Dr. Julie explains that feelings aren't facts but your brain's best guess based on incomplete data. Your emotions mix internal signals like heart rate with what you sense around you, but they're provisional clues, not truth. They can mislead you or overreact to what's actually happening.
How can we tell when our feelings are actual facts? While they can reflect fact, they are never fact. An emotion is one aspect of your experience. So it's the way that your brain communicates to you its best guess about what is going on in the situation. And it takes its clues from what's going on inside your body, be it your heart rate or your blood pressure or various things, and from what's going on outside. It seeks through all of your senses. There are any clues, right? We don't have access to all the information at any one time. An emotion Emotion is that sort of communication, if you like, between you and your brain. So because it's influenced by so many things, it can't necessarily be factual all of the time. It's a best guess. And so when we accept emotion as the idea of a best guess, that means that sometimes, and maybe quite often, it will be a fair reflection of what's going on, but not always. It won't always be warranted, and it won't always be proportionate to what's going on either. So the emotion isn't fact, it's a clue. It's a best guess about what the facts might be.
The Library of Minds: Brain Coach: How to Stay Sharp When AI Does the Thinking | Jim Kwik
