What I am saying is that emotions are not the "real issue", the "real thing", they are a symptom, a "presentation layer", a re-presentation, and therefore a language. This is a very well known practice in medicine: A doctor, by "reading" the symptoms of the patient (pain, etc, etc), can re-relate these symptoms to the "body/apparatus/functions/systems" of the human body. She then can take an action and give you prescription.
It is important to keep in mind that this is a metaphor, and, therefore, as any other metaphor, has its limitations.
The other important things is that by no means I am saying that our feelings are not "Real". NO! They are "Very real". Almost every single one of us knows what happens in our bodies when we feel "fear"... There is a sequence of bio-physical-chemical sequences that doctors, biologists, etc know exactly. So, they are REAL.
What this "understanding" of feelings is trying to achieve, is to establish the connection between the language (or symptoms level), and the needs level.
As you know, we can divide our human needs into 3 categories:
- Needs: Those shared by all human beings
- Wants: Those that are present in a certain era, society, culture, etc, and can also vary during the life course of the individual.
- Desires: Those that are specific to Sheikh, Razano, Ghassan, Shalabieh,or John.
These needs (in their different manifestations) need to be met to be in a "comfort" state of being. This is what happens when you eat. You feel good, because the need for food was met. When a need (of any type) is not met, you are in a dis-comfort state.
Now, a big problem can occur if a temporal resolution to this dis-comfort state was a chieved through a "distractor", and not by satisfying the original need. This, over time, develops into all kinds of addictions we know (smoking, drugs, etc).
One of the major problems in understanding our feelings is that it is not easy to go back and de-cipher the language of our feelings, i.e to go back from the feeling to the need that resulted in this feeling.
Shall we continue this thread of discussion :)
