Have you ever felt happy, sad, furious, or afraid? How about jealous or embarrassed? Almost everybody encounters these emotions from time to time, and they can have a huge effect on the way people think and act. Also did you know that happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise are six emotions that are universally expressed.

The first element you need to know about feelings and emotions, is that there’s a difference between them. Feelings are mental portrayal of what’s happening in your body. An emotion is a lower level response to the subcortical region of the brain, more commonly known as the amygdala. Here’s just a fun fact about feelings, 70% of people claim to be okay when their not, simply because it’s hard to find someone who will actually listen and care.

Reflect back to that time that somebody was mean to you. It doesn’t have to be that, you can think about a time when someone did something good for you. How did you feel? I’m pretty sure that if someone was mean to you, you wouldn’t be all happy and feel on top of the world. No, you would probably be hurt, or sad, or even be mad enough to be mean back. The reason we feel hurt by things such as discrimination, or judgement is simple, we often sense their opinion is true about us.

Most people have feelings, and most people have emotions. But there is still that little chunk of the population, that are within insane asylums, a.k.a. they’re psychotic or alexithymic. To be alexithymic, means you are unable to recognize anyone’s feelings or emotions. Being a psychopath means you are suffering from a chronic mental disorder, in which abnormal or violent social behaviors occur.

Overall you learned that feelings and emotions differ, because feelings are mental portrayal of what’s happening in your body, and emotions are a response to the subcortical region of the brain. Feelings can be hurt because of things people have said or done to us, because we fear they’re opinion is accurate. Last but certainly not least, people with no sense of emotion or feelings are diagnosed with alexithymia, and people who suffer from abnormal or violent social behaviors would be considered psychopaths.