Thoughts and Emotions: A Survival Guide

Dear Readers and Friends,

Today we continue with another article on Emotional Psychology. A step back to unite cognitive behavioral psychology with emotional psychology in a continuous thread of improvements for our mental, physical, and emotional health. 

Before we can manage our emotions, it's essential to understand them. Emotions evolved as adaptive mechanisms that helped our ancestors survive. They aren't simple reactions, but rapid and effective action programs designed by evolution.

Each person is solely responsible for their own thoughts, feelings, actions and behaviors.

We don't gain power in an area of ​​our life until we take full responsibility for it. It empowers us because this rationality frees us from the need for others to intervene on our behalf and make things better. In most cases, it's our own thoughts that disturb us more in life than other people and circumstances; which means that taking responsibility for our thoughts equates to more effective emotional management.

Every emotion has a tangible physical manifestation. This includes a cascade of autonomic nervous system reactions: changes in heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension, sweating, pupil dilation, etc. These responses prepare the body for action (fight, flight, etc.).

When you understand the emotion that moves you, you take back your power. The power to choose your actions instead of being a slave to your reactions.

If people learn unhelpful ways of thinking, they can easily unlearn them.

Feeling is the subjective and cognitive experience that follows emotion; it is its direct consequence. It is emotion filtered through our thoughts, beliefs, and memories. Therefore, feeling is a more lasting and personal mental processing than the initial emotion.

People easily get trapped in their ways of thinking, which are usually rooted in their interpretations of past events. While they may seem deeply ingrained in our belief systems, thought patterns are not illnesses or fixed conditions: anything a mind can do can also be undone. We are not victims of what happens to us, but autonomous beings who can regain our power by modifying our responses to circumstances.

We cannot control the thoughts that enter our mind, but we can choose to act on them or not.

Concepts such as love, hate, resentment, or devotion are considered affective states because they represent a stable emotional tone that persists over time, influencing a person's multiple thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Many people assume that because they believe something is true, it must be true. However, both thoughts and feelings are fleeting entities: they come and go (provided we allow them to). The assumptions that influence us most in life continue to shape our beliefs, and maturity means growing out of the limiting beliefs we adopted when we were young and becoming something more grounded and stable in service to others.

Every emotion can be seen as a rapid and effective action program, designed by natural selection to face a recurring environmental challenge.

As we go through life speaking our minds and hearts to others, we rarely consider how our message or attitude is received and interpreted by other people.

Emotions evolved as adaptive mechanisms that helped our ancestors survive. They are not simple reactions, but rapid and effective action programs designed by evolution.

Being better is better than feeling better

Identifying the emotion behind a specific action gives us the power to choose conscious responses. This internal analysis reveals hidden needs and fears, helping us act with greater emotional coherence and clarity.

Most people desperately want to feel better. When we experience emotional, physical, or spiritual pain, our instinctive need to feel better can take on a life of its own. Most of us don't even realize that our subconscious is working frantically to do whatever it takes to avoid these negative feelings. However, the problem is that what makes us "feel" better is usually not what actually makes us "better."

Feeling better can happen through a variety of different remedies; while some may seem better than others, they usually all yield the same results. The truth is, these remedies are only temporary distractions from our emotions or life situations, and often prolong the underlying problem. Essentially, they're just temporary solutions!

Most forms of dysfunction stem from the same root: an innate need to avoid unwanted emotions (most often some form of anxiety). The most common "drugs of choice" are activity, food, and control. Busyness can be very destructive; it allows us to escape from our emotions, to the point where we don't have the time or energy to even feel them. Similarly, being a control freak can give us a sense of power, but it can also be incredibly damaging to our relationships. Eating may calm your anxiety in the moment, but the consequence is often a lifelong struggle with weight.

Getting better often requires feeling worse for a period that may seem counterintuitive. Many argue that counseling doesn't work because they felt worse when they went. Getting better doesn't make you feel better right away, and this can be discouraging for many people. We could compare it to psychological chemotherapy: we must be willing to feel worse in the short term to improve in the long term.

Improving means growing in self-awareness, understanding ourselves better, and adopting new strategies in our lives to help us become more effective and of greater value to others.

Our internal world manifests itself in our external world

The power of thought is the key to creating our reality. Everything we perceive in the physical world originates in the invisible, inner world of our thoughts and beliefs. To become masters of our destiny, we must first learn to control the nature of our habitual negative thought patterns. In this way, we begin to attract more of the things we truly desire into our lives as we come to recognize this truth: our thoughts create our reality.

Identifying the emotion behind a specific action gives us the power to choose conscious responses. This internal analysis reveals hidden needs and fears, helping us act with greater emotional coherence and clarity.

For every "external effect" there is an "internal cause": every effect we see in our external world has a specific cause that originated in our internal or mental world. This is the very nature of the power of thought. In other words, the circumstances and conditions of our lives are the result of our collective thoughts and beliefs. Every aspect of our lives, from our health to the state of our finances and relationships, reveals our thoughts and beliefs.

The real paradigm shift lies in stopping judging our emotions and starting to understand their function. Every emotion, no matter how unpleasant, is a messenger that brings us valuable information about our relationship with the world. The goal isn't to eliminate emotions we don't like, but to learn to listen to their message and use that information to function better in life.

By internalizing and applying the truth that our thoughts create our reality, we can proceed to create the changes we want to see and begin working toward achieving our life goals. Reality is an inside job.

Emotional styles determine how we manage our emotions. Some people are aware and balanced, while others feel overwhelmed or resigned. Identifying our style promotes self-understanding and emotional development.

If you don't address your own wounds, you'll end up hurting others. When you don't forgive others, you suffer. When you don't forgive yourself, you suffer. This is true on a physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual level.

What we focus on has an emotional consequence.

Every time you give power to the little things that seem to bother you, you're choosing to be that anxious and unproductive energy. Every time we get caught up in the need to feel appreciated, approved, and respected, or focus on how other people have hurt us, we choose to be the fear of being mistreated.

Thinking is more than just an activity: it actually manifests as a state of being.

It's not that we should swallow our feelings about life events (big and small) for fear that they will somehow define us. But what if we started questioning the thoughts that create our feelings, instead of creating discomfort and drama over something we might not even remember in a few days, we would prevent negativity from consuming us. We tend to spend much of our time focusing on things that don't truly serve us when what would actually help us most is focusing our attention on what we truly need. If we can pay attention and understand how our thoughts influence us, we will change who we are and how we experience the world. It begins with a simple realization: we can feel free, present, and open in this present moment if we choose to let go of the worries that hold us back.

Band-Aids don't heal wounds

Band-Aids don't heal wounds, but addressing the root of the problem does. Addressing the root of the problem means learning to identify and break free from the limiting beliefs and destructive thought patterns we developed earlier in life.

Destructive thought patterns are repetitive and unhelpful thoughts. They serve no real purpose and lead to negative and debilitating emotions. The truth is, we can choose how we react to these destructive thought patterns, and once we learn to recognize and identify them, we can begin to make wiser and more informed decisions about what we focus on.

Become an observer of your thoughts; to free yourself from negativity, you must become more aware of what you're thinking! Start paying closer attention to what's actually happening in your mind at any given moment. Pay close attention to any negative thought patterns that arise. Become a curious observer of what's happening in your inner world. Our minds are like a record player, always playing the same familiar songs. Due to a lack of awareness, the record keeps playing because its momentum is accustomed to moving in familiar grooves.

The key to emotional intelligence is developing our acuity to distinguish when an emotion is adaptive and when it has become maladaptive.

It's not about fighting the emotion itself, but rather learning to manage it when it stops fulfilling its useful function and starts to become an obstacle to our well-being.

By becoming more aware of your negative thought patterns, you bring a new level of awareness: you become mindful. When this happens, you can step back from your thoughts and become an observer. As a result, 

Thoughts and Emotions immediately begin to lose their grip on you. Every time you become aware of these destructive thought patterns, it's as if you've made a small scratch on that old, habitual recording. After a while, the record doesn't sound the same anymore, and eventually, it doesn't sound the same at all.