Have u seen any of gina panes work, the french contempoary artist/ performance artist who investigated many different human emotions and psychological ideas.
You may find it useful. Through her work she tries to understand some very extreme emotions and feelings such as the ones you described. She does some of this by mutalatining her own body.

I just visited an exhibition in bristol of her work and i may write about her for my next essay. I would be interested to know if you found that she managed to descibe, through her work, the different emotions you were interested in.
However , perhaps only she is the one who can truely know and not the viewer. any way, hope that kinda made some sense and may have helped . look forward to hearing from u!