How feelings
actually work

Body first, story second

Before any feeling has a name there is affect: how pleasant it is (valence) and how activated you are (arousal). Tight chest plus fast breath is raw data. 'He disrespected me' is the story your brain adds to explain it.

Try: Pin one moment today using only two numbers: pleasant 1–10, activated 1–10. No word yet.

Interoception is the raw material

Hunger, poor sleep and caffeine change your body budget, and your brain reads that debt as being about your life. A lot of 'everyone is annoying' is unpaid sleep.

Try: Next spike, ask in order: eaten, slept, moved, hydrated? Then re-rate it.

Feelings are waves, not weather

A single emotional response peaks and passes in seconds to minutes. What lasts longer is rumination — the retelling that keeps re-triggering the same wave.

Try: Set a 90-second timer at the next peak. Feel it, name the body part, then check what's left.

Intensity is not importance

Petty and small are still real. A trigger fires hardest on old material, which is why a queue-jumper can feel like a betrayal — the size of the reaction points to history, not to the event.

Try: For one big reaction, write: 'How old does this feel?' Answer with an age.