Show Notes
What’s the Difference Between an Emotion and a Feeling?
We often use the words emotion and feeling interchangeably, but what if they’re not quite the same thing?
In this short episode, I explore a distinction that can completely change how we relate to difficult emotional experiences.
An emotion is somatic. It happens in the body. Tightness in the chest. Heat in the face. A knot in the stomach. A heaviness we can’t quite explain.
Often, what the emotion is asking for is surprisingly simple: to be felt and experienced.
A feeling is what can happen next, when we attach a story, meaning or narrative to that emotion. And from that story often comes an urge to do something: fix it, escape it, distract ourselves, change our circumstances or make the discomfort disappear.
But what happens when we stop trying to get away from the emotion?
A six-minute reflection on learning to feel what is actually happening in the body, before the mind turns it into something we need to solve.