What Causes Emotions & Feelings?

• Your subconscious mind determines how you respond to things.
• Your unconscious mind determines how you feel about things.
• Feelings communicate subconscious needs to the conscious mind.

Feelings can be better understood by breaking down the different effects they have on us. The term “feeling” for example, refers to how your emotions make you feel and the physical expression of those emotions.

Emotions themselves are generated in your subconscious mind, whilst the physiological changes they cause (the effects they have on your body) originate from the unconscious processes that occur in the brain.

Therefore in order to fully understand your feelings, you first need have a basic understanding of the conscious, subconscious and unconscious parts of your mind. So let’s have a look at these now.

The Conscious Mind

The conscious mind is what you are using right now to read this article. It is what you think with everyday, and what determines how you perceive yourself and your surrounding environment.

However the conscious mind is fairly limited in what it can process, as it can only remember 7-9 piece of information, or hold one thought, at any given time.

Whatever information or thought is being held by the conscious mind during this time, will then be analysed for the most logical solution.

So for example, if I think to myself “I am thirsty” my conscious mind will analyse this thought, and come up with a solution that will get me something to drink.

But it will not think of a way for me to do something else (e.g., get something to eat), unless I start thinking about food.

The problem with the conscious mind is that this analysis is often impaired by the unconscious parts of the mind.

One of the most powerful influences are emotions, which can cause a person to act irrationally by dominating and bypassing their conscious analysis.

This is why we often do things we regret when we are feeling very emotional, such as when we feel very angry or very sad.

The Subconscious Mind

Unlike the conscious mind which is limited in its processing power and storage capacity, the subconscious mind has the ability to store everything that has ever happened to you in your life.

But because it is stored in your subconscious, you cannot access it through normal means (i.e., by thinking about it).

This is why some people undergo hypnosis, as it allows them to get to the root cause of their problem by finding out what has been buried in their subconscious.

Over time as your subconscious begins to fill up with more and more information, it begins to form a model of the type of person you are. This model then determines how you view yourself, other people and the world you live in.

Typically this model is firmly established by the time you reach your teens, although it still can be modified by subsequent life events and experiences.

The Unconscious Mind

The unconscious mind is similar to the subconscious, in the sense that you have no conscious awareness or control of it.

However the unconscious is not really a mind, by rather a series of processes that occur in the brain which result in the regulation of autonomic bodily functions.

For example, breathing, sweating and the beating of your heart (autonomic bodily functions) are all a direct result of the unconscious processes that occur in your brain.

These keep your body working, without you having to think about it.

Unconscious Feelings

The unconscious part of your brain is also what makes you feel the way you feel when exposed to a certain stimulus. For example, when you experience fear that emotion is first generated in the subconscious.

But the feeling you feel from that emotion, comes from the unconscious part of your brain which causes adrenaline to be released into the body.

This adrenaline then causes you to feel the feelings associated with fear, such as an increase in heart rate, breathing and alertness.

Why you experience emotions, such as being happy or sad, is largely due to what has been programmed (stored) into your subconscious throughout your life.

A simple way to demonstrate this can be found with the films we like and dislike. For example, you may really like a particular film, but your friend might think it is boring.

The emotions each of you experienced from watching that film were determined by how your subconscious (through its programmed beliefs) perceived that information.

So for example, if you have had a keen interested in space since you were young, you are likely to find films about outer space much more interesting and entertaining than someone who has no interest in space.

However it is important to note that this example takes into account just one factor, that being, whether you have an interest in space or not.

In reality, all the information that has been stored in the subconscious will be used to determine how you perceive, and therefore react to, any given piece of information.

Subconscious Filters

All the information that is stored in your subconscious acts like a filter, which then determines how you see and experience reality.

Whatever the subconscious considers to be the most important information, is what it will use as its primary filters.

Generally this will be any information that created a strong emotional response within you, or you have been repeatedly exposed to for a long time.

If for example you have been told all your life that you are good for nothing, and then one day someone tells you how great you are, you are likely to ignore or reject this compliment because your dominant subconscious filter tells you that you are good for nothing.

This then causes the unconscious part of your brain to make you feel as though you were good for nothing. You can probably already spot the danger in this process, as it creates a self reinforcing cycle.

If you have negative thoughts about yourself programmed into your subconscious, then the feelings you experience from those thoughts will reinforce the original negative subconscious beliefs.

So the longer you feel depressed about yourself and your life, the more you are telling your subconscious that is the way you should be feeling, and so that is exactly what you will get. A self reinforcing cycle, that unless broken will eventual spiral out of control.

Your Subconscious “Alarm System”

Now that we understand the basics of how emotions affect us, we can see that emotions serve a very important purpose.

The emotions that are generated in the subconscious in response to an external stimulus, act like an alarm system which signals to us whether something is “good” or “bad”.

If as a result of our pre-programmed subconscious beliefs we perceive something as being bad, an emotion will be generated which will then make you feel bad.

This feeling you experience is designed to draw your conscious attention to that issue, so that you can respond accordingly. However should you ignore those feelings, that issue will remain unresolved.

The danger in leaving these “subconscious issues” unresolved, is that by doing so you allow the feelings you experience to reinforce your negative subconscious beliefs, thereby creating the self reinforcing cycle I discussed earlier.

This is why it is so important to understand and listen to your feelings, as they will help you to overcome any negative subconscious beliefs you may have about yourself.

In a later article, I will talk more about this, and the different messages our emotions are trying to tell us.

Summary

I have put together a very basic diagram to illustrate the main points I have been talking about in this article.

You can replace “cake” with any kind of stimulus. The purpose of the diagram is to show how your subconscious communicates with the conscious mind by using feelings.

These feelings represent your subconscious needs, and in a later article we will talk in more detail about how you interpret the different feelings your subconscious is sending you.

We will also look at why you are being sent these feelings. For example, do you want to eat cake just because you have pleasant memories of eating cake? Or is it something you are using to distract yourself from some painful feelings you would rather avoid? (emotional eating).

So it is important to remember that In reality feelings are not as straight forward as demonstrated in the diagram.

Your Conscious Mind

Your conscious mind is what you think with. It is what you use to experience the world you live in. It is what you call you.

Your Subconscious Mind

The subconscious mind records everything you do and experience in your life, but you have no conscious awareness of it.

All this stored information forms a blueprint as to the type of person you are. This blueprint then determines what your beliefs and values are, which then determine how you see yourself and the world you live in.

You can have positive beliefs (think about yourself in a good way) or negative beliefs (think about yourself in a bad way).

Your Unconscious Mind

Your unconscious mind refers to the parts of your brain that keep your body running automatically. It allows you to do things like breathe, without having to think about it.

Whenever you are exposed to something, your subconscious mind checks to see if you have been exposed to it (or something similar to it) before, and then how you responded to it.

This subconscious process creates an emotion within you, which you feel when your unconscious mind releases certain chemicals in your body.

For example, when you were 5 years old you had a bad experience with a spider which made you feel very scared.

This event was stored in your subconscious mind and the next time you saw a spider (either in a few days, weeks, months or years) it triggered your previously stored negative experience you had with that spider when you were 5.

Associated with this previous experience was fear, and so your unconscious mind caused you to feel fear when you saw the spider.

Unless this negative stored subconscious memory is resolved (by you overcoming your fear of spiders) this memory will continue to affect you for the rest of your life.

The purpose of you feeling this fear, was your subconscious minds way of telling your conscious mind that you have an unresolved issue stored in your subconscious that you need to overcome.

So to sum it all up, your emotions (and the feelings you experience from those emotions) are messages from your subconscious to your conscious mind about things which need your attention.

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