Friday, 23 November 2012

Thoughts Vs Feelings



Studying the difference between feelings and thoughts can help you connect better and others understand you more. For those people in recovery, it is crucial to differentiate the two. Most people think that if they use the word feel in the sentence, they are speaking about their emotions. For instance:
I feel like no one loves me.
I feel as though I am all alone in this thing called recovery.
I feel as if I am going mad.
In reality, whatever follows these phrases - feel like, feel as if, and feel as though, is in fact a thought, assumption, or viewpoint. What are missing in the above illustrations are the feelings.
I think no one likes me, and I feel disapproved of and unloved.
I think I'm alone in sobriety and I feel scared and overwhelmed.
I think I am going crazy and I feel scared and uncertain.
You will know that you are talking about your emotions if you process them from the five general categories of feelings - mad, sad, glad, bad, and scared. "Bad" will usually be emotions like guilt, be jealous of, envy, etc.
Recovery is learning how to think differently and learning, in many cases, how to articulate your mood and emotions, especially those that have prompted your use in the past. Learn to process your thoughts and feelings as the separate and distinct aspects that they are. This will make it easier to determine if your thoughts need modifying or your feelings are the issue.
Your feelings are affected by others, but not managed by others. People often talk about something "making" them feel a specific way. This removes your liability for your feelings and puts the blame or accountability for how you feel onto others. When you put this responsibility onto others, you hold them accountable for what you are feeling.
You can then give yourself an excuse for why you feel a certain way, and lose all control over how you feel because others made you feel anything. This can become a victim posture or a tricky cycle that needs to be broken for you to acknowledge that they are your emotions, independent of the actions of others.
This does not indicate that you do not react to the activities of others. It is simply a way of acknowledging that when somebody did or did not do something that you had feelings about their activity or lack of action, but you are claiming the feelings as your own.
A less blaming way of stating how you feel in relation to what someone else has done or not done, is to state it as, "When you did that, I felt." It lets you state what they did, but how you felt, and taking liability for your own feelings is empowering. You can choose how to feel in any given situation and not be based mostly on how they made you feel.
It will take exercise to start phrasing your speech differently and you will find that you continue to use thinking statements instead of feeling statements for a while. Make the effort to distinguish them, and even correct yourself when you forget.
Ultimately, you will remember to include your feelings in your statements. An easy way to start phrasing thoughts and feelings is, "When __ occurred, I felt _____, or "I thought ____ when ___ happened." Stating both the thought and the feeling helps you distinguish them and lets people know which you are talking about in any situation.

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