Your Primary & Secondary Feelings

• Primary feelings are the first indicator of unfulfilled needs.
• Frustration is a secondary feeling that is caused by ignoring your primary feelings.
• Using distracters will eventually lead to depression.

So far in these articles we have been looking at how the body uses feelings to draw your attention to your needs, wants and desires.

If you don’t understand what these feelings are telling you, or try to distract yourself from them, then you will never be able experience a genuine and lasting sense of satisfaction and fulfilment in your life.

In the last article you saw a good example of this, which showed how emotional eating never leads to a sense of satisfaction, because it does not address the true need your body was trying to bring your attention to.

So in this, and the next few articles, we are going to start looking at exactly what sort of messages the different feelings we experience are trying to communicate to us.

With this understanding you will then be in a better position to respond more appropriately to your feelings, thereby allowing you to satisfy your true needs, wants and desires rather than distracting yourself from them.

Types Of Feelings

Whilst understanding your feelings may sound easy in theory, in reality the enormous diversity of feelings people experience can make it quite a challenging topic to get your head around.

So to make things easier, we can group certain types of feelings together, starting with the first group called your primary feelings.

Primary Feelings

If you can remember a few articles back where I gave the example of how my laptop communicates its needs to me, well your primary feelings are a lot like that.

Primary feelings are the first indicator your body gives you that you need to pay attention to a particular need. They are the equivalent of a laptop warning you that it is running low on power via its battery icon.

So as soon as a need, want or desire reaches a certain level of dissatisfaction, you will begin to experience primary feelings which will make you feel uncomfortable. The longer the need, want or desire is left unsatisfied, the more painful this feeling will become.

Let’s demonstrate this with an example. If you are single and haven’t been in a relationship for awhile, then you may be feeling lonely as a result.

The loneliness you are experiencing, is the painful feeling that comes from not satisfying one of your most important needs; the need for love and companionship.

The longer this need remains unfulfilled, the more uncomfortable and painful it will feel.

You may try to distract yourself from those feelings by using drugs or entertainment, but because they do not address the underlying need (the need for love) these uncomfortable and painful feelings will remain.

This eventually leads to even more painful types of feelings, which we will discuss later.

Secondary Feelings

We have already established in previous articles that when people experience bad feelings, they like to distract themselves from those feelings.

This then creates a self reinforcing cycle whereby the more they distract themselves from those bad feelings, the worse those feelings become.

Even though the distractor does not make anything better in the long run, it will continue to be used because of the short term relief it provides.

Over time this cycle of distraction eventually leads to the secondary feeling of frustration. This feeling comes as a result of the frustration you experience when no matter what you do, you never seem to “feel better”. To feel satisfied.

So using the example I gave earlier, a person who is feeling lonely (primary feeling) as a result of not being in a relationship (need) will either try to do things to get into a relationship (e.g. try dating) or distract themselves from that feeling (e.g. through entertainment or drugs).

This feeling of loneliness comes as a direct result of their unfulfilled need (the need for love), and the longer this need remains unsatisfied the more painful this feeling will become.

If this person attempts to satisfy this need by trying to date other people (for example) but is unsuccessful in finding a relationship, then their primary feeling of loneliness will lead to the secondary feeling of frustration.

The same would apply to anyone who tried to distract themselves from their primary feelings of loneliness, as whatever distracter they used, would never satisfy their need for love. As a result, the distracter would also eventually cause the secondary feeling of frustration.

Recap

let’s just recap this whole process. Your body sends you a bad feeling whenever you have a need, want or desire that needs to be satisfied.

These feelings you experience are your primary feelings. If you are unable to satisfy the need associated with that feeling (either through trying to satisfy it but failing, or distracting yourself from it) then this primary feeling will become more painful and eventually lead to the secondary feeling of frustration.

The reason you become frustrated is because no matter what you do, you can never seem to get rid of that primary feeling, because you can never satisfy your underlying unsatisfied need.

Frustration can be felt along with any other primary feeling, although you will always experience the primary feeling first, and then experience the secondary feeling of frustration later on.

Some examples of primary feelings associated with the secondary feeling of frustration could include

Lonely and frustrated
Sad and frustrated
Angry and frustrated
Bored and frustrated
Worried and frustrated

The Depression Cycle

It is important to note that if at any time you are able to satisfy your unsatisfied need, then your primary feeling (e.g. loneliness) or your primary and secondary feeling (e.g. lonely and frustrated) will quickly fade away.

However if you are continually unable to satisfy your unsatisfied need, your feeling of frustration will gradually start to increase and your primary feeling will become more painful.

Unfortunately this tends to be a self reinforcing cycle, whereby the worse you feel about yourself and your situation, the more painful those feelings become.

Eventually this downwards cycle leads to a tertiary feeling called depression, which I will talk about in more detail later.

The Temptation To Use Distracters

One thing you should be aware of during this cycle is that the more painful your feelings become, the more likely you are to try and distract yourself from those feelings by using distracters.

However because distracters ultimately result in more painful feelings, as soon as you are finished with your distracter, your urge to use it again will be greater than before.

This can rapidly lead to an addiction to your distracter, whereby you use it constantly throughout the day to “numb” yourself to the pain your unfulfilled needs are causing you.

For example, if your distracter is alcohol, then in order to feel “normal” you would need to drink throughout the day which would then make you an alcoholic.

Or if your distracter is food, you would eat throughout the day, which would make you obese.

This is why it is very important to identify the distracters in your life, because whilst they may appear to be making things better for you, in reality they are making things much worse than they originally were.

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