Emotions – What are they?

Emotions to me is a way of expressing yourself to the world or in other words releasing your energy out into the world.

Being bi polar, my emotions are expressed from one extreme to another; when I am happy, I am very excitable. On the flip side of this, when I am sad, I become very down, angry and my mood varies in an instant from one extreme to the other. Sometimes it happens in a matter of moments, and sometimes it happens over time. Even the time periods fluctuate from a short to longer time period; you may be familiar with the short fluctuations being referred to as mood swings.

I am sure most of us have experienced mood swings as a teenager. I guess as a teenager we are all getting used to our emotions and learning to handle them as this isn’t something we are taught at school or at home. We learn by deciding what to take in from our environments on this. Short term mood swings are more noticeable in comparison to the fluctuation of moods over a long period of time, which can easily go unnoticeable.

I say this as I am aware my mood has fluctuated from very happy to very sad for long periods of times, with this cycle repeating itself multiple times. This especially happened when I was studying and working in London for over 7 years and I don’t recall anyone noticing this about me. No one pointed it out to me, nor did they advise that they noticed this and that it was something I should be concerned about.

Had this happened, I may have learnt some important life lessons 15 years earlier, rather than learning the lessons myself by experiencing life; through awareness and analysis of my whole life, my thoughts and why I behaved the way I did, this has provided me the basis of setting up my blog. More so during the period of lockdown, where I was forced to spend more time alone with my thoughts and reflect.

Recently, one person actually told me they thought I was bi polar. They picked it up more recently, a few years ago, rather than when I was younger. They told me that they didn’t think it was their place to say anything to me without being diagnosed, although at that point I was diagnosed but I hadn’t shared with many then. Although initially I was shocked that they never told me this about me, I realised they were being sensitive towards me. Mental health itself is a very sensitive topic, and others react in different ways to it.

Going back to emotions, I will use the emotions of happiness and sadness as examples.

When I was happy, I would radiate with happiness and others would notice this too, and I always felt as though others wanted to be around me more. I felt confident to do more in life, I got more done in life too and I didn’t care what others thought about me either. I was just feeling ecstatic, on top of the world. One could describe this as being manic, having a very elated state of mind, in bi polar terminology.

I was told by my family when I was younger I was a very happy child. Everyone used to love being around me and nobody could understand why. On any family occasion that I missed, everyone would notice I wasn’t there and ask where I was as they missed me. Looking back at it now, I believe I was radiating positive energy, which others sensed but couldn’t understand what this was. We radiate energy? How is this possible?

I have previously written a blog on us being energy. Further to that blog, I believe we are constantly vibrating as energy does. So based on your state of mind or shall I say vibrational state, we obtain a feeling, and these feelings are what we describe as the various emotions that we are familiar with, such as being happy, excited, sad, angry, etc. There are so many words to describe different types of emotions, as each feeling is so different. Whether we understand this or not, others can sense our vibrational state or shall I say our vibe? Our vibe we let off is whether we are really happy, sad, etc. or even hiding something from others; this would be picked up as an intuitive sense of something being wrong. Only by being aware we would realise this.

I have an example of sensing someone hiding something from me. I was meeting up with a friend who I hadn’t seen for some time for dinner. We met, we had a good time, but something felt off during our time of meeting up. At the time I put it down to us drifting apart since we hadn’t met up in ages and people can change over time. After some time I found out she was actually keeping a secret from me, which she told me a few months later. I realised this was the “off” vibe I had felt when we were hanging out together after ages. After this period we have met many times and we are totally fine now. We haven’t drifted apart and there are no “off” feelings between us anymore.

Now to the emotion of sadness. There have been times when I have felt really sad too. I carried on with life as usual, exercising, going to work and meeting family and friends. When hanging out with others, I realised that they could sense my sadness or low energy levels, but they never said anything to me – I guess they couldn’t describe what they were feeling but it was a sense they weren’t as happy to be around me as when I was feeling happy inside of me. Their actions showed it all. I still met others, but they didn’t respond or reply back as they normally would, yet when I was in a happy emotional state, I felt others would respond or reply back to me quicker. It was my vibe others were responding to, without even realising this.

But when I was feeling sad, others reacting this way just reinforced my feelings of sadness, causing me to continue becoming more and more down, until I eventually became depressed. At the time I didn’t realise this, but looking back I believe I was depressed. I believe I was depressed multiple times in my life, but never got diagnosed (I didn’t realise what I was going through myself at the time), as I used to feel so low and never knew how to come out of it. Somehow I did come out of it and I am happy to say I have never gone back to that state of mind for a long time now. I have written another detailed blog on depression too.

Summary

· I believe emotions are words used to describe a way of expressing how you feel to the world, your vibe and others can notice this when they become aware of how they are really feeling around others.

· We are energy – we vibrate at an energetic state which varies depending on what emotion we are feeling at that point in time.

· When someone is hiding something from you, we are able to intuitively feel it, if we really become aware of our feelings around others.

· Mood Swings - most of us had these as teenagers as it was a way to manage our emotions. These mood swings can be more extreme, lasting for longer periods of time too, which is a typical symptom of bi polar.

· Another typical symptom of bi polar is fluctuating from one extreme emotion of say happiness to sadness over long periods of time.

· Others could notice your mental health but may not express this to you as the topic of mental health is very sensitive to others, and we are unaware of how others will react to this.