People feel many different feelings during a day. Feelings like happy, sad, angry and afraid are normal, and everybody has them. Some feelings are small and some are big. Most feelings do not last long. Feelings happen when something happens around us or when we remember something. Scientists describe emotions as feelings caused by situations that are meaningful or important to you. You feel them or show them through body language, and they may compete with other important things. Feelings happen in the brain and the body. No feeling is simply good or bad.

Scientists think emotions are made up of several parts that work together. These parts involve both the brain and the body and how they interact. The part you feel in your body is called the experiential part, and it is the only part we really notice. The other parts happen so fast that we do not realize they are happening. Emotions are also not made in just one place. They are processed by many different areas of the brain, and scientists call this an emotion processing network. Feelings help the body get ready to act.

Two people can be in the same situation and feel different emotions, because they have different thoughts about it. When people are sad they usually think of sad memories, and when they are happy they usually think of happy memories. Different emotions can also feel alike in the body. Anger and fear can both make a person shaky and make the heart beat faster. Feelings are often caused by what a person thinks about a situation. Reappraisal means trying to change your thoughts about a situation, which can change how you feel.

Why do people have emotions at all? Fear can make a person run from danger, which may save their life. Many emotions probably exist because of challenges humans have faced over time. Emotions have helped people survive, and fear helps keep people safe by getting the body ready to get away from danger. In the fight-or-flight response, the body gets ready to face danger or run from it. When you are scared, your body releases a hormone that makes your heart beat faster.

People sometimes cry when they feel sad. Babies cry to tell people what they need. Babies are born crying, and in their first three or four months they cry often. As they near their first birthday they cry less and find other ways, such as pointing, to show what they want. Tears come in three kinds. Basal tears bathe the eyes with each blink, and reflex tears well up when onion fumes irritate the eyes. Emotional tears are the third kind.

People show their feelings with their faces and bodies. A person who feels happy often smiles. Around two months old, a baby starts to smile to connect with other people. By about four to six months, a baby's facial expressions consistently reflect anger, joy, interest, fear, disgust or surprise. Infants and young children cannot yet name an emotion or say why they feel it. Some people try to hide a feeling, which is called emotional suppression. Showing an emotion you do not feel, such as smiling when you are angry, is called masking.

Learning to handle emotions takes a long time. Regulating emotions and managing behavior are skills that develop slowly over time during childhood. Deep breathing is one way to calm down. One calming breathing exercise is to let the breath flow deep into the belly without forcing it, and to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Feeling listened to and understood can help a person calm down too. With practice, people get better at knowing what they are feeling.

Words to know

• experiential: the felt part
• suppression: hiding a feeling
• masking: a pretend feeling
• basal: blink tears
• emotions: feelings