The Neuroscience of Emotions... and a stark reminder

Last week I attended a talk on The Neuroscience of Emotions! I was in my element. It covered emotional granularity; how language affords a different emotional experience; the differences in intensity of emotions; and our ability to manoeuvre a prediction-feedback loop. 
 
I really want to dive into these things in more detail over the next few weeks as this really ignited a little spark in me and reminded me of how complex and interesting our global emotional landscape is. 
 
However, this wonderful, inspiring evening reminded me of something… 
 
At about 16 I declared that I wanted to become a therapist. I was doing psychology and philosophy A levels and was fascinated. 
 
“You're too emotional, you wouldn’t be able to handle it.” 
 
As a teenager with wavering self-esteem and no connection to my inner voice I heard that and thought ‘Oh. Hmm. Okay then’. And I applied to do a law degree because that’s what I thought I should do. (I hate the word ‘should’) 
 
From that moment I buried my emotions deep because apparently they were a weakness. I learnt to use only 'good' or 'fine' and left the other 3000 words to describe my emotions to one side. 
 
It took 10 years to realise that my emotional breadth and intelligence was in fact my strength. And it took many more years to learn the language to connect to my feelings, and it took a little longer still to say them out loud. 
 
I’ve shared this before, but ‘when we bury our feelings, we bury them alive.’ They’re not going anywhere, they’ll just manifest in other ways. 
 
So I dedicate myself now as a Life Coach (I made it to the therapeutic profession eventually) to provide space for people to connect to their emotions, feel them out loud, know it's safe to do so, and to work through them in pursuit of becoming more themselves. More confident, more trusting of themselves, more resilient, and no longer in need of the protective layers we so often wrap ourselves in. 
 
Every single emotion is important. Some we feel deeply, some not so much. Some are wonderful and some are so bloody uncomfortable we really really want to push them away. But they are there to be felt and listened to. They’re either great, or a lesson. 
 
I'll explore the intensity of emotions more next week. But for now, below are 100+ feelings of the 3000 available in the English language to get us started. 
 

How are you feeling? Really?