What is the difference between feelings and moods

The third part of the equation here is Affect. Affect is the physical sensations you have when you have emotions. These are the butterflies in the stomach that we experience with anxiety, the muscular tension that anger can bring, or the ache in the heart we have with grief.

These Affects can be the thing we notice about emotions, and the thing that we can find most distressing about them. I've written more about Affect before. For instance, whilst in a bad mood is quite possible to have brief feelings of happiness and joy. Similarly, when a good mood, it is still possible to feel sad or angry feelings.

However, it is much more likely that your mood will influence the emotion you feel. So it's not really a question of moods versus emotions; instead it's more moods and emotions. If this happens, the emotion may have the same flavour as the mood. In this way, our emotions are susceptible to the mood we are in, and this also make us more likely to interpret our environment in particular ways and distort our thinking.

When we are in a bad mood, it is much easier to misinterpret things in the light of this bad mood. Understanding what are moods and emotions — and their differences — takes time and practice.

I've written before on what you can do when you're in a bad mood. Let me know what you think in the comments. Click here - the initial consultation is free. Hi Tim. I lost my sister 7 months ago. I finally broke down and saw my G. I could describe emotions but mood totally eluded me. So I googled it and there you were. It boggles my mind I could have lived this long, been in councelling for over a decade at one time, and today was the first time I was ever asked about mood.

The amygdala plays a key role in emotional arousal. It can regulate the release of neurotransmitters in the hippocampus, an area central to memory consolidation [4]. One theory is that this is why emotional memories are usually perceived as stronger and are so long-lasting [5, 6]. Emotions are physical and instinctive, instantly prompting bodily reactions to threat, reward, and everything in between.

Top of Page. While emotions are associated with bodily reactions that are activated through neurotransmitters and hormones released by the brain, feelings are the conscious experience of emotional reactions. Originating in the neocortical regions of the brain, feelings are sparked by emotions and shaped by personal experiences, beliefs, memories, and thoughts linked to that particular emotion. Strictly speaking, a feeling is the side product of your brain perceiving an emotion and assigning a certain meaning to it [7].

Interestingly, this process works both ways: While the actual encounter with a spider stimulus might freak you out, just thinking of it can activate the same emotional response. The conscious nature of feelings makes it quite easy to measure them using self-reporting tools such as interviews, surveys , and questionnaires including rating scales and self-assessment procedures.

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