Even the most calm and restrained people experience emotions. But what are emotions and why are they given so much attention? Most psychologists believe that this is the very first and immediate reaction to an incident, object or event. This is a fleeting phenomenon, which, however, is very important for the body.
The fact is that emotions serve as a kind of mirror for the world. Negative ones show that a person is not happy with the situation or doesn’t like something.
Positive, on the contrary, prove the correctness of decisions and actions, serve as a kind of “carrot”. In this case, emotions are more and less strong. For example, fear can still be overcome, but horror - a much stronger emotion - is much worse controlled. At the same time, fear tells a person that he is faced with a certain danger, and horror - that the danger is too great and it is better to run. Surprise tells that the information or event does not correspond to the conclusions and assumptions made earlier.
Scientists have been arguing for a long time about what emotions are and how they can be divided and described. Most often they are divided into simple and basic (joy, sadness, interest, anger, fear, surprise and disgust), pleasure-suffering (this is especially easily seen in the example of newborn children) and many others. But at the core they all arise from the correspondence and inconsistency of events and the surrounding reality to the needs and beliefs of a person.
True, there are more complicated options. First of all, these are communicative emotions, that is, experiences associated with a thirst for communication, emotional closeness. What are emotions of this type? They make people seek friendship, sympathy and assistance. Altruistic emotions, due to which people help and patronize someone, as well as a thirst for fame, self-affirmation, recognition and honor, fall into the same category. In addition to them, there are also romantic emotions, as well as pleasant sensations from the work done, achievement of the goal or contemplation of beauty. There are also hedonistic emotions associated with satisfying the needs for comfort, physical or mental, and the joy of acquiring or accumulating.
What are emotions for a person? These are the very first impulses that lead him and guide all activities, they are primary in relation to thinking and reason, and it is they who often guide behavior. And people are simply not able to live without them, because emotions affect the hormonal metabolism, the tone of the whole organism and affect the feeling of happiness and fullness of life. That is why it is vital to know how to manage emotions and apply them successfully.
Some psychologists say that it is harmful and it is not necessary to suppress impulses. However, control over emotions is still necessary. After all, they can be dangerous to others and destructive to the individual. There are three ways to control emotions. This is, first of all, an attempt to switch to something else, to choose another object for concentration. As a rule, this method works perfectly, you just need to make some efforts. The second way is to change beliefs, because they very much affect how a person perceives information from the environment. And the third way is a change in physiology: breathing, body position, even the tone of the voice affects a person’s thoughts and emotions.
Thus, despite the primacy of emotions and the fact that their occurrence is not subject to reason, people, however, can control and subjugate them, finding harmony and integrity. Indeed, unbridled, wild passions are harmful and destroy a person, and gaining power over them makes it possible to live a happy and fulfilling life.