Your emotions are your most important signaling system. Emotions existed long before thought and language, and whether you were born into this world as a human being or as a person, you had the ability to feel happiness, sadness, fear, shame, and anger.
Your emotions are important because they remind you of things that are important to you. They let you know how you treat yourself and those around you, and most importantly they let you know what you need because all emotions are related to your needs. This means that emotions are part of your brain, your body reacts to something important happening and thus your emotions tell you that you need to pay attention to what is happening because one or more of your needs are affected.
When your emotional system believes that something important is happening, they send out alerts to warn you. These alerts usually consist of physical sensations, a surge, and an experience of interpreting meaning. Physical sensations include: knots in the stomach, restlessness, pressure in the chest, feeling warm, energized or strong. An impulse may be to approach someone else, to isolate yourself. Your interpretation might be, “This is dangerous!”
For example, if you have lost someone you liked very much, then you may become sad and mournful. You may feel a heaviness in your body, a lump in your stomach or throat. You may want to cry. You know how much this person meant to you, and you may need to keep that person with you, and the grief tells you that you can no longer get that need. Grief causes you to approach other people for comfort, care and support.
All of our emotions are tied to needs in this way. Fear needs safety, shame needs acceptance and validation, anger needs boundaries for self-space, and grief needs comfort. So the next time you find yourself feeling any of these things, you might ask yourself: what is this emotion telling me I need?
If you would like to learn more about emotions and needs, we recommend the following movie for you
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)