As I began sharing with current and former clients that I would be transitioning into private practice, the most consistent question I received was: What list of “emotions” are you going to display at your new office? (Contrasting with the list of emotions we used at Sage Hill).
So, here is my answer: None. I will not be displaying a list of emotions, because I believe that emotions are not easily accessed through language. Emotions are physiological (neurological and hormonal) in nature. We experience them in our bodies. To illustrate what I’m talking about, I want to show you a picture:
Above is an image developed by Dr. Lauri Nummenmaa and colleagues published a fascinating 2013 study. Each body shows regions in which participants reported activation increased (warm colors) or decreased (cool colors) when feeling each emotion. One of the first things I noticed is that Spider-Man experiences a whole lot of shame.
All joking aside, emotions are uniquely experienced in our bodies. They are not a cognitive or mental phenomenon. Emotions are bodily experiences that are later interpreted by our cognitions/aware mind and consequently labeled with language. The cognitive interpretation of our physiological emotional experience is what we would call a feeling.
Going back to the question, am I going to display a list of emotions in my new office? No, but I might display the image above as a reminder that our emotions go much deeper than our cognitive awareness might let us believe.
Dr. Ribeiro.
P.S. If you interested in reading Dr. Lauri Nummenmaa’s article, here is the link to the article as well as its APA citation:
Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2014). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), 646-651.