WHY WE FEEL EMOTIONS

 sometimes we wonder why.

Our emotions can be short-lived like a flash of annoyance at a co-worker or long-lasting

Such as enduring sadness over the loss of a loved one ,But why do we experience emotions?

What purpose do they have?

Let's find out!

Thanks to the work of a few researchers we can theorize on a few reasons why we feel emotions.

Number 1

Emotions help us survive.

Naturalist Charles Darwin believed that emotions are adaptations that allow us humans to

 survive. When we lived in the wild we needed emotions in order to react quickly to

 dangerous situations.

If faced with a tiger, it's better to be rocked with a fear so strong it triggers a quick

 response.. rather than theorize about the threat. If you want to create a system that works

 hard to survive... make it conscious and emotional. It will want to keep itself around.

This also helped us jump up the food chain.

Emotions help to organize our behaviour and set us a motion to accomplish a goal.

When faced with a nerve-racking exam you might feel a lot of anxiety about whether you'll

 do well and how it will impact your final grade.

These emotional responses can motivate you to take action, like studying to improve your

 chances of getting a good grade.

We also tend to take certain actions that make us feel positive emotions and stay away from

 the ones that cause us to feel negative ones.

For example,

you might seek out social activities or hobbies that give you a sense of happiness,

 contentment and excitement.

On the other hand,

You'd probably avoid situations that might lead to boredom, sadness or anxiety.

Number three. Emotions can help us make decisions.

Our emotions have a major influence on the decisions we make, from what we decide to

 have for breakfast.. to which candidates we choose to vote for in political elections.

Anger can make you more likely or take risks and to minimize how dangerous those risks are.

Fear can make you more uncertain about your decisions.

And happiness will make you more open-minded.

This is why emotional intelligence, our ability to understand and manage emotions,

is very important in enhancing our decision making abilities. Without it we're at the mercy

 of our emotions.

Number 4

Emotions help us communicate with people. We can do this with verbal and non-verbal

 behaviour. When we show or tell friends or family members that we are feeling happy, sad,

 excited or frightened... we are giving them important information that they can then use to

 take action. In turn emotions also help us to recognize what others are feeling.

It allows us to respond appropriately and build deeper more meaningful relationships

with our friends, family and loved ones. It also allows us to communicate effectively in a

 variety of social situations, from dealing with an angry customer... to consoling a

 heartbroken friend. So, as you can see, emotions play an important role in our life.

However, they also tend to drive us crazy when given too much rain. Mental illness usually

 develops as a result of excess emotion. An unhealthy overflow of emotion doesn't just drive

 mood disorders like depression, but fuels most psychological problems such as phobias,

 anxiety, trauma, hoarding, obsessiveness, borderline personality disorder and drug and

 alcohol abuse, which was passed on by primitive predecessors.

Mental illnesses often result from an imbalance in these two. Even though emotions like

 fear used to be helpful in the wild ,they're less efficient helpmates in modern civilized

 life. Of course, we still have plenty to fear, but our threats are not usually immediate, like a

 tiger, but rather distant like money and war and homelessness. So a lot of us suffer from a

 more generalized fear, or anxiety. There's a sense of danger without a practical opportunity

 to respond to it quickly. As a result our emotions get out of whack because they bubble

 without an effective outlet. Therapy these days often focuses on balancing our emotion and

 reason. This way we don't let our emotions overrun us. Keep our systems in balance

 too.This is no easy task though, but like with everything else, practice makes perfect .So, as

 we have learnt, our emotions serve a wide variety of purposes and play a critical role in

 how we live our lives, from how we engage with others, to the decisions we make. But if

 left unchecked, they can be quite troublesome. So it's a good idea to familiarize ourselves with our .emotions