A presenter maps the wide spectrum of emotions beyond basic labels, defines emotion as "to move," and explains how emotions prompt action with distinct bodily responses (anger, fear, joy, sadness).
The speaker opens by inviting you to name emotions and shows that beyond common labels there are hundreds of feelings, from boredom to awe. This orients viewers to the breadth of emotions the series will address.
The video defines the word emotion (to move) and explains emotions exist to prompt action. It also notes that some emotions (like anger) may signal actions we should avoid.
Using examples, the speaker explains how different emotions trigger distinct physiological responses (e.g., blood to hands with anger, legs with fear, calming neurotransmitters with joy, low energy with sadness). The segment ties these reactions to evolutionary protection and practical meaning.
This short section reinforces that emotions arise automatically in response to internal and external cues and that our bodies are doing their job when emotions surface. Viewers are encouraged not to blame themselves for emotional reactions.
The speaker describes growing up emotionally suppressed, how that helped in some situations but was also harmful, and introduces upcoming videos on how to allow and process emotions. It closes with an invitation to continue the series.
As we dive into this topic of emotions, I want you to think about all of the emotions that come to your mind when I say the word emotion. So probably is something along the lines of happy, sad, tired, grumpy, joyful, you know, like the Seven Dwarfs. But if you think about it, there's so many more emotions. I actually did a Google search and there's hundreds. If you've ever seen that chart that you can put up on your fridge and kids can point to the little face that correlates to how they're feeling that day, I think there's like 20 on that chart, but there's literally hundreds of emotions.
Think about these, for example. What about the emotion of boredom? How about hunger, contentment, nostalgia? awe or surprise, all of these are emotions as well. And I think we disregard them because they don't necessarily have as intense of a physiological response as the other ones. But I wanna just define what an emotion is to really start here because an emotion, actually the root of the word means to move. So the whole point of emotions, why we were created to have emotions is to actually cause us to take action.
That's why we have emotions. And so they can really be useful when we think of them in that way, that an emotion comes up, our body is made to feel something, and it really helps when you can identify what that feeling is. A lot of times people struggle with that, myself included, but the whole point of it is to be information to help you act, to help you take the next step, to help you make some sort of movement. Now some of these we don't want to take action on. Anger, for example, we don't necessarily want to take action on that emotion.
emotion because it could be detrimental to us. It could cause us to be rageful and maybe hurt someone or hurt ourselves. So some of them we don't want to take action on, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do something when we feel them because what's actually happening in our body physiologically is a response to that emotion. So for example, when you experience the emotion of anger, you actually get blood flow to certain parts of your body. You get blood flow to your hands more so than other areas because your body is preparing to fight.
So your body's already responding whether you want it to or not when you feel that emotion, which is why when I think back to my ex-husband who often had a lot of anger, he would almost start to look like the Hulk. Like his fists would ball up and his chest would like puff out because literally his body was physically manifesting the emotion of anger. And that's a normal response. If you think about other emotions such as fear, when you experience fear, you actually get more blood flow to your legs and like your skeletal muscles because that emotion is driving you to run.
It's the same kind of physiological response with the sympathetic nervous system as anger, but it needs blood flow in different areas of the body for how you're supposed to act. Remember the root of the word emotion means to move or to take action. When you experience the emotion of joy or love, for example, it causes a release of different neurotransmitters in the brain and it fuels different areas of your body. So your parasympathetic nervous system actually takes over and you have a more calming effect.
When you have the emotion of sadness, you actually drop your energy level. I mean, I can tell you, having experienced depression, that emotion causes an intense decrease in energy level. And the root of this is actually important to understand because if you are experiencing sadness or depression, you're probably in a little bit weakened state. where you're not like ready to fight. And if you think about it from evolutionary time frame, if somebody was in a depressed state and they weren't ready to fight off a potential predator like a bear, for example, if we're thinking back to like caveman days, it's really important to note that when you feel sad and you feel little energy, you just want to sit around and stay home.
So it's actually a protective mechanism because it makes that person more of a threat to predators. And so by giving them the physiological response to just want to sit around and stay home is actually a protective mechanism. So when you experience sadness and depression and you just want to sit around and isolate and stay home, that's actually how your body's supposed to respond to that emotion because the action that your body is taking is inaction in order to protect you. So we think back physiologically of why the emotions are, why we're evolved the way we are.
They're very informative because the emotion comes, we often have no control over how our emotions come up, when they come up, what emotion comes up because it's a response to our external environment or internal environment of what's going on in our head and our body is responding appropriately and in a healthy way. So the next time you get mad at your body or your brain for experiencing a certain emotion, just remember that it's actually doing its job. I used to struggle with this a lot. I was very cold emotionally.
I grew up this way, never cried, never experienced emotion. And because of that, I had an immense control over my emotions because I didn't know what was going to happen to me if I actually felt them. So I could suppress emotions really, really well, which made it really helpful in certain circumstances. It's made it very easy for me to work in the emergency department as a nurse, compartmentalized trauma. I mean, probably one of the reasons I stayed really level headed during my sexual assault experience because I just did not allow myself to feel in that moment.
And so it can be really helpful to manage your emotions that way, but it also can be really detrimental. And that's what I want to dive into in the next couple of videos to talk about how to really allow yourself to feel emotions. Because if you understand the basis that they are informative and helpful and it's your body's natural way of responding, you can start to honor them a little bit more. And that's really important as we dive into this next step. So stay tuned with me to the next video so we can talk about really how to process emotions.
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