Why feel?
A first question might be why
do we have feelings in the first place? After all, while we can
have very pleasurable feelings, we can also suffer because of
them such as when we are sad or frightened. In fact, feelings
can be very painful indeed as anyone who has lost a loved person
or pet would testify or when we feel the pangs of jealousy or
the terrible despair of true depression. Feelings of anxiety can
also be so intense for some people that they are almost immobilised
in their day to day living. So wouldn’t life be simpler if we
didn’t have feelings at all and simply live by logic alone? We
would all be very sensible indeed but perhaps our lives would
probably be without its colour, intensity and most importantly,
we would lose one of the key factors that binds us together as
human beings. In other words, feelings help us to:
- survive,
- connect,
- facilitate our social interactions
How feelings do all this, will become clear
as we go along. Firstly, we need to think of ourselves as evolutionary
beings, evolving just like every other living thing on the planet.
As humans, our evolutionary time table is relatively short but
nevertheless babies– like other mammals – are born with reflexes
and other skills and abilities which help support our early interactions
with our parents. As babies we have the ‘rooting’ reflex, we can
suck, grasp, and can see enough to enable us to see the faces
of our carers. We can also hear well and recognise the familiarity
of our mother’s (and father’s) voice and so on. As infants we
are totally helpless and rely totally on the loving care and attention
of our parents/carers. We express our needs by literally ‘crying
out’ and this crying brings our carers close to comfort, feed,
soothe etc. Without this ability to call for our carers, its emotional
impact on them and their response, we would not survive beyond
infancy.
Did you know: a
puppy taken from his mother can cry 700 times in 15 minutes. Sunderland
(2006), P.36.
Being left alone in a distressed state for both infant animals,
babies and young children is highly distressing and calls into
question the idea that leaving a baby, child or ndeed a young
animal to ‘cry’ is good for them!
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