Feelings in life and in communication.

FEELINGS IN LIFE

AND

IN COMMUNICATION

“Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion” Victor Hugo.

As Victor Hugo said it is really difficult for people to express emotion and it is especially hard when we want to express our feelings through the language. However, all people feel and show emotions from time to time. Some of us can express them openly; others repress it – they cannot or will not express them. According to Bernstein, there is evidence that both repressing and expressing our feelings too intensely can be dangerous, not only for our health but also for mental condition.

To talk about ways of showing feelings and using the language during that process, first we have to establish what “emotions” are. Calling emotions, such as love, anger or fear is really much easier than giving their complete definitions. To tell the truth not all scientists accept existing definitions of particular feelings. However, most of them agree that emotions are different from rational thinking (recognition), information collected through senses (perception) and knowledge stored in our brains (memory). Although feelings are believed to be something different and independent they co-operate with all other functions of human’s mind. Every kind of explaining feelings must take into consideration three factors:

what evokes this kind of emotion;
how the human body and mind react for the feeling or how the feeling is expressed;
how our physical and mental reactions influence on further living through emotion.

Terms “feeling” or “emotion” is not only unclear and complicated but also similar to other concepts and that makes it even less understood. We can talk about feelings and take them into consideration in three different meanings:

as a specific state of mind which can be sensed positively or negatively;
as a mental process connected with satisfying our lofty needs;
as our ...

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what evokes this kind of emotion;
how the human body and mind react for the feeling or how the feeling is expressed;
how our physical and mental reactions influence on further living through emotion.

as a specific state of mind which can be sensed positively or negatively;
as a mental process connected with satisfying our lofty needs;
as our general and permanent attitude about a subject , ideas or people.

Because definitions of some feelings partly agree with descriptions of the other ones, it is usually really difficult to separate particular emotions. When does kindness to somebody change into friendship and then into love? When does impatience turn into anger?

According to Bloomfield, depending on how we answer this question, we can separate dozens, hundreds or even thousands of feelings. Many psychological authorities have tried to limit the list of feelings to the most basic ones. Charleston believed, that a good example can be a list made by Robert Plutchik, including only eight emotions: kindness, anger, expectation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and astonishment.

The list of feelings gave by the scientist seems to be extremely narrowed down. It is possible that the number of emotions can be infinitely high and therefore there is no point in counting them. What we feel depends entirely on our way of thinking, our previous experiences and memory.

Every human is the only of its kind; completely different from every other people who have ever lived on our planet.

To consider ways of expressing emotions through the language, I had to establish which of positive feelings are the most important from my point of view. I have chosen only two from Plutchik’s list, i.e. kindness and joy. I have decided that I would take into consideration some other, in my opinion very important positive feelings such as love, friendship and sympathy.

Every emotion has a lot of shades so it is rather difficult or even impossible to define it clearly enough to be accepted by everybody.