Editing Feeling (section)

{{Short description|Conscious subjective experience of emotion}}
{{redirect|Feelings|other uses|Feeling (disambiguation)|and|Feelings (disambiguation)}}
{{Cleanup|reason=Some sections remain fragmented or weakly integrated (e.g. sensation, needs, perception). Further editing is needed to improve cohesion.|date=March 2025}}

According to the ''[[American Psychological Association|APA]] Dictionary of Psychology'', a '''feeling''' is "a self-contained phenomenal [[experience]]"; feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them".<ref>{{Cite web |title=APA Dictionary of Psychology |url=https://dictionary.apa.org/ |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=dictionary.apa.org |language=en}}</ref> The term ''feeling'' is closely related to, but not the same as, [[emotion]]. ''Feeling'' may, for instance, refer to the [[conscious]] [[Subjectivity|subjective]] experience of emotions.<ref>VandenBos, Gary (2006) ''APA Dictionary of Psychology''. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association</ref> The study of subjective experiences is called ''[[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]]''. [[Psychotherapy]] generally involves a therapist helping a client understand, articulate, and learn to effectively regulate the client's own feelings, and ultimately to take responsibility for the client's experience of the world. Feelings are sometimes held to be characteristic of embodied [[consciousness]].<ref name="Solms 2021">{{Cite book |last=Solms |first=Mark |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1190847187 |title=The hidden spring : a journey to the source of consciousness |date=2021 |isbn=978-1-78816-283-8 |location=London |publisher=Profile Books |oclc=1190847187}}</ref>

The English noun ''feelings'' may generally refer to any degree of subjectivity in perception or sensation. However, feelings often refer to an individual sense of well-being (perhaps of wholeness, safety, or being loved). Feelings have a semantic field extending from the individual and spiritual to the social and political. The word ''feeling'' may refer to any of a number of psychological characteristics of experience, or even to reflect the entire inner life of the individual (see [[Mood (psychology)|mood]]). As self-contained phenomenal experiences, evoked by sensations and perceptions, feelings can strongly influence the character of a person's subjective reality. Feelings can sometimes harbor bias or otherwise distort veridical perception, in particular through [[Psychological projection|projection]], [[wishful thinking]], among many other such effects.

Feeling may also describe the [[sense]]s, such as the physical sensation of [[Somatosensory system|touch]].