Day 8 What are emotions?

Question to Ponder - Day 8: Are you having success at recognizing the emotions connected to your pain? If you have, how do these emotions make you feel? If not, what do you think is preventing you from doing this?

I am confused about what exactly constitutes an emotion. My only experience of an emotion as a physical occurrence would be crying/sadness. When I try to connect 'emotions' to events in my day, I find myself 'feeling' frustrated, annoyed, nervous/anxious, impatient, bored, pleased, excited etc. Are these emotions? I tend to think of emotions more as happiness, sadness, anger, love etc.

Also, in terms of connecting the emotions to my pain, does this mean the emotions felt when the pain began? Or the general underlying emotions/themes that are part of my life. I suppose both are really linked.

Thank you

 

I think everything emotion you stated in the first question are emotions. In The Great Pain Deception Steve O. said there are 600 types of sadness so there are thousands of emotions.
Regarding your second question I believe it's both and everyone is different but I'd love to hear what responses you get to that.

 

Hi, Mischa. I agree with Ines that all of the feelings you mentioned are emotions and they are part of your life and your pain.

I think it's important to feel the emotions that cause emotional or physical pain, and then to go on to the emotional cause of the pain.
This involves journaling to discover repressed emotions. I found relief from severe back pain through the SEProgram and journaling to discover feelings of anger, abandonment, and insecurity from when my parents divorced when I was seven. Journaling helped me to put myself in their shoes and it helped me to discover that they had their own TMS emotional and physical pain. It helped me to understand them better and through that, to forgive them. Forgiving is a powerful tool in emotional MindBody-TMS healing.