What Do Emotions Do For Us?

As someone that spent the first 25 years of life simultaneously afraid of and powerless to my emotions, one thing DBT was helpful with was teaching me the real purpose of emotions, what they do for us, and why they are needed. If you have been in a lot of invalidating environments throughout your life, you may also struggle with seeing the true value of your emotions.

Like I covered when discussing the difference between guilt and shame, DBT teaches us a number of different skills that help identify, validate, regulate and cope with different emotions. This includes reflecting on the purpose of them.

I used to believe that if I gave my big emotions the freedom to be felt, that I’d drown in sadness, grief and shame. DBT taught me that emotions aren’t enemies. They are messengers with important jobs to do, even if they’re sometimes misguided.

So that’s what I’m delving into in today’s deep-dive.

What Emotions Do For Us

In short, the purpose of emotions is to communicate, motivate and organise, both internally and externally. They’re not random or irrational, even when they feel that way. They’re deeply wired into our nervous systems and have evolved over millions of years to help us survive, connect, and make sense of the world around us.

More specifically, the role that emotions play in our daily lives includes to:

• Communicate to ourselves
• Communicate to others
• Motivate and organise us for action

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How Emotions Communicate To Ourselves

Think of emotions as your internal smoke alarm system. You don’t always know whether there’s a real fire or burnt toast, but the alarm still goes off, prompting you to pay attention. 

You might feel anxious walking into a room, or suddenly get tearful after a conversation. These reactions are worth noticing. They’re not necessarily proof of danger or wrongdoing, but they are signs that something might need your attention. For example:

• Feeling anxious before a meeting might highlight a fear of judgment or unmet need for preparation.
• Feeling a surge of anger when someone interrupts you might point to a boundary being crossed.
• Feeling low energy or sadness after a social event might be your body telling you that you need rest or more alignment with your values in your relationships.

Emotions ≠ Facts

One of the traps we can fall into (especially when we’re emotionally dysregulated!) is assuming that how we feel is automatically how things are. For example:

• “I feel abandoned, so they must not care about me.”
• “I feel guilty, so I must have done something wrong.”
• “I feel ashamed, so I must be bad.”

This is called Emotion Mind in DBT, and it is when our feelings run the show without support from reason or logical thinking. If we treat emotions as facts, we may jump to conclusions, lash out, withdraw, or spiral without actually checking whether the facts of the situation supports those feelings.

That’s why DBT teaches us to honour the emotion, but also check the facts. When we slow down and observe, part of  the core ‘WHAT’ skills in the DBT Mindfulness module, we give ourselves a chance to respond rather than react. We allow the emotion to communicate with us, not control us.

Gut Feelings and Intuition

Sometimes our emotional signals show up as what we call a gut feeling or a sense that something’s off, something’s important, even if we can’t immediately name why. DBT encourages us to respect and validate those signals and check the facts before acting on them. 

Remember, emotions are data, not directives. They tell us something’s going on but they don’t automatically tell us the whole truth. Your intuition might be accurate, or it might be shaped by past experiences, trauma, or assumptions. 

The key is using the emotion as a prompt for mindful observation and further reflection, not a green light for immediate action. 

🧠 Learn more about mindfulness in my Little Guide To DBT Mindfulness Skills

How Emotions Communicate To Others

Whether we realise it or not, our emotions are constantly communicating to the people around us. 

In fact, many of our facial expressions happen faster than we can consciously control. They are biologically “hard-wired” into our nervous systems, part of our human design for connection, survival, and understanding.

Other people pick up on our feelings through subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) cues: our facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, eye contact, posture, and even our silence. These signals can speak volumes, sometimes even more clearly than the words we choose.

Emotions Communicate Even When We Don’t Want Them To

Sometimes, we might not want others to know what we’re feeling. Maybe because we don’t feel safe, or we’re trying to stay in control. But when the emotion is strong, it can be incredibly hard to suppress. They’re not just mental states, but full-body experiences. They want to move through us, be felt, and heard by others.

And that’s not a flaw, it’s part of how we’ve evolved to make our feelings known. 

We’re social creatures. Emotional expression is part of how we get support, set boundaries, ask for help. Working against this part of ourselves isolates us from this biological need for connection, and sometimes even jeopardises our survival.

How Interpersonal Effectiveness Helps Us Communicate Emotions

Here’s the tricky part: even if we don’t intend to, our emotional expressions affect and can even influence the behaviours of those around us. If we’re outwardly angry, others may feel threatened or defensive. If we’re joyful, others may feel uplifted. If we’re withdrawn or flat, others may interpret that as rejection or disinterest, even if that’s not what we mean.

This is where DBT’s concept of interpersonal effectiveness comes in, helping us become more aware of how we’re communicating, what our goals are, and how to balance our needs with other perspectives.

🧠 Learn more about interpersonal effectiveness in my Little Guide To DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills

How Emotions Motivate & Organise Us For Action

In a very primal sense, emotions help us act quickly in situations where there’s no time to pause and weigh up every option. If you’re in danger, your fear response doesn’t wait for a pros-and-cons list, it kicks in instantly, activating your body to protect you. In this way, emotions can save time and even save lives.

Each emotion tends to come with a built-in “action urge”, AKA something we are biologically wired to want to do when we feel it. For example, fear urges us to escape or avoid danger. Anger might push us to protect ourselves or set boundaries. Sadness can nudge us to slow down and reflect or self-soothe. These responses are not random; they’ve developed over time as part of our human survival toolkit.

Of course, this isn’t a free pass to act on every emotional urge. Sometimes the action an emotion urges isn’t helpful, or doesn’t fit the facts. That’s why DBT teaches us to check the facts, use opposite action, and otherwise utilise emotional regulation skills. Not to erase our emotional world, but to work with it. 

Emotion gives us fuel. Skills give us the steering wheel.

What Happens When We Ignore Emotions?

Without emotions, we would no longer be human; no longer be ourselves. And ignoring our emotions completely is not an effective solution to emotional overwhelm.

Living purely from logic, assessing every situation as if you were a robot or a spreadsheet, might seem like an appealing escape from pain or grief. But over time, pushing emotions down has real consequences. They don’t just “go away”.

The body doesn’t forget what the mind tries to suppress. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk famously wrote, “The Body Keeps the Score.” Chronic emotional suppression is linked to stress-related illnesses, digestive issues, autoimmune conditions, fatigue, muscle tension, and more. My own chronic migraines can attest to this.

Beyond the physical toll, ignoring emotions can leave us feeling numb, detached, or lost, disconnected from our desires, relationships, and even our sense of self. We can’t cut off our emotions without cutting off access to our own humanity. (*Insert TVD joke here* – if you know, you know.)

Balancing Emotions With Rational Thinking

The more we understand the purpose behind our emotions, the easier it becomes to allow them. Yes, even the ones that feel messy, too big, or “irrational”. 

Emotions are always valid. That said, just because an emotion is valid doesn’t mean every action urge that comes with it is effective. 

Emotions arise for a reason, shaped by our histories, our biology, our values, and sometimes just our nervous systems doing their best to protect us. And at the same time, it’s possible to feel anger without lashing out. To feel fear and still choose to move forward. To feel shame and still hold your head high. 

In DBT, that’s where Wise Mind comes in. Wise Mind is about balancing both the Emotion Mind and the Rational Mind; hearing what your emotion is trying to tell you, while also consulting your values, goals, the facts, and the bigger picture. 

Your Wise Mind knows when to pause, when to act, and when to wait. 

So if you’re feeling flooded or frozen today, maybe the invitation isn’t to shut your feelings down or to let them sweep you away on your next spiral of self-destruction. You can start by trying to just listen. Then decide, from that Wise Mind place, what comes next. 

You are allowed to feel everything and still choose peace for yourself.

Lizzie 🤍