Well, friend. Here I am, once again a latecomer to the soiree, to the salon for the psychologically savvy. I am, regrettably, only just now beginning to get a firm grasp on the nuance between thinking and feeling. Not to mention the connections between thinking, feeling and behavior. Better late than never, you say? Agreed. In days gone by, my feelings and thoughts cleaved seamlessly together in a big, amorphous blob that wended its way haphazardly through the shadowy labyrinth of my psyche, randomly oozing into the accidental happy moment, but more often snagging itself on projections of all sorts.
This is a sad and sobering thing to realize about oneself. Oh yes, it really is. But fortunately, I am finding a smidgen of solace in camaraderie. It turns out I’m not the only psychological stumblebum after all.
When the dawn of awareness at long last broke, I awoke to find the twin vultures of compare and despair leering menacingly at me. It seemed I must be the last to realize the obvious separateness of thought and feeling. But a bit of research, which I conducted with the utmost subjectivity and absolutely no regard for scientific method, revealed a pair of contrasting truths.
On the one hand, the last several decades appear to have seen a relatively quantum leap in terms of psychological awareness and emotional fluency. On the other, the mind is ever a hotbed of trickery. Even for the most self-aware of us. And that hotbed is constantly fertilized by a steady supply of cultural messaging manure.
Oddly enough, this has all got me to thinking about good old René Descartes. You know, the one who’s been called the father of modern philosophy, the inspiration for the scientific method I so cavalierly disregard, and doppelganger of legendary Queen guitarist Brian May? The originator of “I think, therefore I am?” Yep. The very one.
Pour quoi, you may ask, did the contemplation of thoughts and feelings lead me to Monsieur Descartes? In short (I will, mercifully, spare you from taking the long and winding road I traveled), because he created a methodology, sometimes referred to as Cartesian Doubt, that hinged on doubting the truth of one’s thoughts.
I believe it fair to say that René was an enthusiastic self-doubter, a champion self-gaslighter. I mean, he even masterminded a Malicious Demon Hypothesis as a fallback when one encounters a thought that seems legitimately true. Because who can be sure their thoughts aren’t being manipulated by an invisible, demonic evil genius?
Now this may seem a little…paranoid. But, in true Cartesian spirit, I question such judgment. Is it, really? After all, the mind can be spectacularly clever in spinning problematic narratives about reality.
And besides, Descartes wasn’t the first to poke the stick of skepticism at his thoughts, nor was he the last. Stoic philosophers, for instance, theorized that false beliefs led to potentially destructive emotions. Nowadays, there are any number of cognitive therapies out there, most prominently Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), premised on the idea that thoughts are the engine driving feeling states.
I will now proffer a rough interpretation of the CBT Model of Emotions, which explains the thought-feeling-behavior loop thusly: A situation presents. We automatically (often unconsciously) have thoughts about the situation. These thoughts trigger feelings (which means both emotions and physical sensations). The feelings lead to reactive behaviors. The behaviors create new situations. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Now mind you, this is not a strictly one-way street. If one feels like poo (say, depressed), they are likely to think depressing, poo-like thoughts, maybe “I’m a worthless sack of tripe.” Likewise, behaviors can reinforce thoughts and resulting feelings, too. For instance, one feels like poo and reactively retreats into a pillow nest on the couch while the TV watches them for days on end. This in turn generates thoughts of worthlessness and unwittingly shovels more poo on the feelings pile.
So, what does all this mean? That we should stop ourselves from thinking? Think only positive thoughts? Happy-wash all our negative thinking? Elect Pollyanna as a write-in for president?
Slow down friend, let us not get swept off our feet in the warm updraft of toxic positivity. Bypassing reality isn’t a viable option.
And neither is not thinking. Trying not to think is a little like trying not to breathe. Even folks who’ve spent the better part of their adult lives meditating will back me up on this one. Jack Kornfield, one of the founders of the Insight Meditation Society, who also trained as a Buddhist monk in South Asia and also happens to be a PhD in clinical psychology put it this way: “Just as the salivary glands secrete saliva, the mind secretes thoughts.” In fact, it’s been estimated that the mind produces up to 70,000 thoughts per day. So, nope. Scratch not thinking as a possibility.
On a side note, which really deserves to be a full note because it’s so important: it may seem like one has even more thoughts than they do, because we so often confuse or conflate thinking and feeling. Have you ever noticed that when someone says “I feel like…” or “I feel that…” they are actually expressing a judgment rather than an emotion? Here are a few *completely random* examples: I feel like Donald Trump’s hair must be roadkill reincarnated. I feel that Doritos tasted better in the ‘80’s. I feel as though trillionaires should pay income taxes for everyone else.
The point is that we can’t really be very good detectives about the connection between our thoughts and feelings unless we can tell the difference between the two. Once one has learned to make this distinction, thinking about thinking can be remarkably helpful. Particularly if we can notice a connection between thoughts and the feelings they generate.
Remember those automatic thoughts that I mentioned from CBT? Well, because we’re so often unaware of them, they can lead one to feel like they’ve been ambushed by negative emotion and accompanying unpleasant sensations. Like an emotional flu. Additionally, these automatic thoughts tend toward what, in 12-step parlance, is often termed “stinkin’ thinkin.” They’re usually quite narrow, rigid, negative and fixed. They usually present only one possible explanation for circumstances, at the gooey center of which often lurks some dastardly and self-destructive core belief, like “I’m not enough” or “I’m too much.”
I know. It really does stink. But listen, friend. Think of the potential here. If we become adept at connecting the dots between thoughts and feelings, that means we can help ourselves by providing additional context and re-framing our narratives about situations. If this seems unfathomable, imagine talking to a friend going through something similar. Or talking to the part of you that’s singing Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song. Just a little cognitive distance often provides a different view.
Well, I could go on, but I know you don’t have all day. You need to get busy practicing. That’s right, practicing tracking the connections between thoughts and feelings. Here’s another SBNE (okay, I will spell it out. Simple, But Not Easy) tool to send you off with: keep a thought record, CBT-style. It works, it really does. And if you need some additional help getting the hang of it, click below.
Omg the line about the TV watching you all day is so good!
Bryan May’s hair!!!!!! We all bow. lol “I feel that Doritos tasted better in the ‘80’s.” Jack Kornfield, Malicious Demon Hypothesis (who doesn’t have one of those? Malicious demons be everywhere) that sweet sweet balloon picture & caption 🎈🫶🏽👌 to say nothing of the heart of the Descartes matter!