The Function of Emotions: A Complete Guide for Neurodivergent People
Emotions play a fundamental role in our everyday lives, affecting how we experience and interact with the world around us. From the moment we wake up to the time we go to bed, emotions color our experiences, shaping our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.
As an Autistic person, I must admit I am not always on the best terms with my emotions. In fact, during my initial therapy appointment with a psychoanalyst I was desperately trying to impress. I accidentally let it slip out that “I hate emotions.” The psychoanalyst gently pointed out the irony of such a statement coming from a psychologist! So to say I have a complex relationship to emotions is an understatement. Delving into the science of emotions was a turning point that prompted me to reevaluate their significance in my life.
It wasn’t until I delved into the science of emotions and realized they actually had some helpful functions that I reached a turning point in my relationship to emotions. And now that I’ve done a deep dive into the science, emotions have become somewhat of a special interest.
Emotions influence so much more than that of which we are consciously aware. They often operate silently like software that we don’t even realize is always running in the background.
Emotions serve a variety of purposes, ranging from mobilizing us for action and enabling communication to influencing perception and memory. They are powerful signals, providing insight into our internal states and alerting us to potential threats or opportunities.
Neurodivergent and Neurotypical people process and experience emotions differently. And within the neurodivergent community experiences of emotions also vary widely, as each person's neurodivergent traits and experiences are unique.
In this blog post, we will delve deeper into the various functions of emotions and what they can do for us, how they help us communicate, and what can happen when they go awry.
What Are Emotions?
Emotions are far from simple. While psychologists have worked for years to define emotions, most today broadly agree that emotions derive from both mental and physical responses to different stimuli or situations.
Most psychologists agree that emotions are a combination of 1) bodily sensations and 2) the story we tell ourselves about the sensation (also known as cognitive interpretation).
In other words, an emotion takes shape through the interplay of the physical sensations we experience and the narrative we construct to make sense of those sensations.
The Function of Emotions
Emotions aren’t just decorative. They actually play a really important function to our survival and daily life activities! Understanding the functions of our emotions can help us befriend these pesky little things and helps us unlock the potential of what they can do for us.
What Emotions Do For Us
Emotions are our brain's way of responding to situations, helping us make sense of the world around us and guiding our actions. Emotions give us valuable information to help us navigate life, make choices, and connect with others.They're like signals that tell us how we're feeling and what's important to us.
Emotions do more for us than we may realize, playing a crucial role in forming connections, building attachments with others, making decisions, and mobilizing us toward action. They also serve as a valuable source of information, providing insights into the situation, our safety, our perception of others, and more. Here is a rundown of just some of the things emotions do for us:
Act as motivators, particularly in situations where quick action is necessary. In urgent moments, our emotional responses take the lead in mobilizing us quickly.
Contribute to forming our positive experiences and feelings that contribute to overall well-being. These positive emotions act as a reinforcement, which motivates us to do the thing again (for example: experiencing endorphins after working out paired with a sense of accomplishment reinforces this healthy behavior).
Offer insights into our thoughts, needs, and desires. They help us recognize what matters to us, guiding personal growth and self-awareness.
Are linked to memory formation and retention. Strong emotions, whether positive or negative, tend to create lasting memories, aiding in the learning process.
Help regulate our behavior by providing internal feedback on our actions. Feelings of guilt, for example, can encourage us to correct our actions and make amends.
The Evolutionary Theory of Emotions
When examining emotions through an evolutionary perspective, we can better understand how, due to their adaptability, emotions have evolved to help ensure two key things: our reproduction and our survival.
Reproduction
Emotions are drivers for creating connections and attachments, and they play a key role in motivating reproduction and protecting young children. These emotional processes are intertwined with the brain's intricate neural circuitry, offering a captivating window into the world of neuroscience.
For instance, during the formation of new attachments, our brain experiences a surge of neurochemicals, notably oxytocin and dopamine. Oxytocin, often referred to as the "love hormone," floods our system, fostering feelings of warmth, trust, and emotional closeness. Similarly, dopamine, the "reward neurotransmitter," heightens our sense of pleasure and anticipation, reinforcing the motivation to pursue and maintain these attachments.
Consider the experience of a nursing parent. The act of nursing triggers a cascade of oxytocin release, creating a powerful emotional bond. This flood of oxytocin not only enhances the emotional connection between the parent and child but also drives feelings of affection, nurturing, and a profound sense of bonding. This emotional bond, bolstered by oxytocin, compels the parent to respond with care and attention, even amidst the challenges of sleep deprivation and post-childbirth healing.
This intricate interaction of emotions and neurobiology shows the complexity and significance of emotional experiences in shaping our behaviors and relationships. The release of oxytocin and dopamine during these emotionally charged moments provides a foundation for the emotional bonds and attachments that drive us to protect and nurture our offspring.
Survival
Emotions also play a vital role in ensuring our survival by enabling swift and adaptive responses to a wide range of stimuli and environmental shifts.
Emotions serve as our innate alarm system, activating rapid responses to potential threats or changes in our surroundings. This heightened sensitivity to danger is deeply rooted in the neurobiology of our fight-flight-freeze response, a primal mechanism that has evolved over eons to protect us from harm.
Activated fight-flight-freeze emotions are automatic and reactive emotions, meaning they don’t have to go through the prefrontal cortex analysis which slows down a response. Having access to fast, reactive emotions mobilizes our bodies for quick action!!
The fight-flight-freeze response engages various brain regions including the amygdala and the hypothalamus. When we face danger, these regions orchestrate a symphony of neural signals that trigger the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These neurochemical messengers mobilize our bodies for action, preparing us to confront the threat head-on, flee from it, or even remain still to evade detection.
Consider the scenario of crossing a busy road. In a split second, your brain evaluates the potential danger, and emotions like fear and caution surge to the forefront. This emotional response activates your body's stress response system, releasing adrenaline to sharpen your senses and accelerate your heart rate. This heightened state of arousal readies you to respond rapidly, ensuring your swift and safe navigation across the road.
Emotions, intricately intertwined with neurobiological processes, are the architects of these life-preserving reactions. Their ability to trigger rapid and appropriate responses help keep us safe and we have them to thank for our survival as a species!
Communicating Underlying Needs
Emotions play a crucial role in communication by allowing us to express our underlying needs and desires to others. At the heart of communication lies the ability of emotions to serve as a bridge between our internal world and the external environment. When we experience emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, or fear, these feelings often mirror specific needs or desires that are either fulfilled or unmet.
Consider the emotion of joy—a surge of positivity that may indicate the fulfillment of our needs for love, connection, or personal accomplishment. Conversely, when anger arises, it can signal a breach of our needs for fairness, respect, or autonomy. Emotions are the silent messengers that communicate these insights about our internal landscape.
Without emotion we would likely lack the motivation to address the unmet need! For instance, fear acts as a mobilizer, compelling us to seek safety, while anger propels us towards justice, and sadness may draw us towards connection to fulfill our underlying connection needs.
By articulating our emotions, we share vital information about our needs, thereby enabling others to comprehend and respond to them effectively. Moreover, emotions unfold as a language of their own, expressed through nonverbal avenues like body language and facial expressions. These unspoken cues offer invaluable insights into our emotional state, allowing others to discern our needs even in the absence of explicit verbal dialogue.
Cross-Neurotype Communication: Understanding and Expressing Needs
However, this is also where emotions can complicate the neurodivergent experience! The experience of emotions and their communication can vary, especially for Autistic people. This can contribute to the double empathy challenge—a phenomenon where different neurotypes have difficulty understanding one another in cross-neurotype interactions that are prone to misinterpretation. As Autistic people often communicate emotions uniquely and perceive emotional cues differently, cross-neurotype relationships may encounter hurdles in effectively understanding and addressing each other's needs.
In essence, emotions emerge as a conduit for conveying our inherent needs, desires, and encounters to others, mobilizing us for action to get our needs met and fostering empathetic understanding and meaningful connections.
Understanding and expressing emotions across neurological differences adds complexity to human interaction. This influences how we engage with others and shapes our interpersonal dynamics across the neurological divide.
The Primary Signaling System
Emotions are our primary signaling system. This means that our emotional system is among the fastest to respond to our environment and provide us with information. When we encounter any situation or stimulus, our emotions kick in almost instantly before we even have a chance to consciously process the information (also referred to as reactionary emotions).
For example, if we see a snake slithering towards us, our immediate emotional response might be fear or panic, triggering the fight-or-flight response. This instinctual reaction is critical for our survival, as it helps us react quickly in potentially dangerous situations.
Emotions also serve as signals for our well-being and needs. When we feel hungry or thirsty, our emotional system signals that we need to nourish our bodies. Similarly, when we feel lonely or sad, it signals a need for social connection and support. Our emotions guide us in fulfilling these needs and maintaining our overall well-being.
Core Needs
Our emotions tell us a great deal about our core needs. Core needs are fundamental psychological requirements that contribute to our overall well-being, sense of security, and fulfillment. These needs play a significant role in shaping our emotions, behaviors, and interactions with others. Common core needs include:
Safety and Security: Feeling safe and secure is a foundational emotional need. This includes physical safety as well as emotional security, knowing that one's feelings and vulnerabilities will be respected and protected.
Connection and Belonging: Humans are social beings, and the need for connection and belonging is paramount. This involves forming meaningful relationships, being part of a community, and experiencing a sense of acceptance.
Autonomy and Independence: Having a sense of control over one's own life, decisions, and actions is crucial for maintaining healthy self-esteem and a feeling of personal agency.
Our emotions help us to understand and advocate for our core needs; we just have to know how to identify them. Just identifying the need can help bring down the intensity of the emotion. The next time you are feeling overwhelmed by a big emotion, try to see if you can identify the underlying core need connected to it. This simple act will calm down your amygdala!
Safety And Security
Here are some common core needs we may have in relation to our safety and well-being:
Physical safety
Rest/sleep
Protection against threatening forms of life (bacteria, viruses, disease)
Fresh air, water, cleanliness
Stability
Physical health
Neurodivergent people often struggle to have these core needs met, we often struggle with chronic conditions, being chronically misunderstood, difficulty with sleep, economic and relational stability and more. It is no wonder our emotional alarm is often running on high alert!
Connection And Belonging
Some core needs related to our relationships include:
Affection and connection
Belonging
Trust
Love and care
Intimacy and closeness
Feeling understood and included
Neurodivergent people are more vulnerable to social victimization, peer victimization, and more. Many of us experience rejection sensitivity and have emotional raw spots around our relationship history! For this reason, relational conflict and tension can activate big emotional responses for us! We may respond with fight-flight energy as our sense of belonging feels threatened in these moments.
Meaning and Autonomy
Core needs related to our meaning and autonomy include:
Purpose
Hope
Sense of belonging to a larger cause
Choice, freedom, autonomy
Growth
Creativity and learning
When we experience executive functioning challenges and systemic barriers to education we can easily become overwhelmed and a sense of helplessness can set in. This is why building accommodations that support us is so important for the emotional well-being of neurodivergent people. Accommodations, supports, and experiences that help us grow in our sense of autonomy and purpose are critical for our emotional health and well-being.
Common Feelings When Needs Are Met
When emotional needs are met, we often experience a range of positive feelings that contribute to overall well-being and contentment. Some common feelings associated with fulfilled emotional needs include:
Happiness: Meeting emotional needs can lead to a sense of joy and happiness. Positive interactions, meaningful connections, and a sense of accomplishment can also trigger feelings of happiness.
Contentment: Fulfilled emotional needs often bring about a feeling of satisfaction and contentment with one's life and circumstances.
Security: When emotional needs like safety, trust, and belonging are met, we may feel secure and at ease in our environment and relationships.
Relaxation: A sense of emotional fulfillment can lead to relaxation and a reduction in stress and anxiety. When emotional needs are satisfied, there is less tension and worry.
Confidence: Meeting emotional needs can boost self-esteem and self-confidence. Feeling valued and supported can lead to a greater sense of self-assuredness.
Common Feelings When Needs Are Unmet
When emotional needs are not met, we can experience a range of negative emotions and discomfort as a result of these unfulfilled needs. Some common feelings associated with unmet emotional needs include:
Loneliness: When the needs for social connection and companionship are not met, we may feel lonely and isolated.
Sadness: Unmet emotional needs can lead to feelings of sadness and a sense of emptiness, especially when essential needs like support or understanding are lacking.
Anxiety: The absence of emotional security and stability can lead to feelings of anxiety, worry, and unease about the future.
Frustration: When emotional needs are not satisfied, we may experience frustration and irritation due to a lack of resolution or understanding.
Insecurity: Unmet needs for validation and acceptance can contribute to feelings of insecurity and self-doubt.
Anger: Frustration and unmet expectations can escalate into feelings of anger, especially when emotional needs related to fairness or respect are disregarded.
When Emotions Malfunction
Our emotions are here to help us with everything from communicating our needs to keeping us alive. They play a fundamental role in communication, both internally and externally. Ideally our primary signaling system is well-tuned and working for us! However, what happens when our emotional system becomes dysfunctional and our emotions no longer serve us?
While our emotions can be beneficial, they can also lead us astray. Negative life experiences have the potential to override our emotional system. For instance, experiencing trauma can turn our primary signaling system (AKA our emotions) awry and our emotions are no longer accurate representatives and signals. We might constantly feel threatened, making it challenging to accurately evaluate whether our emotions are giving us useful information.
When our emotional signaling system has become hijacked by past traumas it means that our emotional system is constantly responding both to the present and to the past; it can be difficult to decipher if the information about our emotions is accurate and helpful. Our brain and nervous system may amplify the perception of danger, threats to belonging, and other core needs. As a result, our emotional responses might not always align with current reality, complicating our emotional experiences.
Neurodivergent people experience more adverse life events that can cause our emotional system to go haywire. These adverse life events include but aren't limited to:
Trauma of various kinds
Bullying
Sensory trauma
Social alienation and isolation
Victimization
Additionally, as neurodivergent people, we experience other vulnerabilities such as issues with rejection sensitivity, executive functioning, or sensory disabilities. When considering these in addition to the adverse life events we experience, it leaves us prone to experience more mood and emotional-related disorders. This can make it harder for us to trust our emotions as an accurate way to communicate with ourselves and others.
When our primary signaling system has become disrupted by trauma and life events the goal becomes to heal and work through past traumas and raw spots and rewire our brain so that we can calm our emotional system and it can work for us rather than against us.
Summary: The Function of Emotions
Emotions are essential tools for communication and survival, encompassing a range of functions from expressing needs to ensuring our well-being. However, when our emotional system malfunctions, things can go haywire for us. Despite their potential benefits, emotions can lead us astray, particularly when negative life experiences disrupt our emotional equilibrium. This is especially true for neurodivergent people.
Additionally, emotions influence our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors, shaping how we perceive and interact with the world. It can be difficult to trust our emotions since they can steer us the wrong way. For many neurodivergent people, healing past wounds so that we become better attuned to our inner communication system is often a necessary first step in our mental health journey. When we do this we can learn how to effectively understand and utilize our emotions.
Emotion Resources
For those seeking to delve deeper, here are some further resources for more of a deep dive into emotions here are some resources:
Emotions 101 Workbook and Companion Skillsbook: This Neurodivergent Insights digital workbook set provides an overview of emotions as well as 55+ skills for working with emotions.
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain: Written by a neuroscientist, this is a comprehensive yet accessible take on emotions. Lisa Feldman Barrett debunks some of the major theories of emotions and explains exactly what they are. It is science-heavy, but if you’re looking for a comprehensive, cutting-edge take on emotions, this is a great resource!
The Science Of Emotions (Huberman Lab): Another great deep science deep dive. For people who do well with video (or audio), this video podcast provides a scientific breakdown of the theory of emotion by a neuroscientist.
Divergent Conversations-Autistic Emotions: Less scientific, but if you’re looking to hear from a lived experience context; Patrick and I, both mental health professionals, talk about emotions and our experience of emotions as AuDHDers (Autistic-ADHD).
