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Asked by rosieredxxx to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 24 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by flissboo.
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Sam Geen answered on 24 Jun 2013:
Humans are social animals, and feelings allow us to navigate the minefield of social interactions. Being happy means good things are happening to us, and we should do more of what made us happy. Being sad means that bad things are happening to us, and we should avoid them. Guilt and shame are so that we don’t do something again, love is (if we’re being purely biological and cynical, here) eventually to make more humans. Some emotions evolved a while ago and aren’t that useful, plus sometimes people have mental disorders that mean they have bad feelings for no reason. Medicine can help treat this, partly.
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Claire Lee answered on 24 Jun 2013:
Feelings are a result of a complex series of chemical reactions in your body. Happiness, for example, is due to the release of something called serotonin, and love/trust is due to oxytocin. When a baby is born the mother’s body is flooded with oxytocin, which helps milk be produced, and also causes the mother to “fall in love” with the baby, thus increasing the odds of its survival.
Of course, this is simplified,and things are much more complicated, and we don’t quite understand them. But feelings are, in general, good things.
Depression, for example, is one of the worst diseases.. At first it starts off with just feeling sad for no reason, but even then that’s ok because as long as you feel you will usually try to do something. When it gets really bad is when you stop having feelings at all, and you go numb – that is the worst part of depression, because when people can’t feel they can’t care, about anything. The medicines available work at treating this and getting the body to feel feelings again.
Summary: feelings are important! You need to feel stuff, it’s one of the things that makes us want to keep on living
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 25 Jun 2013:
The only thing I could add to these great answers is that feelings are our very fundamental way of experiencing life. And as pointed out by Sam and Claire, it makes living life possible. You can choose to think about things, but you can’t help feelings – that’s what makes them feelings I guess!
Comments
rosieredxxx commented on :
thank you very much for your answer! i always wondered what they were for! now i know 😉 x