Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Emotions as signals
Point at the body. 'Your hands went up just then', or 'you put your head in your hands', gives a feeling something solid to stand on.
Feelings argued about in the abstract go round and round. A gesture you both just watched is much harder to dispute, and it opens a door: what was going on in you when your hands went up like that? Alone, the same thing works in miniature. Notice the jaw, the held breath, the shoulders up by your ears, then ask what that part of you seems to be bracing for.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Scripture is described as causing skins to shiver, and 'then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God' (Quran 39:23). Body first and meaning after is a sequence the Qur'an itself sets out.
ٱللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحۡسَنَ ٱلۡحَدِيثِ كِتَٰبࣰ ا مُّتَشَٰبِهࣰ ا مَّثَانِيَ تَقۡشَعِرُّ مِنۡهُ جُلُودُ ٱلَّذِينَ يَخۡشَوۡنَ رَبَّهُمۡ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمۡ وَقُلُوبُهُمۡ إِلَىٰ ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُدَى ٱللَّهِ يَهۡدِي بِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُۚ وَمَن يُضۡلِلِ ٱللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُۥ مِنۡ هَادٍ
God has sent down the most beautiful of all teachings: a Scripture that is consistent and draws comparisons; that causes the skins of those in awe of their Lord to shiver. Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God: such is God’s guidance. He guides with it whoever He will; no one can guide those God leaves to stray
Qur’an 39:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Imaging work on breathlessness and pain found both were handled in insula, cingulate and amygdala regions already known for their role in fear and anxiety, one reason bodily signals and emotions are so hard to prise apart. Worth holding beside it is a cross cultural study in which people's sense of their own heartbeat matched the real thing poorly, even in a culture that emphasises attending to the body. So the body is a genuine source of information while your reading of it can still be wrong, which is why you ask rather than assume.
von Leupoldt A, Sommer T, Kegat S, Baumann HJ, Klose H, Dahme B, Büchel C. (2009). Dyspnea and pain share emotion-related brain network.. NeuroImage doi
Chentsova-Dutton YE, Dzokoto V. (2014). Listen to your heart: the cultural shaping of interoceptive awareness and accuracy.. Emotion (Washington, D.C.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The body reacts before the words arrive, so it is often the most honest thing in the room.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Ask what the feeling is trying to do for you. Anger clears an obstacle, fear gets you out, sadness calls for comfort, shame hides you from being seen.
If all you can say is that you want to get away, that is already information. Nobody moves away from nothing, so somewhere in there is something that felt hard.
When someone finally gets one true word out about how they feel, resist explaining it to them. Ask what that word is like from the inside and let them find the rest.