Decoding Feelings and Reactions



With quiet confidence in the small peaceful community and as a gifted psychologist, Dr. Smith Foster stood on the threshold of an extraordinary breakthrough. She had dedicated her whole life to exploring the complex labyrinth of human feelings and emotions, which made her resolute on finding an answer to that mystery that fascinated her for many years.

For Dr. Foster, this journey started at her early childhood. Being a daughter of emotions researchers, she got familiar with the intricacies of man’s soul since her childhood. She grew up in her parents’ warm and cozy house where the rooms were stuffed with psychological books. For instance, dinner time was always used to talk about the recent developments in theories and research within psychology. This is what created a thirst in her for feelings.

Scouring ancient books, volumes and journal articles in a cramped and dark room, belonged to Dr. Foster. Her plan was in a sense a search to explore the depth of man’s emotional life, to find answers why there are some emotions that come out very strongly while some are hard to fathom.

Days later, months had passed by as Dr. Foster’s research took her on a biological-psychological maze. In fact, she realized that emotions were tangible entities with physical bases in the brain. The limbic system, which is also called ‘the emotional brain’, was instrumental in generation and processing of emotions.

She pored over brain scans with such passion as if it were an obsession; she analyzed neurotransmitters and scrutinized the neural connections linking our emotions to events we experienced. She found it in these complex neural networks, which allowed her to decode emotions.

Findings of Dr. Foster’s research show that emotion is neither black nor white, but lies in the broad range. It included everything from deep happiness in laughter of the child, to deathly despair in grief. She understood that every emotion served a specific purpose within the fabric of life itself.

The author surveyed and interviewed people from numerous areas of society for this purpose. And she heard stories of love, of anger, of fear, and all of them. This produced a mosaic of human emotions; a kaleidoscope of feelings portraying the human experience.

This search for emotion also led Dr. Foster to explore emotional expression. Micro expressions of the face, body language and vocal sounds were amongst the fields she studied. The research of her exposed the underlying manner by which emotions unfolded inter alia into how we got along with each other.

She discovered the universality of some common emotional expressions through experimental observation. For example, a smile crossed cultures, symbolizing joy wherever it showed up. Through his work with Dr. Foster it became evident that emotions constituted an individual’s dialect, their silent communication bridging people at their essence.

Any reflection on emotions must recognize the deep impact of culture. Dr. Foster focused on cross-culture research concerning varying cultural influences over the patterns of emotion, experience and expression. Her research made her realize how much cultural norms and values determined emotions in individuals.

Culture created a lasting impact in the emotional terrain from collectivist East Asian societies where emotional restraint was emphasized to individualistic Western cultures where self-expression was celebrated. The findings of Dr. Foster underscored that culture plays a critical role while trying to understand the psychological aspects of emotions.

However, his achievements were not limited to studies only. Her discovery led her to understand that it was therapeutics. Along with therapist and counselors' cooperation, she developed emotional focused therapy aiming to guide people on understanding the complexity of the feeling environment.

She recorded significant changes in patients’ conditions through her therapeutic intervention. Thus, it was a relief for individuals who carried the burden of unsolicited emotions towards such people. Emotional science was not just for academic journals anymore; it had real-life applications, which could change people’s lives.

This made Dr. Foster an expert and a renowned figure in the study of emotion psychology. Many students wanted to attend her lectures and her books appeared on ‘bestseller’ lists. However, she realized that she had reached her target of unraveling the psychology of emotions but there remained a lot ahead of her.

Tomorrow would open up an ever-expanding field of knowledge concerning man’s feelings. According to Dr. Foster, with progress in technology we will continue to explore more depths of understanding in the emotional sphere. While she knew that there still lay myriads of enigmas yet hidden in the emotion field; nonetheless, she kept on her journey of exploring it.

Dr. Smith Foster’s odyssey through the land of emotion had been characterized by inexhaustible interest, insatiable urge to search for new discoveries, challenges and breakthroughs. Not just did it widen our understanding of emotions, but, by all accounts, it changed numerous people’s existence. By this, she was able to decipher the language of feeling and open up the secrets of the powerful science which governed our inner lives.

The Psychology of Emotions: Decoding Feelings and Reactions was not a book, it was evidence of the unleashed human curiosity and unlimited capabilities of science. Turning pages into its readers went along a self-discovery journey while holding the awareness that life was nothing enigmatic but wonderful puzzles of human existence.