About

Feelings

Feelings play out in our heads. They are mental associations and reactions to an emotion that are personal and acquired through experience. There are over 4,000 feelings listed in the English language. Most people can easily recognize at least 500 of those, but when asked to list emotions they can only list five to ten. The emotion comes first and is universal. What kind of feeling(s) it will then become varies enormously from person to person and from situation to situation because feelings are shaped by individual temperament and experience. Two people can feel the same emotion but label it under different names. For example: You are in a zoo on your own and on foot, you see a lion behind bars, and your feelings may range from curiosity to admiration or bitterness if you believe lions should never be caged.