A Note on Emotions and Feelings
Emotions are relational psychic structures that play a critical role in shaping individual personalities, and encompass dynamic emotion-cognition interactions that inform both situational responding and enduring personality traits. In the book Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, Antonio Damasio describes emotions as internal bodily reactions that are activated through the central nervous system via neurotransmitters and hormones. Feelings are then the manifestation of conscious experience felt through visceral sensing and mental images. Weber asserts that “relationships are a nervous system”. The main functional role of the visceral nervous system is to regulate, distribute and maintain ordered exchanges of energy and information between our internal and external environments.
Individuals with high emotional intelligence (EI) experience, regulate and manage their emotions successfully. EI is associated with greater emotional resilience and emotional regulation, which translates to individual adaptive responses to adversity, stress, and the ability to overcome emotional hardship. The inability to effectively regulate emotions is associated with negative mood states and anxiety. Cisler et al. describe emotion (i.e., fear and anxiety) and emotion regulation as distinct constructs. Depending on the strategy, emotion regulation can alleviate fear and worry, and may offer measures that inform variance in symptoms of anxiety.
Emotional Expression and Place
In the book Nature and Therapy: Understanding Counselling and Psychotherapy in Outdoor Spaces, Jordan states that geographical places and spaces have an effect on emotions and can be deliberately used to facilitate the exploration of emotions and feelings. Natural landscapes like forests and oceans have been shown to facilitate a deeper connection to the environment and can evoke emotional and psychological responses that are positive and calming. Emotions, our imagination, and the stories that shape our worldview create an aesthetic understanding of the human relationship to the environment.
Leslie Davenport MA, MS, LMFT describes natural environments as having the ability to ignite a visceral understanding that everything is connected. Davenport asserts that “in nature we can re-establish our inter-related connectivity with the natural world” (March 10, 2022, personal communication). To intentionally know nature includes the formation of an undistracted space within ourselves where projections about the past and future do not exist, and where the imagination can explore the present moment experience. Healthy emotional expression involves a “pallet of colors” that we allow ourselves to feel (Davenport, March 10, 2022, personal communication). Feeling uncomfortable emotions leads to emotional health, and it is when we numb our experience and prevent ourselves from feeling and expressing emotions that we may begin to feel disconnected from our experience and the natural environment.
Cisler, J. M., Olatunji, B. O., Feldner, M. T., & Forsyth, J. P. (2010). Emotion regulation and the anxiety disorders: An integrative review. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 32(1), 68–82.
Damasio, A. (2021). Feeling and knowing: Making minds Conscious. Pantheon Books.
Davenport, L. (2009). Healing and Transformation Through Self-Guided Imagery. Celestial Arts Berkeley.
Grant M, Salsman NL, & Berking M (2018). The assessment of successful emotion regulation skills use: Development and validation of an english version of the emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire.
Ingerman, S., & Roberts, L. (2015). Speaking with Nature: Awakening to the Deep Wisdom of the Earth. Bear &Company.
Jordan, M. (2015). Nature and therapy: Understanding counseling and psychotherapy in outdoor spaces. Routledge.
Recordati, G. (2001). The Visceral nervous system and its environments. Journal of theoretical biology.
Weber, (2014). Matter and desire: An erotic ecology. Chelsea Green Publishing.
