Emotions vs Feelings - What’s the difference?

Did you know there is a difference?

I’m not excused from this. I did not know that there was a difference.

Emotions are your body’s physiological reaction to a trigger or stimuli. Simply put, it’s reactions such as heart pounding, feeling hot, fist clenching, lump in throat, stomach turning, or even sweating profusely. It’s what your body is ‘emoting’.

Feelings are describing words to help label what your body is emoting or showing. For example, if I told you that I was sweating, palms were clammy, and my stomach was turning, would you know if I was feeling excited, nervous, anxious, or even scared? It would be hard to tell without the feeling word.

It’s important to know what your body is emoting or presenting so that you can cognitively label and express what is occurring. In therapy, we teach clients to identify what is happening in their bodies and then use a resource like a feelings wheel to begin that process of affect or emotion identification. If we are unware of that is happening, we can be avoidant by distracting ourselves with social media or people. If we are unware of how are body is reacting, we can run out of control and not know what to do, for example anxiety or even panic attacks.

Building awareness of both describing your body’s reactions and correctly labeling that experience with feeling words is crucial to being vulnerable and honest with yourself, to expressing that to others in order to receive care and support, but to also empower others that this isn’t something that “crazy” people go through.

We need to normalize feeling our feelings. And it starts with therapy.