seem to roll over you like a wave and be overwhelming. It can be helpful to break emotions or feelings down into 3 parts:
- Physical sensations – what’s going on in your body
- Thoughts - what thoughts or images are going through your mind in a given moment
- Behaviours - what you actually do as a result of the thoughts and sensations
Ideally, emotions motivate you to respond adaptively to situations. For example, fear will cause you to jump out of the way when you see a car barreling towards you. Sometimes, though, your emotions act more like a faulty fire alarm that is overly sensitive, going off in the absence of any real harm. Over the next few weeks, we’ll work on recalibrating your fire alarm so you can know faster whether it’s signaling a real fire or if it’s a false alarm.
Just like with a real fire alarm, it’s good to have emotions ‘go off’ in times of danger so nothing bad happens to you. Once the alarm goes off, messages are sent to various areas to get you out fast. If you’re alarm is overly sensitive, the message to “get out” may be triggered by relatively benign situations like giving a presentation, being in a confined area, or thinking about something negative. While these situations might not be your favourite, chances are they don’t pose a real threat to your personal safety. A good way to gauge whether your alarm system needs some tweaking is if your reaction to a situation is a lot stronger or pronounced than most others. So while many people feel some degree of anxiety prior to a presentation, most are able to sleep on the nights leading up to it and don’t feel as though they are going to have a panic attack in the situation.