The Links Between Feelings and Thoughts
By
Dr. Lorraine Cassista

     Thoughts are powerful and affect how you feel. Likewise, feelings affect how you think creating a cycle whereby thoughts affect feelings and feelings lead to more thoughts. If you are in a bad mood, you are likely to think bad or negative thoughts that will, in turn, contribute to a cycle of bad feelings and thoughts. Engaging in negative thinking results in negative feedback, whereas, a more optimistic outlook will allow for constructive feelings and actions. Optimistic thinking improves health and happiness by helping to improve mood and self-esteem, decrease depression, anxiety, and hostility, lessen pain and other symptoms, speed surgery recovery time, and enhance your immune function. You do, in effect, feel what you think. What were the emotional patterns and rules in your family when you were growing up? Were you allowed to express your emotions or were you encouraged to keep them to yourself? What are the emotional patterns in your family today?

     Different people, and even oneself depending on your mood, interpret events differently. Think of a situation that you and a few other people have experienced together and remember how each person reacted. Perhaps someone at a social event made a comment that got one person angry, while another got hurt and sad and a third just got annoyed realizing that the person making the comment was inept and insensitive. These different feelings lead to different responses to the same event. By making the connection between our feelings and our thoughts, we empower ourselves by noticing how our thoughts affect our moods.

     We all experience a wide variety of feelings over the course of a day. Feelings are not good or bad, they just are. Emotions, such as anger and sadness, are healthy and appropriate at times. Feeling sad and grieving the loss of a loved one, whether through death or a break-up is an appropriate response to loss. What we want to do is keep from getting stuck in an emotional state, holding onto feelings of anger, resentment, sadness, fear or guilt. When we become stuck in an emotional state, our mind becomes a filter that allows into our conscious awareness only those things that confirms or reinforces the mood in which we are stuck. Studies have shown links between anger and hostility and coronary artery disease. Being able to express emotions rather than repress them has helped people with AIDS and cancer ease their symptoms and even keep them in remission. People with good attitudes and healthy expression of their emotions appear to have healthier functioning immune systems. Some studies have even concluded that people with a healthy attitude live longer.

     Last month I suggested a thought journal to keep track of your automatic thoughts. What can you do to deal with your associated feelings? First, recognize and acknowledge them. Second, reflect on them and ask yourself if the depth of your feeling is in accordance to the magnitude of the event. Are your feelings realistic or irrational? Third, communicate your feelings in a calm, rational manner to the person(s) involved whenever possible. Lastly, let them go. A good way to let go is by practicing visualization techniques. Here is an exercise you can try: Find a comfortable position and close your eyes. Relax and take in a few deep breaths through your nose and out through your mouth. Starting at your head and working down to your toes, tell your body to relax each part, one at a time while taking deep abdominal breaths. When you feel yourself relaxed, envision a warm, soothing light beaming down on you filling you up with love, peace and harmony as you slowly inhale each breath. As you slowly exhale, envision yourself letting go of the anger, guilt, resentment, sadness, worry, loneliness, or whatever feeling you want to dissipate. Focus on your breath and the feeling of filling up with a sense of well being and letting go of the negative emotions. If your mind wanders, keep coming back to focusing on the breath to quiet your mind. Do this for about 10 minutes.

     Visualization has been shown to be quite effective in eliciting a relaxation response and shifting into a more positive state of mind. There are many books and tapes on the subject. There are other techniques, such as meditation, a process of focusing the mind on an object or activity to elicit the relaxation response, or mindfulness, focusing attention on what you are experiencing from moment to moment, or journaling. All of these are beneficial in helping to make the connection between what is going on in your body with what is going on in your mind.