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CORE PRINCIPLE 1

Understanding Your Feelings*

*Emotions (also referred to as "feelings") are internal, physical-chemical sensations that provide you with important information about yourself, others, and your environment. Acknowledge your feelings, but use your head to make decisions.

STEPS TO APPLY THE PRINCIPLE

SUCCESS STORY

GENERAL INFORMATION

Every thought that goes through your mind, whether conscious or unconscious, sends an important message to the body, which triggers a wave of internal motion (increased heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and muscle intensity). These internal, physical/chemical MOTIONS within the body are commonly felt and referred to as "eMOTIONS." Emotions are like a stream that is constantly flowing in each of us twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes the motion or flow is calm and tranquil; other times it is rapid and turbulent. Regardless of the nature of your stream of emotion at any given time, you--not the stream itself--make the decisions of what to think and how to act. Although it may not always seem like it, your behavior is controlled by the decisions you make, not by how you are feeling.

When you are upset, the agitation you feel in your body is the result of your mind triggering the release of chemicals, such as adrenaline, into your system (stream). On the other hand, when you think rational and happy thoughts, chemicals such as endorphins are released, causing you to feel good.

Unreasonable thinking--whether conscious or unconscious--pollutes the stream of emotion, thereby causing unpleasant feelings. Those feelings, like toxic chemicals dumped into a stream, eventually pass. How long it takes for them to pass, of course, depends on how long you continued to think unreasonably.

I am frequently asked, "How can a person control or get rid of undesirable feelings?" I often answer with the following question: "If you were camping by a stream and accidentally spilled gasoline into the water, what would you do?" Certainly, you would not jump into the stream and try to scoop the gas out. Nor would you chop down a tree to build a dam across the stream. Neither would you pretend the spill did not occur. How then would you deal with the gas spill? You would probably simply acknowledge you made a mistake, take precautions to avoid similar mistakes in the future, and perhaps warn the campers downstream to avoid swimming in the water till the spill passes. And it will pass!

A similar response is appropriate when you are feeling upset. Rather than ignoring or fighting upset feelings, simply acknowledge that they exist. Then look at yourself and the situation and decide what action, if any, to take.

Key Point: When upsetting or toxic thoughts cause you to feel upset, the feelings will eventually pass as your thinking and behavior gets back on track

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR AND EMOTION

It is easy to confuse emotional behavior, which is best controlled within some reasonable bounds, with emotion, itself. Although behavior such as fighting or fleeing may express emotion, it is not emotion itself. Emotion, for the most part, is simply the body's internal reaction to what is going on in the mind. It occurs internally as opposed to behavior which is external.

There is a distinct difference between the appropriate control of emotional behavior (controlling what you say or do when you feel angry) and the counterproductive attempt to control emotion (ignoring or fighting the feeling of anger). Although struggling to control the stream of emotion may seem natural, it is healthier to focus on and control the thoughts and actions that direct the stream, rather than focusing on the stream itself.

A DAMMED MISTAKE

Many people, when they are upset, make a common mistake. They futilely attempt to control, fight, or eliminate the stream of emotion. This results in the creation of a dam that blocks the natural flow of emotion, thereby causing unpleasant feelings to grow in magnitude and intensity. Rather than simply acknowledging whatever unpleasant emotions you are experiencing and finding a way to better manage yourself or your circumstances, you end up with compounded or dammed feelings. If you feel angry about something and then clog up your emotions, you end up with dammed anger in addition to the initial anger.

CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHTS

Your mind contains billions and billions of thoughts or pieces of information stored in the form of words or pictures. The thoughts you are aware of are referred to as conscious thoughts; they account for approximately 15% of mental activity. The other 85% of mental activity generally occurs without your awareness. The unconscious part of your mind automatically regulates breathing, heart rate, body temperature, digestion, etc.

THE STREAM OF EMOTION

Your unconscious mind also contains everything you have learned or experienced. It is like a great library containing vast quantities of information--some brain researchers suggest up to as many as 50 billion pieces of information. Of course, not every piece of information is readily available for recall, but each is nevertheless permanently recorded.

Situations, emotions, and conscious thoughts can trigger unconscious tapes or patterns of thinking. When you are driving an automobile, for example, and the highway situation changes, a tape containing everything previously learned about driving is triggered in your mind. This tape allows you to automatically speed up, slow down, or do whatever is necessary to safely meet the situation. This most likely occurs instantaneously, without any conscious thought or effort. Your conscious mind could even be involved with something entirely different, such as listening to the radio or daydreaming.

Your mind has many tapes like the one for driving, each containing valuable information or resources for effective living. Sometimes, however, these tapes and the solutions they contain seem to become forgotten and remain untapped. Other tapes contain outdated information, useful in the past but no longer applicable. Yet in some cases these tapes are silently interfering with current success and happiness. Still other tapes contain incomplete or irrational information causing unpleasant feelings and undesirable behavior. Some tapes are so powerful they can negatively interfere with your life, sometimes without you even being aware of the tape or of what it contains.

EMOTION--KEY TO THE MIND

How can you unlock the door to the vast library of learning contained in your mind? There is a key. Since every conscious or unconscious thought triggers a physical/chemical sensation, those emotions--pleasant or unpleasant--provide valuable feedback to what is going on in your mind. By learning to observe and use emotional information, you will discover better ways of managing yourself.

Key Point: Your emotions are caused primarily by what goes on in your mind, not by any external situation. Likewise, what you do is determined by your mind, not by the emotions that may precede or accompany the behavior.

PURPOSE OF EMOTION

The primary purpose of emotion is to provide valuable information about what is going on in your mind--particularly your unconscious mind. If you feel peaceful, for instance, there is a good chance your thoughts are rational and productive; however, if you are feeling agitated, something in your mind probably needs attention.

Second, emotions provide important information about your behavior. If you are feeling calm, your behavior is likely to be purposeful and on track with your goals and values; on the other hand, uncomfortable feelings or agitation may be an internal indicator suggesting the need for careful examination of your behavior.

Third, emotions can provide useful clues about your physical health. If you are getting enough rest, proper nutrition, and regular exercise you will tend to feel well. Otherwise, your body may be telling you, via your emotions, to take better care of yourself.

Fourth, emotions can provide helpful information about your relationship with the Lord. When you are close to the Lord and in harmony with Him, you will tend to feel better and more peaceful than when you are further away.

When you are generally feeling well--with the usual emotional ups and downs--your thoughts, actions, physical health, and spirituality are most likely within reasonable guidelines and in balance. Intense or frequent emotional pain, however, usually suggests that some area of your life could benefit from attention and improvement. By paying attention to and understanding the important messages your body provides through emotion, you will gain greater self-mastery and happiness. When looked at in this manner, pain has a purpose and can be viewed constructively as "growing pain," rather than as a feared or hated enemy.

Important Point: Emotion is primarily caused by what goes on in your mind, not by the situation that may have triggered the thoughts. Likewise, you behavior is caused by what occurs in you mind, not by the emotions that may precede or accompany the behavior.

TO BENEFIT FROM YOUR EMOTIONS--A.C. T.

Rather than ignoring, dwelling on, or fighting your emotions, A.C.T.:

1. Acknowledge the feelings you are experiencing ("I am feeling upset right now.")
2. Consider the available choices ("What are my choices now? What shall I do?")
3. Take constructive action.

For additional information on how to A.C.T., please see "Communications barrier 8".

One of the biggest hurdles in understanding emotion is the difficulty distinguishing the myths from the facts. The following section will help dispel some myths and help you better deal with your feelings.

STEPS TO APPLY THE PRINCIPLE

Although everyone experiences and talks about emotions or feelings, success in dealing with them is directly related to the ability to sort myth from fact. Following are thirteen of the more common myths and their corresponding facts. As you apply the information in this section, you will be better able to understand and use emotions for your benefit.

 

Myth 1: Emotions and emotional behavior are the same.

Fact:Your behavior (laughing, crying, frowning, yelling, hitting . . .) may represent what you are feeling, but it is not the feeling itself. For instance, you can feel angry without acting angry.

Myth 2: Emotion must be controlled.

Fact:Your emotions provide you with useful information to help you better control your thoughts and your actions. Emotion itself, however, is not to be controlled. Trying to control, alter, or ignore your feelings is like putting tape over your car's instruments so you would not have to be bothered by them. By doing so you would miss out on valuable, even critical information, necessary to drive safely; you could get a speeding ticket--or your car might run out of gas or overheat.

By paying attention to your feelings--your emotional instruments--rather than trying to control them, you are in a better position to more effectively control yourself. Result: With better self-control you generally feel better.

Myth 3: Feeling that something is a fact makes it so.

Fact: Feelings do not change facts.

Example: Feeling dumb does not change the fact you have a good mind. Feeling ugly does not change the fact you have a reasonably attractive body. Feeling like you are the greatest does not change the fact there are others who can do certain things better than you can.

Myth 4: You must do something to get your feelings out.

Fact: Feelings cannot be physically taken out of your body. You may describe what you are feeling: "I feel tense and agitated" or you may act in a way suggesting how you feel (clenched fist, raised voice, furrowed brow), but feelings, unlike a piece of food caught between your teeth, cannot be removed. Sometimes, however, talking about what you are feeling will bring about a feeling of relief--as though you were getting your feelings out.

Key point: There is a stream of emotion continuously ebbing and flowing through your body twenty-four hours a day. Fortunately (or unfortunately) whatever you are feeling at any given moment will eventually pass regardless of what you do.

Myth 5: The happiest most successful people follow their feelings.

Fact: The best decisions are usually made with 90% head and 10% heart--not the other way around. Emotion is designed to be a feedback mechanism, not a guidance system.

Myth 6: Analyzing the "why" of unpleasant feelings will make them go away.

Fact: The more you think about unpleasant feelings, the more intensely you are apt to feel them. It is better to acknowledge the feelings and say to yourself, "I am feeling upset." Then, rather than dwelling on the feelings, look for something constructive to do. Fortunately the unpleasant feelings, like an oil spill in a clear spring, will eventually pass.

Myth 7: Talking about unpleasant feelings is the best way to get rid of them.

Fact: There are certainly some benefits to talking (including the possibility of increased understanding of self and another, closer relationships, more objective thinking, and better perspective); however, talking does not automatically create the thoughts and actions necessary to feel better. What comes out of the mouth does not necessarily change what is in the mind.

Example: Recklessly driving a car 75 m.p.h. and yelling, "I am going too fast" obviously does not change anything.

Myth 8: When emotionally upset, reasonable thinking will quickly produce better feelings.

Fact: Emotional pain, like physical pain, takes time to heal. An upsetting thought is like touching a hot stove. You can do so for a second or two without getting burned badly, but for every additional second, the degree of burn is worse and the time to heal is longer. The healing time for emotional pain is about ten times the amount of time you spent thinking the upsetting thoughts. The emotional pain from four minutes of upsetting thinking, for example, will take about forty minutes to heal.

Myth 9: Certain emotions should be eliminated.

Fact: Like water continuously flowing down a stream, emotion can be directed or redirected, but it cannot be shut off.

Example: When you are feeling angry or depressed, you cannot simply turn off the stream of feelings because they are unpleasant. Unpleasant feelings always have a cause and that cause must be addressed and taken care of before you can feel better. Many artificial and unhealthy ways exist to seemingly turn off or dam up feelings (alcohol, drugs, food, T.V., etc.). However, the mind itself can produce chemicals or drugs--endorphins, for example--that can naturally have a powerful anesthetic or numbing effect on the body's feelings.

Myth 10: Emotions are illogical.

Fact: Emotion is your body's natural and logical response to what is occurring in the mind. Although feelings may or may not be logically related to a situation, they are a logical reaction to what is occurring in your mind. Upsetting thoughts--whether conscious or unconscious--cause upset feelings and calm thoughts cause calm feelings.

Caution: Even though emotion logically follows thinking, thinking itself may or may not be logical.

Example: A person going deeper and deeper into debt may not feel any stress, because he is thinking, albeit illogically, that all is well.

Myth 11: Some people do not have feelings.

Fact: Everybody has feelings, whether expressed or not. Many people, however, have yet to learn how to express what they are feeling. Others have learned to ignore or even shut down their awareness of feelings, perhaps in a misguided attempt to protect themselves from emotional pain.

Myth 12: You should feel badly about feeling badly.

Fact: Telling yourself you are bad for feeling badly or that you should not have felt bad in the first place only serves to make you feel worse. It is better to take some corrective action or else ride out the emotional wave until you feel better.

Myth 13: Happy people do not feel much emotional pain.

Fact: To experience pleasure, you must also know pain. All people, from time to time, feel emotional pain, sometimes to extreme degrees. Although some people seem to experience less pain than others, unless we walk in their shoes, it is difficult to tell for sure the degree of pain they actually feel.

SUCCESS STORY

Those who knew Ed at work or at church found him to be an intelligent and kind man, generally patient and tolerant of others' shortcomings. At home, however, so many things--especially little things--seemed to upset him. When his wife did not express herself well, for example, he became irritated or when his children repeatedly asked questions, he became impatient.

His wife, Jan, came to see me because she saw their fine family deteriorating. She thought maybe she was doing something to upset Ed, although she did not think so. She insulated him from as many of the family stresses as possible, hoping not to upset him. Despite her efforts, he was often upset.

I explained to her the nature of emotion, particularly how emotion is the body's chemical-physical reaction to what is occurring in the mind. I pointed out she and the children were responsible for their actions, not for Ed's reactions. That was somewhat hard for her to accept since Ed frequently said she and the children were responsible for upsetting him. I reassured her that although Ed may sincerely believe other people and events cause his emotional upsets, he was mistaken. He, not others, was responsible for how he felt.

Key point: Emotion is caused by the mind, not by outside events.

At our next meeting, Jan reported that an unusual thing had happened--Ed was feeling worse and she was feeling better. I asked her what she was doing differently. She explained the main difference was her understanding that he was responsible for his upsets, not her. She felt relieved. Nevertheless, she continued to be kind and considerate, although she did stop taking extraordinary measures to "protect" him from the things he upset himself about.

When he noticed he was feeling worse, while she was feeling better, he began thinking. "Perhaps," he wondered, "she is not the problem after all." He then came in to see me. He was not as receptive as Jan to the idea that he, rather than his environment, was responsible for his emotional upsets. I told him I would give him a powerful question to ask himself whenever he felt upset. I suggested to him that because he was an intelligent man he would soon know what caused his upset after he asked the question:

The next time I saw Ed, he told me he was not sure whether or not he liked the question. I detected a hint of a smile as he went on to explain what happened. One evening, while he and Jan were talking, the children burst into the living room arguing about something. He characteristically started to feel upset, when he noticed Jan dealing with the children in a calm and reasonable manner. He then bravely asked himself, "Did the situation upset me or did I upset myself?"

As he pondered the question, he thought about how he deals with employee problems at work. As a manager, it was not unusual for him to help angry employees solve conflicts with one another. It occurred to him that he rarely felt upset around employees who were thinking or acting unreasonably. "How can it be that I act so rationally at work and so irrationally at home?" he wondered. Then like a lightning bolt out of the sky, it hit him, "I am responsible for how I react to events around me."

Rather than looking for ways to change those around him at home, Ed began to look for ways to better manage himself. After the children left the room, he thoughtfully looked at Jan. He then asked her to help him understand what she does to act as rationally at home as he does at work.

Neither Jan or Ed could believe the changes that were taking place. Rather than blaming her for his upsets, he sought her advice. He began to be more reasonable and patient with the stresses of family life. He even called a family council and taught the family about the nature of emotion and what causes it. He even taught them the question he had learned.

Giving them the question turned out to be a blessing and a curse. One time when Ed was angry and arguing with his teenage daughter, he mistakenly told her she was making him mad. She wittily responded, "Dad, am I upsetting you or are you upsetting yourself?"

Reminder: If this core principle does not apply to your particular concern, go to another core principle OR go directly to the section on the problem you wish to solve: (Communication Difficulties, Depression, Sexual Problems, or Anxiety Attacks)

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Core Principle 2: Managing Your Thoughts