Introduction

We all experience emotion. Enjoyment, anger, happiness, sadness, frustration, grief. These are part of life.

Ask most people what emotion is for though, and you will get a blank look. Few have thought about it. Even fewer can answer.

But emotion has a purpose. Several, in fact.

1.Navigating everyday life

Emotion is how we cope with the world. Without it, everything becomes harder - and seems pointless. Relationships, memory, learning, safety, fulfilment - they all rely on emotion.

2. Building relationships

Social chit chat is not about the exchange of information, but about emotion. This is what is meant by the term ‘social emotional reciprocity’. When people engage in social chit chat, they pass packets of information between each other. This is what builds relationship. The words are just the scaffold for the emotions. This is why some people find online meetings so frustrating: the emotion aspect is missing and you have to make do with facial expression and tone of voice.

Many autistic people cannot exchange packets of information. This makes social chit chat boring and meaningless for them. Instead, these autistic people prefer to build relationship by doing things together.

3. Learning

Have you noticed that when your teacher is enthusiastic, it is much easier to learn their subject, even if you do not actually like it very much? Enthusiasm is infectious. It builds engagement, and that engagement means you will put in the effort to learn.

But when a teacher lacks enthusiasm, their subject becomes harder to learn - even if it is one you usually enjoy.

A teacher who shows passion for their subject will naturally explain why it is worth learning. They have the power to get you interested too. If you are interested, you will have more desire to learn it.

If a subject feels boring or irrelevant, it becomes more difficult to learn. In some cases, that lack of interest can create a complete block for some students.

On the other hand, if you actively look for what is interesting in a topic, learning becomes easier.

Everyone learns by doing, by practising and applying knowledge. Repetition helps you remember, but so do those ‘aha’ moments when something finally clicks.

4. Building memories

Just stop and think about the events you remember. Those events will almost certainly have a significant amount of emotion attached. You probably won’t remember your last trip to the supermarket for very long. There was nothing salient about it. But you may well remember your first day at secondary school, the death of a loved one, your first job interview, being sacked (hopefully not, but it happens), your wedding day, salient moments in a holiday, when you went ‘wow’.

It is the emotion attached to these events that make them stand out and signals to the brain that these events are worth remembering.

5. Avoiding danger

Fear can be a very useful emotion. It helps you react fast: pull a child back from traffic, step away from a fire. These responses come before thought, they are protective. But they can also misfire. That is not helpful, but it is real.

For autistic people, talking to people, especially strangers can trigger a fear response because of what might happen, including misunderstandings, offending someone by accident. Other examples when fear is not helpful are fear of leaving the house because someone will look at you, exposure anxiety.

6. Enjoyment and fulfilment

Without emotion, nothing is enjoyable. You need emotion to find the things you enjoy so you do more of them. Life is hard and can be very challenging at times. You need to balance your life with things you enjoy.

Learning new skills, doing a job well, helping someone understand something they could not grasp, growing and eating your own food, achieving a goal you have worked towards for a while, helping someone, watching a child grow and develop are all things that create fulfilment. The list is endless and what creates fulfilment is very individual. You need to know what brings you this feeling.

If you don’t know what makes you feel a sense of satisfaction, or a sense of fulfilment, something will be missing in your life. Something that you might try to satisfy by seeking pleasure, taking risks, or via drink and drugs.

You need this sense of fulfilment from whatever works for you to find life worth living.

7. Job satisfaction

You spend much of your life working. If that work gives you no emotional return, it is a problem. Job satisfaction is important for many people. However, this should not come at the expense of other things that matter to you, such as family. For some, life outside work matters more.

But not everyone can meet this goal. Some people live only for their lives outside work and they work solely to support their families.

Conclusion

Imagine a life without emotion. Nothing to look forward to. No enjoyment. No grief. No motivation. No fear. No pride. It is not a life most people would want.

So if your emotions are too strong, difficult to control, take you from high to low and back again multiple times in a day to the point where you wish you did not have emotions, just stop and think about what emotions are for. Remember this: they are there for a reason.