By the time we speak or act, there is often much more happening than anyone else can see. Long before someone becomes angry, defensive, withdrawn, or begins repeatedly explaining themselves, there has already been an entire process unfolding — a process of noticing, remembering, expecting, interpreting, feeling, making sense. The response is simply the visible part.

To understand why, it helps to look at how that first understanding forms in the first place. Our brains are constantly making sense of what is happening around us, drawing on our previous experiences, expectations, memories, hopes and needs. Long before we consciously realise it, we are already beginning to experience what a situation means to us.

A First Understanding, Not A Complete One

That first emotional understanding is incredibly important. It allows us to respond quickly when something feels significant. But it is important to remember what it is: a first understanding, not a complete one.

Our brains have to work remarkably quickly. They do not have the luxury of carefully weighing every possibility before we begin to feel something. Instead, they rapidly gather what seems most important and create an initial understanding of the situation. That understanding is often enough to help us respond, but it cannot possibly include everything. There may be context we do not yet understand, intentions we have not yet heard, or memories we do not yet realise have become involved.

None of this means our first emotional experience is wrong, nor does it mean we should ignore it. Our emotions are often telling us something genuinely important — simply from the perspective of a remarkably rapid first understanding.

This is why certainty can sometimes become difficult. When we feel hurt, frightened, ashamed or angry, our emotional experience can feel completely convincing. After all, it is our experience. It feels true because it is genuinely what we are experiencing. Yet experiencing something is not quite the same as fully understanding it. There is often more happening than we first realise — not because our minds have failed us, but because a first understanding and a fuller one simply take different amounts of time to arrive.

• Perhaps one of the most important things we can learn is to hold our first emotional understanding with both respect and curiosity — to recognise that it is real, important, meaningful, and that it may still be only the beginning of understanding.

If our first emotional understanding is only the beginning, then perhaps emotions need something more than immediate reaction. Perhaps they first need understanding.

Why Emotions Need Understanding

This is one of the reasons emotions can sometimes feel so confusing. When we experience them, we naturally feel drawn to respond. We want to explain ourselves. Protect ourselves. Withdraw. Fix the problem. Find reassurance. Make the feeling stop. Sometimes those responses are exactly what the situation needs. Sometimes they are not — because our first impulse develops from our first understanding, and if our understanding grows, our emotional experience often grows with it.

This is why understanding our emotions is so important. Not because emotions are wrong, or because they need correcting, but because understanding allows our first emotional experience to continue developing. As we begin to understand more about what has happened, what became important, what memories or expectations became involved, what we needed, and what we were trying to protect, our experience often becomes richer and more complete.

Sometimes we discover that our first understanding was largely right. Sometimes we discover that important parts of the situation had not yet come into view. Sometimes entirely new feelings emerge. Sometimes the feelings remain exactly the same, but we understand them more clearly.

In every case, understanding gives us something that immediate reaction cannot: choice. Rather than simply being carried by the first emotional response, we gradually become able to respond with a fuller understanding of ourselves, the situation, and the people around us.

This does not mean emotions become less important. Quite the opposite. Understanding allows us to take our emotions seriously — to listen to what they may be telling us, to recognise the needs they may be pointing towards, and to respond in ways that are guided by emotion rather than driven by it.

• Emotions are not problems to solve. They are experiences to understand. And perhaps that understanding is where meaningful change begins.

Understanding an emotion, though, is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we can learn to do — for ourselves, and for the people we are closest to. That is what the next part of this series is about.