Do you know where feelings come from? Does it seem like feelings happen to you based on what is going on in your environment? Do you feel like feelings just “jump into” your body without your say so?
I have good news for you. Feelings are caused by thoughts. And thoughts are sentences going through your brain. You actually cannot feel a feeling (also referred to as an emotion) without first having a thought.
Remember the difference between thoughts and circumstances? (Review that post if needed!) When we have a thought about a circumstance, we create a feeling in our body.
This is different than a sensation. Sensations start in the body and are involuntary. These would include physical hunger, coldness, nausea (from an illness), or pain. These come from the body and travel to the brain.
Feelings start in the brain and travel to the body. You have a thought like “I really love my kids” and then you feel the emotion of love. It might feel warm and move slow through your body.
You have a thought like “wow it’s really dark in here” and then you feel the emotion of fear. It might feel cold and skip around and make your extremities feel jumpy.
You have a thought like “my computer is so slow” and you feel the emotion of frustration. It feels heavy and dark and it sits in your gut. The kids, the darkness, the computer–those are all your circumstances. You have a thought about them, which then generates a feeling or emotion, which you feel in your body.
You might think feelings are involuntary and caused by your circumstance. But in fact all feelings are caused by a thought–a thought you have about your circumstance. This might sound like bad news–you might think I am blaming you for all the negative feelings you’ve ever felt. But like I said above, this is actually really good news. This information reminds you that you are in control. You can choose the thoughts you are having, which creates your feelings.
When you understand that you are the creator of your feelings because of thoughts you are having, you actually take back control of your emotional life. When we assign our feelings to other people, such as “my children make me so angry,” other people have to change for us to feel better. You’ve put the management of your emotional life in the hands of, in this case children, who are notoriously ill-equipped to handle such a thing. When you understand that you are responsible for all of your feelings, you take back all of the power!
At first you will want to just jump to a new thought to create a new feeling–we call this “thought swapping.” You’ll notice that a thought makes you feel terrible and so you want to just grab a better thought. But when you are new to The Model, I encourage simply awareness. Tune in to your thinking and notice how that’s affecting your emotions. This is not something most people do. You will be light years ahead by just noticing this week what your thoughts are and then what the associated feelings are. I strongly encourage you not to try to change them yet. Just create awareness. This is like the photo above–feeling sad but pretending to have a different thought just to make ourselves happy.
The first step is to learn to be aware and then to feel the feelings. Not to try to change them just yet. Just feel them. What color is the feeling? Does it move fast or slow? Where is it in the body?
I have a whole worksheet that helps you dive into your feelings and learn to really identify what the emotion is and what it actually feels like in the body. This is so helpful in separating things like boredom from hunger. It helps to separate the nuances of contentment vs. joy. It helps to identify how guilt and shame are different.
Jump on a free strategy session with me and I’ll send you the worksheet (isn’t homework fun!) and help you process through your most common emotion.
Stay tuned for the final piece of the model! How feelings produce the results in your life!
