THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS

Can you feel your thoughts or are thoughts and emotions separate mental states? People tend to separate thoughts and emotions into different compartments of mental experience. After all, don't we think with our heads and feel with our hearts? Thinking is cool and rational, emotions hot and blind to reason. But emotions and thinking are more clearly connected than many people realise.

Let's try a little experiment :

In the next 30 to 60 seconds, try to make yourself feel really angry while keeping your mind completely blank. After reading this sentence just let yourself get angry without thinking any thoughts or picturing any image in your mind. Try it, really.

Were you able to do it? To feel real anger? If so, were you able to hold the anger for more than a passing moment? Did you clench your fists the way you might if you were really angry? Or did you try to recapture the feeling by furrowing your brow, gritting your teeth and breathing heavily? You may have been able to recreate some physical attributes of anger. But did you feel genuine anger or did it seem you were just going through the motions of pretending to be angry?

Something was missing from this little anger exercise. The thoughts that give substance to the emotion of anger. What you have just discovered is that emotions follow thoughts and that without thoughts as drivers, emotions are mere shadow puppets on the wall. Put another way, an emotion needs to be about something. You can't be angry, fearful, or joyful in a thought vacuum.

To better understand emotions and learn to manage them, we need to peel back the surface of the emotion to identify the thoughts or images that triggered it. We need to identify the angering thoughts that make us angry, or the scary thoughts that make us afraid or anxious. Once those thoughts have been identified, the next stage is to subject the thought to challenge. How realistic is the thought? How rational is the thought? How likely is the thought to become something real? Where is the evidence for the thought? How true is the thought?

Once challenged, the thoughts dissipate and without those connecting thoughts as bridges, emotions cannot stand on their own.

Ian McLeod CHP(NC), MNSHP&M, DPLT

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