“There is no separation of mind and emotions: emotions, thinking and learning are all linked.” Eric Jensen[i]

But what about our feelings? What’s the difference between our emotions and feelings? Have you ever thought about this?
And with that introduction, I want to welcome you back to Season 9 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use for immediate results, with our brain in mind.  I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast to share how the understanding of our complex brain transfers into our everyday life and results. Each concept we cover here I’m hoping will help you, wherever you might be listening to this podcast in the world, just as much as these ideas are helping me personally and professionally.
In keeping with our Season theme of “Going Back to the Basics” we look back to EP #127 on “How Emotions Impact Learning, Memory and the Brain.”[ii] It was on this episode, exactly 2 years ago where we first looked at the impact of our emotions on our daily life with the work of neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino Yang from the University of Southern California. We first met Mary Helen on our 100th EPISODE[iii] and she shared with us that “it is literally neurologically impossible to build memories, engage complex thoughts, or make meaningful decision without emotion.” She further explained that “30 years ago, we had no idea that one could study human emotions that emerge slowly over time—such as admiration and awe—and compare them psychologically and neurobiologically with emotions that emerge more quickly like surprise or fear.” (page 80. Emotions, Learning and the Brain).
Before writing this episode, I had to stop, and think deeply about something I’ve often quoted. I learned this back in my days working in the speaking industry (in the late 1990s) to be careful what you think about because “it’s our thoughts that determine our feelings, that cause us to take certain actions that in turn cause our conditions, circumstances and our environment.”  If we are going to look at our emotions today, we need to understand the difference between our emotions, our feelings, and the actions that we end up taking because of them.
Let’s Start with How Emotions Are Different Than Feelings.
I found a clear explanation of “Emotions vs Feelings”[iv] from Dr. David Matsumoto, the founder of Humintell, who explains that emotions “are quick reactions to certain events that may impact our survival. They are unconscious, immediate, involuntary, automatic reactions to things that are important to us” which is right in line with what we learned from Jaak Panksepp’s 7 primal emotions that he mapped out in our brain, and taught us they aren’t something that we can control. They are automatic responses.  Dr. Matsumoto further explains that “these reactions include cognitive and physiological changes that help prime our body in a certain way and create sensations in us that we can perceive” which he calls feelings.
You can see a diagram of these differences in the show notes that outlines emotions as “quick reactions to certain events that are automatic and unconscious” and feelings “are perceptions in the body that aren’t necessarily related to the emotion.”[v]

IMAGE SOURCE www.humintell.com Dr. David Matsumoto
Since I’m always looking to connect the most current neuroscience research to improve our best practices, I wonder what can I add to this understanding of our feelings vs our emotions, to see if we can gain a deeper self-awareness into why we feel the way we do, and what this might mean for us, individually, in pursuit of our goals. Or to put this simply, what should we all understand about our emotions, our feelings, and how they translate into our life, and resul