What Is the Difference Between Emotion and Feeling?

Emotion is like the loud music playing in your head, and feeling is how you dance to that music.

Imagine you're at a party. The music (that's emotion) starts off slow, maybe it’s a soft song, and you sway gently. That’s one kind of feeling. Then the music gets louder and faster, maybe it’s a big beat, and now you’re jumping and having fun. That’s another feeling. So even though the same music is playing (the emotion), how you move to it (feeling) changes depending on what the song sounds like.

When something happens, like your favorite toy breaks, that's when emotion starts, maybe you feel surprise or sadness. It’s like a wave inside you that makes your heart go "thump thump."

Your feeling is how you act on the emotion. If you’re sad, you might cry or hide under a blanket. If you're happy, maybe you laugh and run around. So feeling is like drawing a picture of that wave, it shows what's going on inside you in real life.