Emotions: A Code Book
I would advise against this kind of &quot;intellectualizing&quot; of emotions, particularly if you are a &quot;brainy&quot; person. Decoding the emotion as an intellectual puzzle can feel comforting, because juggling with concepts and theoretical models is what a brainy person does, but it will necessarily obscure a lot. But an emotion is not a concept, it is physical. You should listen to it, but not in the head: just allow yourself to feel it, to permeate your body, to evoque images... And often an intuitive call to action will emerge. It might just be internal action, or it might be a growing desire to quit your job to go work in another field or do social service or whatever. The thing is that the conviction that comes out of repeteadly  listening to the emotions in the body is much stronger than the one that comes from rational thinking alone. And it can often be something you would never have thought about just by pondering.<p>Take the example of grief. What is the rational interpretation? &quot;My mother was there, and now she is not&quot;. Or worse, &quot;it shows how much time I lost when she was alive, and now it is gone&quot;. Absolutely useless insight, probably just makes the pain worsen. Maybe it makes you feel guilty and intellectually decide to &quot;engage deeper in my relationships with the living&quot;, but in the few cases of this decision I witnessed it did not really work, because this was just abstract and filled with guilt and shame.<p>But allowing yourself to feel the grief and be sad can open a sense of devotion and respect to the dead. This intense pain can feel like the universe paying respect to the person that is now gone. And out of it can come a new way of interacting with the world and others, and maybe a newfound perspective on life. But the important part is that this kind of happens by itself, as currents and sensations in the body, over time, bottom-up, rather than as the result of solving an intellectual puzzle and coming eith a top down solution a out how you ought to live your life and feel from now on.<p>Obviously, this is just my own conclusion out of my own journey, and YMMV and all that sort of things.