Are our beliefs about our emotions always true, or should other people always accept them to be true?

You don’t “believe” emotions, you feel them. As there is no possible way of knowing what a person really believes – or feels – we have to rely on their honesty, it comes back to trust. Do you trust the person?

@DarkScribe
(Is not wording this in the way he likes)

@cooolbeans DarkScribe(Is not wording this in the way he likes)

It isn’t a matter of wording, it is a matter of accuracy. If you are looking at whether a person is gay or straight – that has nothing to do with emotion in a direct sense, although emotion might be involved in a peripheral sense. There is no emotion involved in my sexual orientation, it is simply a reality – a fact. The same applies to anyone else.

Self-knowledge as to sexual orientation is not an emotion.

If I tell you, “I’m not angry with you,” that’s conveying an emotion. Whether you believe I’m not angry at you is based upon my history of telling you truthfully what my emotions are, or whether or not I’m sending contradictory verbal or physical cues, such as gritting my teeth as I say it, or slamming the kitchen cabinet door shut.

I think a lot of people don’t know what their own emotions are so they don’t know if they are being honest with themselves much less anyone else. True knowledge of one self requires intense examination and work.

I don’t get how sexual orientation fits in with emotions, seems a different subject/question.

“You don’t “believe” emotions, you feel them.”

I know people that “believe” their emotions. Thinking/convincing themselves that what they feel is connected to what they believe.
Needless to say, they also tend to “walk into a few too many walls”.

Sexual orientation is not an emotion. It is not a choice. Since you have nothing to substitute for someone’s declaration of their sexuality unless you happen to catch them in bed with someone of the opposite sex, your only option is to accept what the person says.

As to your other seemingly unrelated question, people can delude themselves about their feelings. Again, however, sexuality is not an emotion.

I agree with @rooeytoo I think there are separate questions here. Primarily we feel things, then we think about them. I think it is entirely possible that people can ignore their ‘real’ feelings, but something still won’t feel quite right. I agree with @DarkScribe too… it’s more about trusting the person. That said I don’t think we need to or should construe peoples feelings and-or beliefs as either right or wrong. People are what they are.

Some neuroscientists make a distinction between emotions and feelings. Emotions happen automatically and we are unable to influence them. When they are evaluated by our rational mind they are called feelings.

A powerful emotion is fear. Suppose you’re on an airplane and all of a sudden there’s severe turbulence. Your feeling related to it can be a belief, like you believe that the plane won’t crash.

I think our beliefs about our emotions are not always true. I think that we sometimes lie about our emotions. Therefore it is hard to know if you should believe what someone says about their emotions.

Suppose someone said to you, “I’m a bad person. You’d be better off without me in your life.” How would that make you feel? Would you take this person at face value? Would you think that you would be better off without the person, because they told you so?

If someone said they loved you, or they hated you—would you believe them? What if the person saying these things was a stranger?

I think that for most emotions, you’re better off ignoring what the person says and looking at how they behave. I, for example, would tell you that you are wasting your time if you bother to read anything I write. I would tell you not to pay attention to my advice or my comments, since I’m usually wrong. I wouldn’t blame you if you flagged all my comments. I’d be hurt, but I couldn’t fault you for doing that.

Would you believe me? Would you think I’m a waste of time just because I said so? Or would you read my comments, and make a decision based on your own criteria? Would you maybe think that I underestimate the quality of what I write? Maybe you’d even decide there was something wrong with me that I could say such things about myself.

I think that people often do not know themselves very well. But it’s tricky. Sometimes we lie deliberately. Sometimes we hide things from ourselves. But you can’t know whether I’m lying, hiding, mistaken, unconscious or giving you an accurate account of my true feelings and beliefs. You certainly can’t tell me what I’m thinking or who I am. All you can do is listen to what I say, and decide whether that jibes with how I behave. If it doesn’t, you can call me on it, or not, depending on what you want to do.

Well, sometimes their actions argue with their own words. Just watch them and the truth will reveal itself. But i think if a person says he feels a certain way it’s better to give him the benefit of the doubt. But if still you’re not sure, question him/her about their actions. “Why did you do this? How come that?” things like that.