Emotions...and its role in relationship
When you hear the word emotion what comes to mind? For me, I used to think of emotion as predominately something to avoid such as sadness, anger, and especially fear. I definitely did everything to avoid fear. I also thought our emotions were not something to give too much weight to because it would dictate what I felt like doing. Thereby, throwing out my ethics and morality. For example, 'I don't feel like taking care of my kids today so I will just go and play golf', etc. The reality and danger is by not recognizing and naming the emotion.
It is important to distinguish between the words "feeling" and "emotion". Emotion in Latin means to move and is a noun. Whereas, the word feeling is a verb and its root means to perceive. Feelings subjectively represent emotion. Emotions are initial / internal attitudes like mad, sad, fear, shame, etc. Feelings, on the other hand, are a product of the emotions and more a "state of being" like joyfulness or depression.
Emotions are necessary realities. We really cannot control them but we can regulate them.
Also, they are not the end all. Emotions are fluid so they come and go. These are the gateway to our soul. It illuminates our needs and vulnerabilities. It allows us to then be able to have empathy. Empathy is the gift. We have to have empathy in order to connect. Without empathy, we cannot have connectedness at the deep core level of our being.
The reality is that emotions are the musical notes but do not comprise of the whole dance. We need emotions because it gives us the ability to know how to dance and what step to take next. But we are not the only one's dancing. When we have emotion, we usually have it with somebody else. In fact, we need to have emotions with another person. That is how we are made. We are made to experience this together. We actually need another person to help us co-regulate our emotions. We were never designed to regulate our emotions by ourselves. Our human natures requires that we process emotions through co-regulation not self-regulation. A person with us, a parent, a spouse, a friend is what we need in order to help us breath. I have heard it said that connection is like oxygen. Well, the emotions can either hinder us or aid us in helping us breath this oxygen. With life's tragedies and struggles we need others to help us breath!
Some great books that further clarifies and explains this is Dr. Sue Johnson's book "Hold Me Tight" or "The Circle of Security Intervention" by Powell, Cooper, Hoffman, and Marvin.