This might seem kinda preachy but it's something that I've been working on for a long time. I'll present my understanding of emotions and how I/you/we might relate to them a bit differently than we've been taught. I remember as a kid being completely mystified when I was given the reason, "Because that's the way I feel."

    Well, we all got ‘em. How many we have.... well, that’s a matter of conjecture. Sorta like, “How many colors are there?” According to some, there are three primary colors. Then there are the skadillions you’ll find at the paint store. I tend to go with, “There are a few basic emotions and as you become more emotionally educated, the differentiations are endless.” If the differentiations serve you, fine. If they don’t, well.... that’s fine, too. We all have our own unique constellations of emotions. In the face of all these potential emotions, my question is, “Are there guiding principles to dancing with emotions so that we all might be able to lead freer lives?” I believe so.
    The following is a functional analysis of human emotions. Which means that I’m not so much interested in what exactly emotions are (singularly or collectively), or where they come from, or which are the important ones. What I am interested in is, “Why do we have emotions? Are there evolutionary functions for emotions? How do emotions serve or not serve us now? Can we learn to dance with them in different ways that might lead us to having the lives we say we want?”
    If you look at emotions as a category of human experience that has promoted evolutionary success, what exactly does this category do that makes human survivability more likely? Why would having emotions be an evolutionary plus? Or, asked in different way, “Why would NOT having emotions be an evolutionary dead end?” What springs to mind is in being faced with something big and fangy that was about to make a snack out of you, the last thing that you would want to do is to stand around  thinking about what to do. Much easier to have this huge emotion come up and, more instantly than not, have you scurrying up a tree. Definitely an evolutionary plus, in certain situations, to have an emotion come up, grab hold of the steering wheel, and have you do what it wants you to.
    It’s important to differentiate between what I would call “responses” and “emotions”. If something jumps out from behind a bush and goes, “Boo!”, you are, more likely than not, going to have a startle response. Some people love ‘em, some people hate ‘em. What happens after the response, that’s emotion. Most of the responses seem to be more hard-wired than not. While there is research out there that suggests that, in a very small but statistically significant way, humans have a shared response to heights and snakes (fear and back-away) and babies (coo-chee-coo-chee-cooing and come closer), there is no-one that I know of who is going to claim that the pairing of a particular stimulus with a particular emotional response is hard-wired into our genetic structure. The pairing of a particular emotion(s) with a particular set of stimuli is learned.
    Emotions seem to function as “emphasizers of importance” and “indicators that something needs to happen, the sooner the better”. If you’re having an emotion, (and let’s assume that it’s a big, powerful emotion) isn’t it understood that the thing you’re having this emotion about is important and something should be done about it right now? Think intense lust, intense hatred, intense envy, intense love, intense joy, or intense fear. Granted, because you’ve been civilized, you may not act on it right now. But wouldn’t you like to? Don’t you fantasize about what you’d like to do, right now, while the emotion is intense? Later on, when the emotion decreases in intensity, you’ll probably come up with many, logical reasons why it was a better thing that you didn’t do what you so wanted to do, in that moment.
    Seems to make sense. If we accept the premiss that, from an evolutionary point-of-view, emotions are used to make things important and to make things happen. Of course, things can be of importance without you having an emotional reaction about them. You can also take immediate action and not be emotional. So what characterizes these things that we have emotions about?
    Your emotional reaction to your set of stimuli is learned, it’s from your history. Somewhere back then, you associated a particular set of emotions with a particular set of stimuli. If the emotion that is triggered is loud/intense enough, it will hijack your ass and, suddenly, you’re not driving your bus anymore. You’ll find yourself doing things that, in a saner (read “less emotional”) moment, you wouldn’t. We have all come to in saner moments and wondered just why the hell that happened.... again. The reason you’re being hijacked is because, to a certain part of you, facing certain things means incredible danger/pain/worse things. This part of you is going to distance you from that threat, in one of the ways that it has learned works. Distancing can be internal, external, or a combination of both.
    So, what do we/you/I do? Well, we can just keep on plugging along, not changing much of anything. After all, being hijacked every once and a while is not that big a price to pay. Is it?
    You could arrange your life so that the things that trigger you aren’t around. Remove temptation, as it were. Live in a cave, don’t date, don’t get involved, don’t risk, keep your nose to the grindstone, don’t commit, etc., etc., etc.
    Or you could learn to engage with your emotions for what they are, information based on historical experiences and interpretations. This information might be useful to you in this moment. Or it might not. “Yes, that dog did bite you way back when. Yes, it hurt a lot. I understand that you think this dog might do the same thing and you think that the best thing to do is move away, very, very slowly, keeping our eyes on it all times, ready to run and scream if it makes the slightest move.” Granted, a bit cartoony and slowed way down. But you get the point. This dog-of-the-present is not the dog-of-your-past. Your emotional response is based on what happened to you way back when. It may be saving you from another biting. It may also be preventing you from engaging with this new, never-met-before dog.
    Learning from your history is a fine thing. How else would we be able to make predictions as to what is probably going to happen next? The question is, “Are your predictions having you live the life that you want to have?” And it’s not just the negative emotions.
    What happens when you apply this point-of-view to the “positive” emotions: love, caring, hope, happiness, joy, etc.? If you step back from your emotions about these emotions, it gets pretty strange. The positive emotions seem to work just like the negative ones do, defining importance and pushing for action. That’s what emotions are designed to do. Except in this case, it’s a push towards instead of a push away. Advertisers know this. Create a situation in which you are feeling positive emotions, introduce what they want to sell you, and there is a better chance of you buying it. Remind you at all of relationshiping? The idea is to set it up so that your date has an emotional experience that they value. They will then associate you with this desired state and will want you closer rather than further away.
    Emotions, positive or negative, are very handy for stamping meaning on something very deeply, in a way that brokes limited interference or reframing. The meaning doesn’t have to make sense: to you, to me, to anyone. “Why am I jumping so high and wide from the garden hose?”
    In a survival-orientated life, this makes a lot of sense. Act quickly or be dead. Jumping from anything that remotely looks like a snake might mean nothing, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Do you really want to stop and think about, “Is it really a snake?” Or do you just want to jump and live?
    Looking at emotions from this point-of-view, they are information and a call to action. The question is, “Is the information and call-to-action that your emotions are sending your way giving you the kind of life you want?”