Why do we have emotions, when do we feel them, and how is that a prerequisite for emotional health?
The cognitive-behavioral approach, dominant today in Western culture, treats emotion as something that stands in the way of psychological health or of the desired behavior of an individual. The developmental approach, on the other hand, sees emotion as one of the main driving forces in human behavior and well-being. While the cognitive-behavioral approach tries to change emotion through cognition or behavioral adjustments, the developmental approach strives to understand how emotions work, what they are for, what they are trying to tell us, and how we can help them do their job.
As a developmentalist at heart, I believe that different features of our body — such as emotions — are not a flaw but an advantage. They lead us in the right direction. They show us the way, if we only listen.
What does it mean to listen to our emotions — you may ask. I will try to answer that.
Felt emotion
To explain how to listen to your emotions, I first need to clarify the difference between feelings and emotions. We often use the two terms as synonyms, losing their original meaning.
Emotions are the drive that our brain creates as a reaction to a stimulus — external or internal. This drive is then reflected in the body by invoking a physiological state that would help the intended behavior to be carried out, and it can even move us to action without the intervention of our cognitive brain.
For example: a loud sound can make us hide (bend down, cover our head or ears, and so on) or freeze long before we understand what caused it. This is the work of the emotion of alarm. Did we feel alarmed in that moment? Not necessarily. Emotions are inner physiological states — we do not always feel them, or in other words, we are not always aware of them. Just as we might not feel our hunger when we are stressed, or we might not feel cold when we are busy at work, we might not feel alarmed, frustrated, in pursuit of proximity, or ashamed when the situation or our inner state does not allow us to.
Emotions can help us function by moving us directly to action. But they can also interfere with our functioning when we need to perform. Hence our amazing brain lets us feel our emotions only when the situation is safe enough. This is where we experience some of the psychological defenses Freud described over a century ago.
So it is only when we feel our emotion that it becomes a feeling. A word is missing in our vocabulary that would signify a “felt emotion.” We use the word feeling, but it is not unique and easily causes confusion. As my son said — and I couldn’t argue — hunger is also a feeling. It is. It is something we notice in the body. But it is not a felt emotion.
A felt emotion is an emotion we are aware of, and we often give it our cognitive interpretation. For example, the emotion of frustration arises when something does not work as we want it to. The feelings we may experience as a result include: frustration itself, guilt if we perceive the situation as our fault, anger if we perceive it as someone else’s fault, outrage if we perceive injustice, shame if we believe something is wrong with us, and so on.
But even if we do not feel our frustration, it is still there once evoked. We may be moved to change something (rearrange the furniture) or to aggression (be sarcastic, dismissive, irritated, yelling, hitting) without feeling the frustration first. We might realize later, “oh, I must have been frustrated,” or we may not realize it at all.
Emotional feedback
If you sit with your eyes closed and focus your attention on bodily sensations, you will feel many little itches, tensions, temperature changes, heat, tingling, and so on — all of these are messages our body sends us, trying to tell us what is going on inside, including our emotional state.
Do we always interpret this correctly? No.
We can misinterpret the feedback our emotional brain sends us. For example: a child is left at kindergarten. He is not yet attached to the teachers, and he is alarmed because his brain is signaling that he is not attached to any adult around him, and this is a dangerous situation. The child feels the alarm, but feeling “left alone” is too vulnerable, so the brain blocks this awareness. The child looks around and sees a big plush toy. Later he tells his parents he is afraid to go to kindergarten because he is afraid of that toy.
That is why the safer the environment — or the perceived environment — the higher the probability that a child or an adult will be able to read the feedback from the emotional brain correctly.
Reading that feedback as accurately as possible is the key to emotional health. According to Gordon Neufeld, all psychological disturbances and problematic behavior stem either from not feeling our emotions or from misinterpreting what we feel, as in the case of phobias.
What needs to happen for our children — and for us — to feel our emotions?
As I stated above, safety is key. And when I say safety, I mean the subjective inner psychological state, not the objective reality.
As humans, we feel safe in play and in secure attachments with our close ones. This is the context where safety — and the feeling of emotion — belongs.
When we, the adults, generously provide care for a child, safeguard their dignity, invite them to exist in our presence and also to become their own person, when we gently lead them and surround them with warmth — this is where it is safe to feel. We can expect all kinds of emotions coming from children in such conditions. Emotional health is messy and loud. Our role is not to prevent the child from feeling frustrated, disappointed, sad, or any other emotions that might not be pleasant. Quite the opposite. Our job is to invite everything that comes, to normalize it, to help the child express it, to help them name it, and to guide their attention toward their emotions. That helps them feel them.
Play is another keeper of safety. In play, things are not for real, free from expectations. They are one or several steps removed, and therefore safe to experiment with, safe to act out. Emotion moves in play, comes out, and thus becomes easier to feel. Stories, role play, replaying an event with toys, music, painting, dancing, rituals — all of these can serve as play and as an emotional playground, crucial for emotional health.
Coming home
We cannot possibly feel constantly, especially in adulthood. When we give a lecture, sit in a work meeting, or manage our kids, we need to function. These moments are moments of work, not rest. Our brain knows this and blocks our feelings, because these are not the right moments to sit and grieve about everything that does not work for us or everything we are worried about.
But what is crucial for emotional health is that we come “home” often enough — to our loved ones, to our emotional playgrounds. We need to come home to safety daily. Long-term work mode can have a significant impact on our emotional and even physical health. It is no wonder that overworked and exhausted mothers who are constantly attending to their children often burn out. They do not find time for their own play, necessary for emotional well-being. Nor do they find rest in being cared for by others. Hence the research showing that mothers who feel supported are less likely to fall into postpartum depression.
This feelings-focused approach provides more understanding of otherwise inexplicable human behavior and psychological phenomena. When we understand how we are built, we can try to shape our surroundings to be more conducive to optimal functioning. As part of these necessary conditions, the developmental approach emphasizes creating opportunities for rest, as opposed to work — in warm relationships or when a person slows down to play. This is as essential to human beings as physical hygiene, exercise, or food.
So how do we implement this in a society centered on cognition and behavior?
Gordon Neufeld often repeats: what we see affects what we do. The moment we understand what is going on, the solutions become self-evident. And while someone might perceive following this approach as more demanding, it actually makes our relationships and child-rearing easier, because we stop going against our nature, our instincts, and our emotions — and we start flowing with the current.
You can hear more about emotional health — and the path toward it — at our conference in Prague on March 13–15, 2026, directly from Gordon Neufeld, Tamara Strijack, Eva de Gosztonyi, and other faculty members of the Neufeld Institute.
Author: Lina Vizelman
Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash
