The Myth of Fixed Emotions: Why Everything You Know About Feelings Is Probably Wrong
By Sophia Rivera
Confession time: I spent 32 years of my life believing emotions were like weather systems that just happened to me.
Happiness would roll in like sunshine, sadness would descend like rain, and anger would strike like lightning – all natural phenomena beyond my control that I simply had to endure.
Turns out? I couldn't have been more wrong.
Over the past decade, research has completely upended our understanding of emotions in ways that most of us haven't caught up with yet. It's like we're all still using flip phones while emotion science has moved on to technology we can barely comprehend.
The Great Emotion Revelation
Here's the mind-blowing truth that changed everything for me: Your emotions aren't happening to you – you're actively creating them.
I know, I know. It doesn't feel that way. When you're furious at your partner or anxious about a presentation, it sure as hell feels like that emotion just ambushed you.
But according to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's revolutionary research, emotions aren't pre-packaged reactions triggered by events. They're predictions your brain constructs based on past experience (Barrett, 2017).
Your brain is essentially a super-sophisticated prediction machine, constantly forecasting what sensations mean based on similar situations from your past. This is why two people can experience the same event – say, a job rejection – and have completely different emotional responses.
One person's brain predicts devastation based on past experiences where rejection meant failure. Another person's brain predicts opportunity based on experiences where setbacks led to better paths.
Same external event. Radically different emotional constructions.
The Language-Emotion Connection No One Talks About
Here's where things get even more fascinating. The words you have available literally shape your emotional experiences at a neurological level.
Think about it: can you feel an emotion if you don't have a word for it?
Researchers have found that language doesn't just help us communicate emotions – it actively shapes how we experience them (Lindquist et al., 2015). The vocabulary you possess acts as a set of tools that helps your brain categorize sensations into specific emotional experiences.
This explains why other cultures have emotions we don't have words for:
- Hygge (Danish): A deep sense of cozy contentment and well-being
- Gigil (Filipino): The irresistible urge to squeeze something cute
- Wadahadal (Somali): A specific form of productive dispute that feels satisfying
These aren't just translation issues – they're actual emotional experiences that become accessible when you have the language for them.
This is why people who can make finer distinctions between their emotional states (what researchers call "emotional granularity") actually experience emotions differently than those who can only distinguish between feeling "good" or "bad" (Kashdan et al., 2015).
High-granularity people might recognize they're feeling "disappointed but hopeful" or "anxious but excited," while low-granularity folks might just register "upset" or "stressed" – resulting in completely different lived experiences of the same physiological sensations.
The Appraisal Revolution: How Thoughts Create Feelings
Every emotion you experience involves an appraisal – an interpretation of what's happening and what it means for you. Change the appraisal, and you literally change the emotion.
Neuroscientist Dr. Kevin Ochsner demonstrated this dramatically when he showed people disturbing images while scanning their brains. When participants simply viewed the images, their amygdala (a brain region associated with threat) lit up. But when they reinterpreted the same images (for example, thinking "that's just a movie scene with fake blood"), their prefrontal cortex activated and amygdala activity decreased.
Same image. Different appraisal. Completely different emotional experience and brain activity (related to findings in Mathews & MacLeod, 2005).
This is the science behind cognitive therapy approaches pioneered by Aaron Beck (1976) – the recognition that our interpretations create our emotions, not external events themselves.
Why You Might Be Emotionally Colorblind (And How to Fix It)
Imagine living in a world where you could only see three colors – red, blue, and green. Now imagine someone trying to describe purple to you. You'd have no reference point, no way to experience it.
That's how many of us live emotionally.
Research suggests that about 30% of adults have what psychologists call "alexithymia" – difficulty identifying and describing emotions. They're essentially emotionally colorblind, able to register only broad categories like "good" and "bad" rather than the rich tapestry of specific emotional experiences (connected to Barrett's work on emotional granularity, 2004).
The good news? Unlike actual colorblindness, emotional granularity can be developed.
Here's a mind-blowing experiment: Researchers took people with limited emotional vocabulary and taught them new emotion words over several weeks. The result? They didn't just learn new labels – they began experiencing emotions they couldn't access before (building on Lupyan's 2012 work on linguistically modulated perception).
The Four-Step Process to Expand Your Emotional Universe
Based on the converging research, here's my four-step process for developing what I call "emotional flexibility" – the ability to experience a wider range of emotional states with greater precision:
1. Body First, Label Second
Emotions start as physical sensations. Before rushing to label a feeling, scan your body. Where do you feel activation? Tension? Heaviness? Lightness?
This builds interoceptive awareness – the ability to detect internal bodily states – which research shows is fundamental to emotional intelligence.
Practice: Set a timer for three random points throughout your day. When it goes off, take 30 seconds to mentally scan your body from head to toe, noting sensations without judgment.
2. Expand Your Emotion Vocabulary Deliberately
You can't experience what you can't name. Make a deliberate practice of learning new emotion words.
Instead of saying you feel "bad," could you be feeling:
- Disheartened?
- Melancholy?
- Disillusioned?
- Chagrined?
- Forlorn?
Each word opens access to a slightly different emotional experience.
Practice: Learn one new emotion word weekly. Use it intentionally in your conversations and internal dialogue.
3. Challenge Automatic Appraisals
When emotions arise, ask: "What am I telling myself about this situation? Is that the only possible interpretation?"
Our brains are masterful at presenting one interpretation as the absolute truth. By questioning these automatic appraisals, we can create space for new emotional experiences.
Practice: When a strong emotion arises, write down your initial interpretation. Then force yourself to generate three alternative interpretations, however unlikely they might seem.
4. Study Your Emotion Construction Patterns
We all have habitual ways we construct emotions. Some people immediately translate uncertainty into anxiety. Others convert disappointment into anger.
By identifying your particular patterns, you gain the power to intervene earlier in the construction process.
Practice: Keep an emotion journal for two weeks, noting the sequence: Situation → Physical Sensations → Thoughts → Emotion Label → Action Urge. Look for recurring patterns.
The Revolutionary Promise: Emotions as Skills, Not States
The most liberating aspect of this new science is that emotional experiences can be developed like any other skill. We're not permanently confined to our current emotional range or patterns.
Through deliberate practice in expanding vocabulary, questioning appraisals, and attending to bodily sensations, we can literally increase the palette of emotions available to us – creating a richer, more nuanced lived experience (drawing from Greenberg's 2004 work on emotion-focused therapy).
This doesn't mean you'll never feel painful emotions. Rather, it means you'll have more options for how you experience and respond to life's inevitable challenges.
As appraisal researcher Klaus Scherer (2001) puts it, emotions are "multilevel sequential processes" – meaning they unfold through multiple steps, giving us multiple opportunities to influence their trajectory.
Beyond Emotional Intelligence: The Future of Feeling
Most discussions of emotional intelligence focus on recognizing and managing the emotions we already have. But the emerging science suggests something far more revolutionary: the ability to actively participate in constructing our emotional experiences.
This goes beyond traditional ideas of emotional regulation to what I call "emotional co-creation" – the skill of collaborating with your brain to generate emotional experiences that serve your values and goals.
The question shifts from "How do I deal with this emotion?" to "What emotion would be most helpful to construct in this situation?"
The way we conceptualize emotions isn't just an academic concern – it fundamentally shapes our lived experience. By understanding emotions as active constructions rather than passive reactions, we gain unprecedented agency in our emotional lives.
So the next time you feel an emotion washing over you, remember: you're not just experiencing it – you're creating it. And that means you have far more power than you ever imagined.
What emotion will you choose to construct today?
References
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Barrett, L. F. (2004). Feelings or words? Understanding the content in self-report ratings of experienced emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), 266-281.
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. International Universities Press.
Greenberg, L. S. (2004). Emotion–focused therapy. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 11(1), 3-16.
Kashdan, T. B., Barrett, L. F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation: Transforming unpleasant experience by perceiving distinctions in negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 10-16.
Lindquist, K. A., MacCormack, J. K., & Shablack, H. (2015). The role of language in emotion: Predictions from psychological constructionism. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 444.
Lupyan, G. (2012). Linguistically modulated perception and cognition: The label-feedback hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 54.
Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (2005). Cognitive vulnerability to emotional disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 167-195.
Moors, A., Ellsworth, P. C., Scherer, K. R., & Frijda, N. H. (2013). Appraisal theories of emotion: State of the art and future development. Emotion Review, 5(2), 119-124.
Scherer, K. R. (2001). Appraisal considered as a process of multilevel sequential checking. In K. R. Scherer, A. Schorr, & T. Johnstone (Eds.), Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research (pp. 92-120). Oxford University Press.
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