Emotional being...

I am not entirely sure how to define emotions for myself, yet they seem to have a strange, and powerful, force over me many days... leading me to negotiate a tricky path, or pushing me along towards satisfaction.

Emotion, in its most general definition, is a neural impulse that moves an organism to action, prompting automatic reactive behavior that has been adapted through evolution as a survival mechanism to meet a survival need.

Clearly, by this 'general' definition, I am not getting much more than what I have already gathered through experience about what exactly emotion can actually be definied as... Do I already know what I need to know about emotions? What about my emotions; is an emotion defined only by the one experiencing it?

Emotion is differentiated from feeling, in that, as noted, emotion is a psycho-physiological state that moves an organism to action. Feeling, on the other hand, is emotion that is filtered through the cognitive brain centers, specifically the frontal lobe, producing a physiological change in addition to the psycho-physiological change.

Ok, so now I am leanring some details! Emotions are separate than a feeling. Is a feeling the aftermath of an emotion? Which comes first? Chicken? Egg? What happen's if you have many at once? Is there any way to control one and therefore controlling the other?

Emotion is complex, and the term has no single universally accepted definition. Emotions are mental states that arise spontaneously, rather than through conscious effort. It is unclear whether animals or all human beings experience emotion. Emotions are physical expressions, often involuntary, related to feelings, perceptions or beliefs about elements, objects or relations between them, in reality or in the imagination. The study of emotions is part of psychology, neuroscience, and, more recently, artificial intelligence.

Also, I have been very much aware that I have little control over my emotions sometimes. I have been attempting to actually note when I am reacting and loaded with emotions, to someone or a situation. More often than not, it is something that has taken control of me without permission. I make my meager attempts to control them, but much to my dismay, though i think i have got them nailed down, they evad my tactics time and time again! I am now starting to amke sense of the emotion vs. the feeling, though i don't an easy time at hiding either.

Emotion is sometimes regarded as the antithesis of reason.

This is funny to me because I consider my seeking the definition of emotion to be very reasonable... likely why when I am operating in an emotional capacity, I get a heaviness in my stomach, giving me cramps of an indignant nature. My logic is constantly asking me for the opportunity to follow-through on a lead, while my emotions make decisions without consultation from my brain.

Emotions can be undesired to the individual feeling them; he or she may wish to control but often cannot. Thus one of the most distinctive, and perhaps challenging, facts about human beings is this potential for entanglement, or even opposition, between will, emotion, and reason.

Does this play a role in the Nature vs. Nurture battle? Are people born with a certain set of emotions and feelings or do they grow as we do? We know babies certainly have personalities from the moment of cenception, later in life offering differing opinions from those of their parents or 'nurturers'. Are emotions strictly learned? and how do we know what feeling goes with it? How do we know what 'feels' good to our spiritual self? Are there statistics on what and when people feel or emote?

According to Book Two of Aristotle's Rhetoric
The emotions are:
Anger vs. Calmness
Love vs. Enmity
Fear vs. Confidence
Shame vs. Shamelessness
Kindness vs. Unkindness
Pity
Indignation
Envy

Funny how envy is also a sin... What are the 'grey' areas with emotions? Is it like a palette of colour where the more you mix in the more vibrant it becomes and create new emotions? Is this what we are limited to? I see no happiness, is it therefore a feeling, not an emotion?

I suppose we can only really define emotions as we experience them for ourselves... creating our own terminology and jargon for each, adding them to our own colour pallette, and just leanring how to adapt around these 'spontaneous' creatures of free will.