Navigating Human Emotions How Emotions Shape Our Thoughts, Behaviors & Well-Being
Emotions are a crucial part of the human experience, they shape how we perceive our surroundings and ourselves.
When we operate from a state of sympathetic activation—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—we struggle to process our emotional experiences effectively.
Stuff it, ignore it, run from it, and deny it become the only options in our emotion management toolkit. None of these actions lead to healing, safety, or happiness. This is where ketamine can help.
Ketamine acts as an amygdala wrangler, reducing the overwhelming fear of feeling our emotions. It provides the space, time, and calm needed to be safely present with our feelings.
As the sympathetic response subsides, we learn to navigate old emotions and past wounds. In doing so, we become comfortable with being human again. These are the steps to healing.
Whether you struggle with anger, depression, anxiety, apathy, or shame, the need is the same: to feel safe and whole within yourself.
If other therapies have not helped you achieve a sense of internal safety, ketamine may offer a way forward. On the other side of fear lies an internally safe, loving, and compassionate self-parent.
Basic Human Emotions
Emotion | State | Associations |
Happiness | Positive Emotional State. You feel joy, contentment and satisfaction. | Associated with pleasant experiences, achievements, or relationships. |
Sadness | Negative Emotional State. You feel sorrow, grief, or disappointment. | Arises in response to loss, disappointment or unmet expectations. |
Anger | Strong, intense emotion. Your feelings will include frustration, irritation or hostility. | Arises in response to perceived threats, injustices, or violations of personal boundaries. |
Fear | Primal Emotion. Characterized by feelings of anxiety, apprehension, and unease. | Triggered by the perception of danger or threat. Physiological responses such as increased heart rate and heightened emotions often accompany fear. |
Disgust | Aversive Emotion. You feel revulsion, repulsion or disgust. | Arises in response to unpleasant stimuli, such as foul odors, tastes or behaviors. |
The Purpose of Emotions
What role do emotions serve in our lives? After all, life might be infinitely easier for some of us without being overwhelmed with emotions, which may elicit positive feelings but also involve crippling negative impacts on our lives.
Understanding and managing emotions is a critical part of being human. The better we understand our internal emotional mechanisms, the easier it becomes to manage and control their negative impacts.
- For starters, emotions convey information about our internal condition, allowing us to navigate our surroundings and make decisions more effectively. They act as signals, providing useful information about how we now view the world around us. They notify us of our wants, desires, anxieties, and even potential threats.
- Second, emotions encourage us to take action. We detect an emotional experience and are prompted to engage in a specific conduct. For example, feelings of hunger drive us to seek food. Fear alerts us to a perceived threat and may even cause us to flee!
- Third, emotions facilitate social relationships. They enable us to express our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to others. Emotions are necessary for successful communication and social interactions. They foster empathy, understanding, and connection. For example, expressing gratitude can strengthen social bonds, while displaying anger may signal the need for boundaries or assertiveness.
At Modern Mindwork, we help people who are living with mental health and trauma disorders, chronic pain issues, and addiction/dependence difficulties. The root cause of these challenges is multifaceted and includes physiological, psychological, and biological factors. That said, unpacking the strong and sometimes overwhelming emotions that accompany these disorders is a complementary but necessary and worthwhile exercise on the journey to living a full life.
Client Testimonials
I finally have found a real, long lasting reprieve from my depression. Ketamine therapy worked very fast and amazingly well
Joanna is warm and professional. She took her time and explained the process thoroughly.
Chronic depression almost killed me. Ketamine allows me to feel normally, sometimes happy, sometimes sad.
