Why feelings feel like facts

What if your emotions are not just shaping how you feel, but actually constructing everything you believe is real? I remember lying on a wooden floor in the Amazon jungle, convinced I was finally seeing the truth. The colors were sharper. The connections were obvious. Everything made sense. There was just one problem: I am a psychologist who studies how people get tricked into believing things, and right at that moment, I was being tricked. What the ayahuasca did to my perception that night is a more extreme version of what is happening to every one of us every single day. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett calls it affective realism: your feelings do not just shape what you think. They construct what you see. In 2021, an ecologist named Martin Scheffer tracked emotional versus rational language in books and newspapers from 1850 to the present day and found something that should concern all of us. Rational language grew for over a century. Then, in the 1980s, emotional language started rising. In 2007, it accelerated sharply. We are living in the most emotionally engineered information environment in modern history, and most of us have no framework for navigating it. In this episode of Inner Propaganda, I explore how emotions work as constructions rather than reactions, what the body budget is, and why your physical state determines what you perceive as threatening, and how a research study revealed that simply naming an emotion precisely is enough to reduce its intensity. I also share the story of Robert Piché, a Canadian pilot who, in 2001, glided a powerless aircraft 120 kilometers over the Atlantic with 306 people on board and landed safely, because he had learned years earlier in a prison cell that fear does not have to steer you in the wrong direction. Chapter markers: [00:00] The Amazon jungle and the problem with feeling certain [01:58] Robert Piché and the question of what to do with fear [03:10] We live in an emotional world [04:33] Affective realism: how feelings construct reality [05:41] Emotions as constructions [08:06] The body budget [12:49] Name the emotion [16:28] Use the emotion [17:55] Change the emotion [20:24] The shaman, the story, and the reality you get to decide In this episode, I explore: Why the emotional state you are in does not just color your mood, but determines the version of reality you perceive How a 2021 study tracking 170 years of language reveals that emotional engineering in media and politics is not accidental, it is systematic Why modern neuroscience suggests emotions are constructions your brain builds in real time from your senses, your body, and your memories, not reactions to the world around you What the body budget is and why being tired, hungry, or stressed makes threats appear more real and more serious than they actually are How naming an emotion with precision reduces its intensity, and why that single habit changes the quality of every decision you make A practical three-part framework for working with your emotions: Label it, use it, change it Referenced in this episode: Lisa Feldman Barrett, neuroscientist: affective realism and the theory of constructed emotion Martin Scheffer et al. (2021): study tracking emotional versus rational language in published text from 1850 to the present Matthew Lieberman (2007): fMRI research demonstrating that precise emotion labeling reduces amygdala response Robert Piché: Air Transat Flight 236, 2001 Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times, Owen Fitzpatrick (Ideapress, August 2026) Think of a situation where a strong emotion has been influencing how you see something or someone. Work through these three steps: 1. Name it precisely. Not just "stressed" or "frustrated." What specifically are you feeling, and what is triggering it? 2. Ask what it is telling you. What information is this emotion actually carrying? 3. Ask what you need to do. Separate the signal from the noise and decide how to act from that place. Write it down. That is where the shift begins. Visit my website: https://owenfitzpatrick.com/ Join my newsletter: https://owenfitzpatrick.com/newsletter/ Order my new book, Inner Propaganda: https://innerpropaganda.com/ Subscribe 🔴 #innerpropaganda #feelings #emotions