Your emotions are like air: you can’t grab them in your hands, but you can’t live without them. Your emotions are real and predictable. The more you know about them, the more you can adjust them and work with them like a potter with clay.

Actually, this only touches on some of the truths about emotions. It’s not comprehensive, because that would require volumes. Nonetheless, these few facts (if you take them to heart) will help you to know yourself more intimately and more accurately.

1. An emotion is an expression of a need. Every emotion or feeling gives you information about something that you need in order to be fulfilled. When you feel hungry, you become aware of your need for food. When you feel lonely or empty, you become aware of your need for loving.

2. An emotion is a physical (physiological) reaction. Here’s how it works: you’re in a situation. For instance, your boss is giving you a job to do. Suppose you believe/perceive that your boss is treating you like a child. Your stomach knots up and the muscles in your shoulders and neck tighten. The tight muscles tell you that you’re feeling angry. So, your anger is a physiological reaction to your beliefs and perceptions about the situation.

3. Emotions don’t necessarily conform to logic and reason. Suppose you feel lonely and want some contact with people. You might be able to list several logical reasons why you “shouldn’t” feel lonely. For example, it’s only 4 o’clock, you’re still at work, and there are people all around you. You spent time with friends last night, and have a project to do tonight. However, none of these logical arguments make the emotion go away. The basic fact remains: Inside, there is still a feeling of loneliness.

4.“Shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” don’t apply to feelings. You feel sad, but tell yourself you should feel happy because you have a good job, a nice house, two healthy kids, and you just bought a new car. Once again, you are trying to use logic to make your emotions go away. But your body (often a wise source of information) is putting out sadness. Your body is telling you that an important need is not getting met by the job, house, new car, etc. Perhaps you need more warmth and intimacy. Perhaps you need a close friend or a job that gives you feelings of self-worth. Or maybe you want more free time or more control over your own life. Your sadness will turn to happiness, your emptiness to fullness, your dissatisfaction to satisfaction, when you fulfill your real needs.

5. Value judgments are not emotions. Suppose you say to someone, “I feel you’re being cold and inconsiderate.” Even though you have used the words “I feel,” you are not really communicating a feeling. Actually, it is an evaluation of someone else’s behavior. It’s a judgment call. Maybe the other person is being cold and inconsiderate—maybe not. Value judgments are beliefs, and they occur inside the head. Emotions happen inside the heart and gut.

6. Emotions tend to happen in pairs and clusters. They rarely occur one at a time. When there is anger, there is usually hurt, and vice versa. Guilt and resentment also occur hand-in-hand. When you grieve over the loss of a loved one, you may feel lonely, angry, guilty, sad, helpless and withdrawn. After achieving a long-sought goal, you may experience excitement and satisfaction, as well as sadness and letdown. Life does not seem to hand us many
black-and-white experiences.

7. Painful emotions, which are consciously acknowledged and outwardly expressed, tend to go away. Those emotions, which are suppressed, anesthetized or covered up, tend to linger. As Alan Watts wrote, “Repressed energies become amazingly powerful, but not necessarily in constructive ways.”

8. No emotion lasts forever; it just seems like it. At the peak of falling in love, your joy and excitement may seem to be everlasting. In the depths of depression, your hopelessness and lack of energy seem endless. They aren’t, especially with
proper treatment.

Your emotions are your lifeline. When you allow yourself to experience your emotions, you experience yourself and life more completely. You enable yourself to grow and become more fully human. Your emotions are a valuable source of information about who you are in your depths, and they can be a tool for finding and following your true path.