Moods And Communication

3 Pages 829 Words

What are Emotions?
Velma Walker and Lynn Brokaw, authors of Becoming Aware, define emotions as, “feelings that are experienced.” Feelings are opinions “based on emotions rather than reason,” according to Dictionary.com. A person is always experiencing some emotion at any time since when the present emotion fades away, another emotion will take its place and be felt by him/her. No single emotional response can remain permanent. When any emotion, such as anger, is experienced the person can stay angry only for some time, eventually the anger will fade away and a fresh emotion will arise. In many instances, we do not feel one single emotion but many different one mingled together.
What are the characteristics of emotions?
Emotions are your body’s adaptive response. They focus your attention and prepare you for action. When our emotions are aroused, there are changes in our body that we do not have control over. Some of these changes are easily noticed—quickened heart rate, rapid breathing—but your body also gets ready for action in less noticeable ways—as if being wounded and your body will clot blood faster. All of these are called physiological changes, meaning they are internal. These changes contribute to how you will feel about what has happened to cause the arousal (i.e. fear, grief, or happiness).
Although emotions are felt internally, they do lead to detectable behavior, or how we react to what we are feeling. We reveal our emotions not only in our bodily responses, but also in our expressive behavior. It may take the form of a smile, laugh, crying or cursing. This may be nonverbally as well as verbally. Most of us are good at reading nonverbal cues to decipher emotions, and some are more sensitive than others at doing so.

Emotions themselves also act as motivation for other things. They can push us to do something good or pull us away from something bad.
Types of emotions.
There are four types of emotions...