What are feelings: list, types and examples

People throughout our lives experience infinite feelings, which tend to manifest themselves in the polarities of positive feelings or negative feelings. Feelings make us human, they make us people, and therefore understanding their meaning and the types of feelings that we can experience will help us better understand ourselves and establish closer and healthier relationships. Therefore, in this Psychology-Online article, we will explain what feelings are: types, list, and examples of them.

Feeling and emotion

What are the feelings and emotions? It is common to place emotions and feelings on the same plane and it is not surprising, since there is a close relationship between the concept of feeling and emotion, although the two processes depend on each other, they are different states. Therefore, before being able to understand feelings and their types, it is of special relevance to know what differentiates them from emotions.

What are emotions?

The definition of emotion is a reaction of our body, psychophysiological, cognitive, and behavioral, which leads us to react in a certain way to an external agent, such as being happy to receive good news or internal ones, such as being sad when remembering a bitter memory. Emotions appear instantly in front of the event and have a short duration, tending to be in polarities of positive emotion or negative emotion.

What are your feelings? Definition

Feelings are a state of mind that occurs in relation to external inputs, considered the mental expression of emotion. Where do feelings come from? When the emotion is processed in the brain and the person is aware of said emotion and the state of mind that it produces, it gives rise to the feeling, therefore the origin of the feelings are the emotions defined and rationally valued that will determine our state of mind.

Feeling and emotion: difference

Although both emotions and feelings are the results of an irrational process in the face of the subjective way of perceiving a given situation, emotions maintain a basic and primitive unidirectional pattern, that is, the emotion appears immediately and spontaneously after the presentation of the stimulus. On the contrary, in the feelings reflective processes intervene, on which the person becomes aware of their state of mind and what it is that they are feeling, allowing them to be valued. Once we understand the difference between emotions and feelings, we will focus exclusively on feelings.

Types of feelings

People can experience many feelings that lead us to different states of mind, however, its division has focused on their polarity, establishing a classification around positive and / or negative feelings based on the response they provoke in the person.

Types of positive feelings

Positive feelings are pleasant feelings that produce a perception of well-being in the person and involve feelings of pleasure. Positive feelings contribute greatly to preserving our physical and mental health because they help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. On the other hand, they help alleviate the appearance of negative feelings.

Types of negative feelings

Unlike the positive ones, negative feelings produce feelings of discomfort in the person and being unpleasant. It is advisable not to confuse negative feelings with bad feelings. Negative feelings are also useful and functional. Sometimes we try to get rid of them, although they are necessary for our development and progress as people.

However, it is important to correctly manage negative feelings, because contrary to positive ones, they can be the precipitants of high levels of stress and anguish and with this, generate physical or mental health problems, such as the development of a depressive disorder and / or anxious.

What are feelings: list, types and examples – Types of feelings

List of feelings

Let us now know the main feelings grouped in the two classifications: positive and negative feelings.

List of positive feelings

There are many positive feelings that we can experience throughout our lives, which can be broadly grouped into the following feelings:

Happiness: happiness is a primary emotion that is understood as a feeling of absolute satisfaction, which is born from another emotion and makes us value the environment that surrounds us in a positive way.
Love: love is a feeling towards someone or something and the desire is born that that person or thing has all the good that it can have, it brings out the best in ourselves.
Euphoria : Euphoria is the maximum expression of joy, which leads to an increase in our energy and makes us see life in a much more positive way.
Hope : having faith in achieving what you want.
Motivation : reaction of enthusiasm and energy before a duty or an action.
Passion: feeling that is closely related to love and tends to appear in the sexual sphere.
Satisfaction: feeling that occurs after the accomplishment of something well done, that stimulates the confidence and security about ourselves.
Fun: focusing our attention on an action that makes us spend time in a pleasant way and brings us well-being.
Well-being: a state of balance between the somatic and psychic levels of the person.
Enthusiasm: feeling that arises from motivation in the face of an event.

List of negative feelings

In the same way, as in positive feelings, there are many negative feelings that we can experience, however, we must not forget that learning to live with negative feelings and give them the importance and dedication they deserve will help us grow as people. The different negative feelings that we can roughly find are the following:

1. Anger: a feeling of disgust towards someone or something, which causes a bad disposition towards the object that generates anger.
2. Anger: it is a primary emotion that is due to high intensity of anger.Fear: anguish caused by the perception of a danger that can be real or imagined.
3. Worry: state of concern that appears in the face of a problem or circumstance.
4. Sadness: the feeling that causes emotional pain and that causes great discomfort, which can trigger pessimistic thoughts and a tendency to cry.
5. Guilt: a responsibility that the person assumes for a fact or action, which carries a negative connotation.
6. Stress: overwhelming mood at the perception of feeling overwhelmed by a certain circumstance.
7. Frustration: feeling that arises from the impossibility of completing what was needed or desired.
8. Indignation: a feeling that runs with anger for considering a fact or action as unfair.
9. Shame: discomfort in the face of a fact about which the person has felt humiliated or in anticipation of fear of being ridiculous.
10. Vulnerability: feeling that encompasses feelings of fragility, helplessness, sensitivity, and insecurity, which triggers a global feeling of perception of vulnerability.

Feelings: examples

Let’s now look at some examples of very frequent feelings that can appear in our daily lives:

• We receive an e-mail where our boss tells us that we must go to work on Saturday. In the first place, we may experience an emotion of anger, but after becoming aware of what we are feeling, feelings of sadness may appear because of not being able to do what you had planned with your partner or of anger because of having to go to work for a weekend.
• We learn that two of our friends have been invited to a party that we have not been invited to. First, emotional responses of outrage may appear, but after understanding the situation, feelings of vulnerability may appear, where we feel insecure and wonder why we have not been invited.
• They notify us that they are going to promote us at work. For example, it could be that our expressed emotion is not what is expected, reacting with a rather listless tone. By processing the news and understanding how we feel, we can be aware of the feeling that it gives us, which can be a feeling of stress and fear, in the face of the challenge that is posed to us.
• These are some of the many examples of feelings on which we can find ourselves, where we can observe that emotions and feelings are two different processes, on which the initial reaction, the emotion, may not have the same emotional tone as the feeling, Once the information has been processed and we have become aware of how this information or fact makes us feel, which is where the feeling is born.