It's More Important To Understand Your Emotions Than You Think
Emotions help us pay attention, focus our recognition and motivate us to action.
PART II
Emotional Awareness
Emotions are part of the human biology assisting us to cope with the complexities of making decisions, interacting with people, and finding our way through life. While sometimes they’re confusing, emotions are part of us, so we might as well learn to use them well.
Where do emotions come from?
Most commonly, it is our thoughts that create our emotions. Sometimes it is our unconscious mind and our senses that pick up on cues from our environment that triggers our emotions.
Those can be such as reading a person’s body language or facial expression which generates an automatic emotional response, or sensing danger and having an automatic fear response. It can Also be a certain smell, a taste, or a sound that brings up an associated emotion.
But for the most part, it's NOT the outside world or the situation that causes our emotional reaction. It is the inner mental filter, our automated thought patters - our interpretation—that causes our emotional reaction to the situation.
Thoughts and emotions have a complex relationship
As much as we like to be right, when it comes to emotions, they are neither right nor wrong, accurate or not. Emotions are simply your body’s reaction to what you are THINKING, whether you’re thinking on purpose or not.
Your belief system and other unconscious/automated thoughts are happening on autopilot all the time, and often cause emotions. That’s why sometimes you have NO IDEA why you feel the way you do.
According to the latest research, we have approximately 6,200 thoughts per day. So if our emotions are influenced by our thoughts… we can pretty much assume that our range of emotions throughout the day would be similar. That’s a staggering number!
So, here’s an example of why emotions are never either right or wrong… because they’re just reacting to your thoughts…
- Think about something don’t have (that you want). You may think you’re unhappy because you don’t have it, but that’s not true. You are unhappy because of the THOUGHT of not having it.
- Have you ever been happy while not having it?
- If you didn’t have it but didn’t care, would you be unhappy?
- If you still didn’t have it but were doing something that kept you from thinking about it, such as going down a roller coaster, would you be unhappy about it?
- You see, not having want doesn’t make you feel bad. Thinking about it does.
Which comes first?
It’s the chicken and the egg question.
Just as thoughts can influence emotions, emotions can also influence thoughts. Have you ever been in an irritable mood and noticed that many of the thoughts going through your mind were negative or had to do with inconveniences or annoyances? In this case, your mood or emotions were probably leading you to have certain types of thoughts.
even if an event directly triggers an emotional reaction, any thoughts you have afterward can alter your emotional response
On the other hand, sometimes your thoughts are the primary fuel for your emotions. If someone you know doesn’t say hello to you as you walk down the hallway, and you think this means the person doesn’t like you, you might feel hurt. If you knew, however, that the person’s spouse had just passed away, you might have a very different reaction.
If you’re trying to figure out how to tackle thinking patterns that contribute to stress or misery in your life, it’s important to know about this complex back-and-forth relationship between emotions and thoughts. It’s even more important to know that emotions, thoughts, and actions all influence one another. This means that you can change how you feel by changing what you do and how you think. This doesn’t mean that you just need to think positively or do fun things, and all of your emotional problems will be solved, but chipping way at enduring negative moods involves slow and steady changes in your activities and thinking patterns.
Emotions flow through our body all the time, regulating everything, including our thoughts. So shouldn’t we be learning about feelings?
How Our Thoughts Influence Our Emotions
What really makes us feel and respond the way we do, is often not the situation or the words and actions of another person, but how we perceive that situation or that person’s actions. It is how we see something or someone and what we think about it or them that really influences how we feel. It is our thoughts and beliefs about an event that significantly influences our emotions and actions.
Thoughts are mental cognition—our ideas, opinions, and beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. They include the perspectives we bring to any situation or experience that color our point of view (for better, worse, or neutral).
An example of a long-lived thought is an attitude, which develops as thoughts are repeated over and over and reinforced.
While thoughts are shaped by life experiences, genetics, and education, they are generally under conscious control. In other words, if you are aware of your thoughts and attitudes, you can choose to
Thoughts and feelings are both part of the experience of being
Automatic Thoughts
Just as we are not always conscious of the way we walk or how we drive a car, we are often not aware of our thinking. Some of our thinking is so habitual that it is automatic, and just like driving, when things are automatic, we might not be conscious of them. All of the time, our brains are turning over thoughts and ideas. However, we are not consciously aware of most of them because it happens relatively fast and we are not accustomed to slowing them down. Our automatic thoughts, however, play an important role in our emotional well-being.
There are three kinds of automatic thoughts:Neutral thoughts, e.g. "I think I will buy some bread today."Positive thoughts, e.g. "This is something I can do really well."Negative thoughts, e.g. "I often find it hard to concentrate – I must be really stupid."Automatic thoughts often reflect worries and concerns, however they can be about anything at all, anything we have ever seen, heard or learned. In addition, it can be anything we know about from any source at all. Obviously, though, negative automatic thoughts are the ones that can cause us emotional distress. People who are depressed tend to think negative thoughts about themselves, the world about them, and their future, and it is these thoughts that can be changed to lift your depression.
Emotions are not Thoughts
One of the most common, repeated dialogues I have with my clients goes pretty much like this:
Me: So… How does that make you feel?
Client: Well… I think that…
Me: (after listening to their thoughts) Okay. Those are valid and interesting thoughts.But that doesn’t answer my question.
Client: What do you mean?
Me: Do you remember what my question was?
Client: You asked me what I thought about it.
Me: Not exactly. I asked you how you felt about it?
Client: Oh, well, what’ do you mean?
Me: You told me what your thoughts are. Can you tell me what emotions you're experiencing about this?
Client: Oh. Fine. I feel fine. I mean... I'm okay... I... I don't know...
(more on this will be discussed in part III)
When we first try to distinguish between thoughts and emotions, it can be easy to confuse them.
Because we are so used to talking about thoughts and feelings as being part of the same experience, but now, after reading this far, we recognize they are not the same.
So, as you can see it is more helpful to separate them and remember that emotions are not thoughts.
For example, you might say to yourself, "I'm anxious", or “I think I’m anxious,” but if you look a little deeper and ask yourself why, you will find out that underneath that 'feeling' you are thinking that " I'm probably going to mess it up and make a fool of myself” - And that thought is actually makes you feel anxious.
Another common example is when, you tell a friend or hear a friend say “I feel that _______ doesn’t appreciate me/what I did/the gift I gave/etc.” Once again, if we take a little closer look and ask ourselves why, or just taking away the 'I Feel' out of the sentence, we will find that there is a thought behind that feeling. “_____ doesn’t appreciate me/what I did/the gift I gave/etc.”
What we in actuality feel because of that thought is Pain. We are hurt. and feel hurt.
Can we change our thoughts and emotions?
We tend to believe that emotions are just “part of us” and can’t be changed. Research, however, has established that emotions are malleable. They can be changed by:
How we choose to live our lives and navigate our thoughts and perception has tremendous power over the way we feel every day.
Sonja Lyubomirsky and other positivity researchers have found that 50% of happiness is determined by your "set point," or genetics, and 10% is determined by your circumstances (finances, health, living situation). The other 40% is based upon your own intentional efforts to become happier, meaning you have a big say in how you feel by your awareness and navigating your thoughts and emotions.
Certain types of mental training, such as awareness/mindfulness or positive thinking, can affect our perceptions of the world and make us calmer, more resilient, and happier.
Other researchers have identified many other helpful attitudes—such as forgiveness, gratitude, and kindness—that can be cultivated with practice.
If you are aware of your thoughts and emotions,
you can choose to change them!
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