When I was a new therapist… In fact, when I was just in graduate school… I subscribed to a theory of change called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy - REBT for short.

This video is circa 1960ish I think.  Albert Ellis was young, and he died in the late 90s I believe.  The whole video is fascinating to me; it would probably put you to sleep!  But if you watched the whole video, you can see a sample REBT session with Albert Ellis in that video.  He actually demonstrates three different modalities of therapy (which I won’t talk about in this post).

I did also locate a video of Albert Ellis conducting a telephone therapy session.  It’s fascinating, if not disturbing.  Take a look:

I hope you’re still with me… there’s a point to all of this!  And it’s this…

First, Albert Ellis, I am reminded in watching these videos – rocks!  I love this man for his rough exterior and the way he just is NOT going to hear the whining and complaining that goes into symptoms that look like depression or anxiety or fear.

Second, Albert Ellis taught me early on about a few things I continue hang onto to this day, and they are:

1. Our thoughts really do create our emotions and actions.  If we don’t take responsibility for what’s in our own head, we won’t change.  Plain and simple.
2. Mental Illness is a phrase that’s tossed about flippantly, and almost everyone has one.  Yet, most of the people that do have that label, don’t really need it.  The symptoms of depression, anxiety, and fear are most of the time, just that – symptoms.  And those are way more manageable than a disease or illness that has overtaken your entire body.  As a therapist, I take heat for this stance, but I will continue to stand by it.  However, I’ve softened over this years, and that’s where the rest of my TEA Theory comes in.

“When you label a child at-risk, you’ve just created an at-risk child”

This is my favorite quote from the movie, “Pay it Forward.”  It’s true for adults, too!

I imagine all therapists go through a process of deciding how they believe people change. Afterall, that’s the question we wish to answer for all of our clients, right? How do I change ____. Clients visit because they want the answer to THAT magic question. I love REBT because there’s a quick and easy answer.

Existentialism Meets REBT

Prior to becoming an REBT follower however, I considered myself an existentialist. I was someone who examined the whole person and not just their thinking mind – their upbringing, the environment they were raised, and their individual self. It was important to me to see human development as unique for each individual, and that the product we became as adults encompassed many variables. The client sitting in front of me who was depressed was not just an irrational individual who needed a verbal slap in the face, but a unique, individual person who was complex with many layers. Still, those many layers, and all the understanding of those layers, still didn’t provide answers on how to change the “problem” being presented in therapy sessions. Hence, my latching on to REBT.

Any therapist will tell you that Existentialism and REBT do not mix. They are like oil and water. Still, I believed them both. I believed it was possible to join up the “whole person” theory of human development with the “thinking mind” theory of rational thought, to create a therapy that really WORKED to create change.

I still use much of Albert Ellis’ work. If you’ve read my posts in this series up to this point, you know I largely believe in the thinking mind and rational thought. That, what you think and believe and perceive WILL create your emotions and actions. I stand by that claim!

But the missing puzzle piece is this: The creation of those thoughts.

How is it that these thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, assumptions, and opinions are created?

In my early days as a therapist, when in a session with my client who was in pain, wanted to change something about themselves, and I explained the REBT model, my clients are frustrated. They wanted to know, “But WHY do I think that?” In fact, I wanted to know myself, so I sought answers.

Therapists are not without their own stories. And in my personal story, I wanted to know, too. What happened to me early in life that created these thoughts and perceptions anyway? And more importantly, does it even matter?

Albert Ellis would say no. I would say yes.

It DOES matter how our thoughts are created, doesn’t it? Does it matter to you? Are you remotely interested in what drove you to the belief system you have today? Are you interested in knowing what created this thought process in you? If you are, keep reading…

How Beliefs Are Created

I’ve been a student of Human Development since High School.  I had an extreme interest in Home Economics, which was later changed to be called “Life Sciences” – that’s a name I believe more adequately describes the field, and I was glad to see it change.  In fact, I originally wanted to be a Home Economics teacher, not a Therapist, because I thought that would be the best way to teach masses of people about human development – which is to say “why people do what they do” AND “how to live the best life you can live.”

Of course, I lived in Rural America, population 2000, and it didn’t take me long to realize life just ain’t like it was back in that West Texas town!  That, for me to teach Home Economics in ANY school across America, let alone Little Town, USA, would be a joke.  And frankly, I don’t see the field as a joke at all!  So, Home Ec. Teacher wasn’t going to be for me… I needed to find a profession where I could create REAL change.

For the past 20 years I’ve studied Human Development.  I’ve been a therapist of Human Development.  I’ve taught Human Development at the local community college.  And as much as I’ve scoured those texts, I couldn’t find one SINGLE theory that answered the question:  How are beliefs created?  Frustrating!

But one came close.  In fact, several come really close, but of course, they are just “theories” which is to say, they will “hint” at reasons, but never come right out and say, “Let me tell you how it is…” which is what I’ve always craved, what my clients crave.

I’ve taken all those theories of human development, as I know them to be true, particularly the theory of attachment, and now attempt to answer “WHY” people think, believe, opine, assume, and perceive what they do.  And hence, feel and act in the ways they CHOOSE to feel and act.

In my next post, I’ll lay it all out on the line for you.  I’ll talk about my TEA Theory of Attachment and seek to answer the burning question:  How were these thoughts created?

Stay tuned!  :)

photo from Single Stone Studios

Now that you’ve worked through understanding your unique value, may reading the pictured Dr. Seuss quote illicit an automatic, “And, that’s a great thing!”  Not quite there yet?  Well, here’s part 2 of our Value challenge!

Value:  Part 2

This week, dialogue through the same questions you personally contemplated last week with 3 or more people you trust.

Share your answers to the first two questions below, and ask them for their feed back and thoughts.

1. My passions, dreams, hurts, and fears are…
2. My life story and how it positively contributes to making me who I am is…

1. What am I good at and not so good at?
2. What am I exceptional at?
3. What makes me unique and uniquely me?  What is that quality I have that no one else has?

Listen and believe them.

People change by changing what they think.  We learned that in the last post.  If only it were that easy!  Sometimes it is.  Most of the time it’s not.

Sometimes when my five year olds proclaim something, I will say, “Well, if you think THAT (whatever “that” is), then THAT is what is true.”  Or, “If you think  it’s scary when you turn off the lights, then it definitely will be!”  They have told me time and again that they’ve used the simple techniques I’ve shared with them: If you THINK it is true, then it’s TRUE.  Just more evidence that being in control of your thoughts is very easy!

Notice in those statements there is emotion attached to them.  It’s not JUST the thought.  It’s the emotion attached to the thought.

Let me drive home this thought concept even further. Besides conscious and subconscious thought which I talked about in my previous post, there are two other types of thoughts that are important to be aware of when we change.

1.  Implicit Memory

2. Explicit Memory

Memories are thoughts.  We don’t always think of memories as  thought, but they are.  Our brain doesn’t really know if what we’re remembering is happening now or in the future because time doesn’t really matter when we’re thinking in memories.

Have you ever had a memory of something that seems as if it is happening RIGHT NOW?  Usually those are the most traumatic or life-changing thoughts we have.  The memories occur in our minds as a visualization, and the visualization is attached to an emotion.  The visualization is a thought.  The entire memory is thought. The visualization and communication signals that produce the emotions within our body are the same, whether it’s an imagined event, or a real event.  That’s why visualizations are so useful when we practice changing.

Explicit Memory

Explicit Memory is memory that is made consciously.  It’s the grocery list you made this morning.  The dentist appointment we need to make by 3pm.  It’s thinking back to the day’s events at the end of the day. Explicit memory is what we can recall because we have a visualization attached to it.  It is the memory that we recall because when we talk about it, we see it happen in our head and we feel the action in our body.

Think back to your very first day of kindergarten.  What happened that day?  What did it feel like?  That is a conscious (explicit) memory.

What was the first job you had?  What tasks did you have to do?  What do you remember about the day?  What did you feel?  This is a conscious (explicit) memory.

Explicit memories have emotions tied to them AND you can see in your mind the events attached to the memory.

Implicit Memory

Implicit Memory, unlike explicit memory, doesn’t have a visualization attached to it.  This is an emotional memory ONLY.

When you have an implicit memory of something, you FEEL something around an event, but you have no visual recall of a situation.  In other words, you can’t really “put your finger on” a reason for feeling that way.  You feel that way because of a memory, but you aren’t sure what it is you’re supposed to be remembering.

Implicit memory is “implied” memory.  It means something happened and stuck in your brain, and you remember it in the depths of your being, but you don’t really know what the memory is.

Think of a situation that makes you frightened, but you aren’t sure why you’re so scared of it.  When you get in this situation, you have an all-out panic over what’s happening, but you can’t for the life of you know WHY you have this strong emotional reaction!

Think of someone that makes you ANGRY.  Why does this person make you angry?  Or, is there just something about this person – something you can’t quite “put your finger on” – that rubs you the wrong way?  You have a feeling, but no real REASON for disliking this person (if you’re honest with yourself, that is).

When you have an emotional memory – sometimes you may have heard this called “body memory” – this is implicit memory.  This is having a memory that you can’t recall.  It’s there, but you don’t really know what it is.

Memory Is Thought

We’re working on change.  And what we know is that we have to change our thoughts in order to change our emotions and actions.  I’ve now introduced two types of thought though – subconscious and implicit memory – in which we have no thought attached to it. Yikes!

Memories are thoughts, so even our memories have to be changed.

But you say, “Memories are just recollections of what already happened, so I can’t change them.”  True… this is definitely true.  But remember we talked about thoughts also being perceptions?  That perceptions, being thought, are what also cause emotions?  Therefore, memories, which are thoughts, which are really just perceptions of an event, can be changed. (You might have to read that a couple of times to soak it in.)

In other words, it is entirely possible to change our PERCEPTION of a recalled event.  It’s entirely possible to even change our perception of an event we can’t recall completely (like implicit memories).  This is story-changing, and we’ll get to that in future sections as well.

What’s important to know now is this:  Thoughts are powerful!  They come in many different forms, they change are what drive our emotions, and they are what drive our actions.  And finally, when we don’t like what we feel and what we do, we must ultimately change our thoughts (memories, perceptions, assumptions, beliefs, opinions…you get the picture!).

Change isn’t hard, we just have to know what we’re working with.

I get the feeling we’re about to embark on something great.  In fact, we are! In my next section, I will talk about how subconscious thoughts and implicit memory (those things of which we do not know) are formed.  Stay tuned!

Related articles

• Explicit and Implicit Memory (healthymemory.wordpress.com)
• Do We Control Our Emotions, Or Do Our Emotions Control Us? (davemsw.com)

Value

In our fast-paced, performance driven society, it is second-nature to think that our value is based on what we can offer other people.   How often do we think of value in terms of who we are instead of what we do? Yes, they are often interconnected, but we tend to focus on the “doing” rather than the “being”.  In other words, we are short-sighted to what we present on the outside rather than who we are at our core.

Change Challenge:  Week 1

This week’s challenge is to think about who you ARE.  Some questions to ponder:

1. What are your passions, dreams, hurts, and fears?
2. What is your life story and how does it positively contribute to making you who you are?
3. What are you good at and not so good at?
4. What are you exceptional at?
5. What makes you unique and uniquely you?  What is that quality that you have that no one else has?

You may find it helpful to process the journey by writing in a journal or getting some friends together and talking it through.

Yup, We’re Talking about You

You have value.  Now believe it.

Recap of Contest Rules:

1. “Like”  I Choose Change’s Facebook page
2. Post a picture, quote or one-liner on our Change Challenge:  Week 1 Facebook post by midnight Sunday, Feb. 19th
3.  Share this Weekly Challenge on your Facebook page.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  And, because we love you and love to see change in you, I Choose Change is launching our Change Challenge 52 today.  Read on to find out exactly what this challenge is, and what our incentive is for you to finish up the year strong (and, perhaps, with a ton of prizes).

The Purpose of Change Challenge 52

There are areas in all our lives that feel like they’re  in perpetual “stuck” mode.  These are things that fall into the annoying, nagging, unhelpful to who and where I want to be categories.  What are those areas for you? Did you name others around you or your situation or environment?  Our Change Challenge 52 is to help you see that the change can (and should) begin with you.  And, because we’re fun folks at I Choose Change, we’re going to help you, and us, do this in a fun and creative way.  Oh, and did we mention prizes?

OK!  I’m in…so what now?

Great!  We’re excited to have you join us on this adventure. There will be Weekly Challenges and Monthly Challenges (and a grand prize at the end of the 52 Weekly Challenges, but we’ll get to that later).  Here are the easy peasy rules:

1. Like I Choose Change’s Facebook page
2. Share each Weekly Challenge on your Facebook.
3. Look for our Weekly Change Challenge every Tuesday.
4. For the Weekly Challenges, post a picture, quote or a one-liner that summarizes your completion of the challenge by Sunday evening in the comments section of the challenge blog post post.
5. We will announce the Weekly Challenge winner of the Starbucks $5 giftcard on the following Tuesday along with our new challenge post.
6. Monthly Challenge:  Participants who posted for each weekly challenge are eligible for our monthly prizes! At the end of the month, participants will be asked to submit a post on their change evolution through the month based on their work on the weekly challenges.  Prize is $50 Amazon.com giftcard.
7. Look for our annual big prize at the end of the 52 weeks!  All previous winners of either weekly challenges or monthly change evolutions will be eligible.

A Sacred Space for Women – Women’s Circle. Find out more…

In my last post on “How People Change,” I talked about thoughts.  More specifically, what a thought is – judgment, opinion, perception, implication, assumption, etc.  I shared the definition of thought, which is:

Thought: To exercise the power of reason, as by conceiving ideas, drawing inferences, and using judgment. To weigh or consider an idea. To bring a thought to mind by imagination or invention. To recall a thought or an image to mind.

This definition is incredibly important!  Why?  Because it gives us power to change.  This definition says WE have the power to reason, based on our own judgments.  WE have the power to weigh ideas and consider alternatives.

If this is so, and I believe it is, then we have the power to CHANGE.  We choose a thought. We can change a thought.  Simple, right?

Not really.  Otherwise, no one would be in therapy and there wouldn’t be so many self-help books claiming to have THE answer everyone was looking for.

Here’s the frustrating part of change:  Our thoughts are not one-size-fits-all.

What I mean is, thoughts come in two distinct varieties, and are made in a way that creates a bit of havoc in our lives.  The two types are:

1. Conscious
2. Subconscious

Conscious thoughts are just as you imagine them to be – within our consciousness.  What we know we’re thinking, and can “think about thinking” right here in this moment.  Conscious thoughts are what we’re aware of.

Stop for a moment.  What are you thinking about right now?  What’s going through your mind?

That’s your conscious thought.

Consciousness refers to how your mind interacts with the world around you.  You have the ability to feel, think, perceive, opinionate, and be aware.

Subconscious thoughts (also known as unconscious – these words are interchangeable) are what you aren’t readily thinking about.  These are the thoughts that can wreak havoc on your life without you even knowing it!  (And then blame other people and things on what’s going on in your life, but that’s for another time…)

These are the thoughts that are within your being, but you can’t recall immediately.  These are the beliefs that reside in your mind, but you don’t always know what they are.  They aren’t the thoughts you immediately think about, because they are, in a way, “buried” thoughts.

Subconsciousness means to lack awareness.  It means you aren’t fully in-tune with a situation, thought, event, or act.

An example of subconscious thought would be to not eat tuna and drink milk together, ever, because you think you’ll get very ill. And, you perform that same action almost without any thought at all, for 18 years (see previous post if you’re confused).

Another example of subconscious thought would be driving to work, then getting there and realizing you don’t remember the drive at all.  You cannot recall getting from point A to point B – you were not conscious or aware of this drive whatsoever.  Your “awareness” is just below the surface of conscious thought.  You were acting rationally (in this case, but thought isn’t always rational), and yet you have no recollection of it, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, you were acting without any conscious input from yourself.  This is pretty scary, isn’t it?

But it gets even more scary!

Conscious thought – what we are aware of and know to be happening right now accounts for approximately 10-15% of all of our thoughts.

Subconscious thought – what we aren’t aware of, but still works to create emotions and actions in our daily living (remember, that’s what thoughts do!  They create emotions and actions) accounts for approximately 85-90% of all of our thoughts.

So, let’s get this straight…

Thoughts, which create your emotions, which create your actions, may be happening – no, ARE  happening – without your immediate knowledge.

If you’re someone who has ever asked yourself something like, “Why do I DO that??”  Well, there you go.  Now you know.

Subconscious thoughts are powerful.  They act on our behalf most of the time, creating feelings in our bodies without us even knowing.

Many people will use the phrase, “You make me feel…”  That’s not a true statement, right?  If someone outside of yourself can make you feel a certain way, then your power is taken away.  There is power in knowing YOU create what you feel from your own, albeit subconscious, thoughts.

Subconscious thoughts are acting on our behalf, creating the emotions that make us DO what we do.

Have you heard someone (or yourself!) say, “I don’t know why I do that!”  Well, now you know.

You, me, everyone DOES that, because we have an emotion that prompted action.  And we have that emotion because we have a thought, opinion, judgment, perception or assumption about others, ourselves, or our worldview, that creates that emotion.

Thoughts create emotions.  Emotions create actions.

Subconscious thoughts create emotions.

Subconscious thoughts are powerful.

We can’t escape subconscious thoughts.

Yikes!

===

Okay, so I’ve painted a bleak picture.  It’s not really all that bad. Sure, subconscious thoughts account for 85-90% of all of our thoughts.  And, sure thoughts are what create those yucky emotions (and good ones!) we don’t like and create those yucky actions (and good ones!) we don’t want.  And, well, yes, we don’t really even know what our thoughts are, and so how can we change those yucky feelings and yucky actions?

Right, right. It is the dilemma we’re seeking to work out.

Subconscious means we don’t know. And the irony is, I’m telling you, you have power to choose just by changing your thoughts.

But if you don’t know what your thoughts are, how can you change them?

Ah. That’s the question of the century

Counseling revolves around THAT central question.  Once you understand how thoughts, emotions and actions work, and that you are in control of them, even if you don’t know what they are, then you’ll work to uncover those powerful subconscious thoughts, and change them.

Choose to change your subconscious thoughts!

Next time, I’ll talk about two other types of thoughts (never fear, we’re leading up to the “how people change” part of this thing – I promise!).

Related articles

• How People Change (Part 1) (ichoosechange.com)

Sit on our Facebook couch: http://www.facebook.com/ichoosechange

In my previous posts, I discussed the TEA process.  Specifically, we dug into extreme actions and extreme emotions.

Here’s a summary of what we talked about:  Without actions, we simply have an emotion that isn’t expressed.  Emotions on the other hand occur all day, everyday, and come in three distinct varieties:  numb, normal, and extreme.

• Numb simply means to avoid all emotion – to choose NOT to feel, if you will.
• Normal emotions are simply:  anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, and guilt.
• Extreme emotions are kicked up normal ones:  rage, depressed, panic, shame, and manic.

Our goal is to have a NORMAL range of emotions and hence a NORMAL range of actions that express how we feel.

Also recall from my very first post in this series that what creates emotions (which ultimately creates actions), are our thoughts.  What’s in our mind is what really matters, and that’s what I’m going to touch on below.

This is a big topic, but I’ll discuss my thoughts on thoughts (ha ha) in small bites.

I’ll first explain what I mean by “thoughts.”

It seems pretty easy, right?  A thought is a thought is a thought.  Here is a definition from the American Heritage Medical dictionary:

Thought: To exercise the power of reason, as by conceiving ideas, drawing inferences, and using judgment. To weigh or consider an idea. To bring a thought to mind by imagination or invention. To recall a thought or an image to mind.

When I use the word “thought” within the TEA Process, I like to include all the major synonyms as well, such as:

• Judgments
• Implications
• Perceptions
• Assumptions
• Belief
• Opinions
• Presumptions
• Speculations
• …etc.

If we were to look at each of those definitions separately, what we’d find (and what you can gather from just reading the list), is that we are the creators of our own thoughts.

Think about it for a minute.  How else does a thought occur in your mind?  Who puts it there?  Where does it come from?

As humans, we are solely in charge of what is in our minds.  Our thoughts exist because we allow them to exist.  Our judgments, beliefs, opinions, perceptions and assumptions occur within our minds because we “brought it to the mind by imagination or invention” (see the definition above).

We think a thought because we CHOOSE to think a thought.

We have an opinion because we CHOOSE to have an opinion.

We keep a belief because we CHOOSE to keep a belief.

All assumptions, presumptions, conclusions, resolutions, worldviews, and beliefs (and all other synonyms) exist because we CHOOSE to have them.  (And of course, we can CHOOSE to change!)

We have beliefs about ourselves, about others, and about the world around us.  This is a very important point to be made about the TEA Process, so let’s dig a bit deeper into the concept:

• We choose to have beliefs (thoughts) about OURSELVES.
• We choose to have beliefs (thoughts) about OTHERS.
• We choose to have beliefs (thoughts) about the WORLD – this is our “Worldview.”

And no matter what we believe about any given topic, we are sure to find someone else who thinks exactly the same thing, and who helps us believe what we think is THE way to think – that it’s “right.”

The big questions to answer are:  Who determines what thought is correct?  Who is to say what belief is the right belief?  Whose worldview is right?  How do we know what we believe, assume, perceive, presume, judge and think is the RIGHT thought to have?

Who says?

The most important part of the equation in the process of change is this:

WE CHOOSE WHAT WE THINK.

Therefore, it stands to reason that if we choose what we think, we also choose what we FEEL (Emotions) and we choose what we DO (Actions).  Afterall, thoughts create emotions and emotions create actions, right?  Let me demonstrate that now…

The color blue is the prettiest color that exists (thought / opinion).  When I put on my blue shirt, I feel beautiful and self-confident (emotion).  I have a pep in my step the entire day! (action)

Another example:

When I was growing up, my grandmother told me if you eat fish and drink milk at the same time, you’ll get deathly ill (no exaggeration).  Consequently, one of my favorite foods is tuna salad and one of my favorite drinks is…milk!  But since my grandmother taught my mother about the deadly concoction and my mother taught me, I avoided having these two together like the plague!  I wasn’t ready to DIE for goodness sake!

While in college, I existed on anything that was easily opened with a can opener.  I’d eat corn right out of the can as an entire meal, tuna out of the can, green beans, baked beans – you get the idea.  One day, (you know where this is going, right?), I ate some tuna and without even thinking about it, washing it down with a tall glass of milk.

PANIC.

You can imagine the sheer PANIC that went through  my body, right?  And the only thing I could do was sit and wait for the sickness to wash over my body.

(I know this seems like a made up story – it’s not!)

I waited, and waited, and waited.  Waited some more.  Waited more.  Time passed and passed.

And of course, nothing happened.

I couldn’t believe it!  I mean, LITERALLY couldn’t believe it!  Of COURSE what my grandmother and mother taught me were correct, right?  That when you have fish and milk, you get deathly ill?  That you’ll get the most violent stomach ache and vomiting fits that you could ever imagine possible?  Of COURSE this was true.  My grandmother – the best woman on the planet I might add, and so full of wisdom – told me it was true!

But it wasn’t true.   Nothing happened.  I probably just fell asleep and took a nap, then woke up thinking, “Am I…. okay?”

The reason I didn’t get sick is because the belief my grandmother had about tuna and milk was untrue.  Where did she get that belief?  Probably from her mother or grandmother!  She gave it to my mother, and my mother gave it to me.  And if I hadn’t experienced absolutely NOTHING that day in college (yes, folks, 18 to 19 years into my life with this belief), my daughters might have this belief.  Who knows!

The point is, we believe something because we choose to believe it.  We have thoughts because we choose to have them.  We don’t check out facts for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.  And even when we do draw our own conclusions, what we come up with is still our choice!

So what does this have to do with change?

If we feel something we don’t want to feel (anger, depression, panic, etc.) then we must conclude that we feel this because of a thought we CHOOSE to have.  Likewise, if we are doing something we don’t want to do (insomnia, over eating, over drinking, etc.) then we must conclude that we are acting this way because of an emotion we most likely don’t want to feel.  And, we are feeling that emotion we don’t want to because of….. our thoughts!

It’s important that we examine fully, our thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, opinions, judgments, etc.  If we don’t, we may be feeling things we don’t want to feel and doing things we don’t want to do.  We are 100% responsible for what we think!

In my next post, I will continue to talk about thoughts.  Specifically, I will talk about the two types of thoughts and the two types of memory swirling around in our minds that affect our thoughts.  I’ll also discuss where our thoughts come from (although you can see from this post partially where they come from – our mothers and grandmothers!).

Until next time,

Jennifer

Copyright © 2011 Jennifer Slingerland Ryan

Related articles

• How People Change (Part 1) (ichoosechange.com)
• How People Change (Part 2) (ichoosechange.com)
• How People Change: Feelings…Nothing More Than… (ichoosechange.com)
• How To Beat Negative Thoughts (huffingtonpost.com)

Notice our little man has grown since my last post!  Last time I talked about actions that were either internal or external (acting out or acting in).  This time, I’ll be talking about feelings…nothing more than, feelings…

Ahem.

There really are only two types of emotions, and we can call them “good” and “bad.”  Clients only come to counseling because of their “bad” emotions (and bad behaviors).

The Good and The Bad

Within the “bad” emotions though, there are three categories.  Before I go into the three types, I’ll demonstrate “normal” emotions with a story.

A mother confided in me, asking how she should handle her angry daughter.  When asked her to elaborate, she relayed the story of how when her daughter became angry, she would run upstairs as fast as she could and slam her door without saying a word.

Mom would run up to the daughter’s bedroom, swing open the door and demand that she talk out her problems.  She said running away was no way to handle how she felt, and that it was very disrespectful to slam the door in her mother’s face.  This was no way to act!

I probed mom more…

I asked, “Where were you when she slammed the door in your face?”  Mom said, “I was downstairs.”  So I asked, “Then, it wasn’t really in your face, right?  It was on a totally different level of the home.”  Of course, mom agreed.

Then I asked, “What was your daughter doing in her bedroom while in there by herself?”  Mom told me her daughter had her head buried in, and sometimes even hitting, her pillow.  Mom was very uncomfortable with this behavior!  When I asked her why, she said, “Because she needs to talk about why she’s upset without getting so angry!”

I dug further, asking how she expressed anger when she was a child and how her mother expressed anger.  She said she wasn’t allowed to be angry when she grew up, but that as a child and even now as an adult, she had her own dealings with anger.  She had a bit of a temper, admittedly.  She would slam a door here and there, and she definitely yelled.  In fact, she’d even raised a hand to her daughter and slapped her on at least one occasion.

We’ll talk more about family dynamics and how they play into Moms behavior later, but for now, this is what’s important…

I asked Mom, very honestly, “How do you want your daughter to express her anger, if not the way she did?”  The truth is, the daughter DIDN’T slam the door in her FACE.  She slammed the door, but…is that really a horrible thing?

The daughter was expressing her anger by hitting and crying into her pillow.  Who was this hurting?  Why was it inappropriate?

I pointed out to Mom that these behaviors SEEMED like normal behaviors.  And so I begged the question, and will ask you, the reader, “What is the best way to deal with anger?”

In fact, what is the best way to deal with ALL emotion?  Where is the rule book on appropriateness?  How does one act out sadness?  How does one act out happy?  Guilt?  Anxious?

So much of the time, we aren’t taught what “normal” emotion is.  As parents, we teach our kids not to feel what they need to feel:  don’t yell (it’s disrespectful), don’t cry (or I’ll give you something to cry about), don’t stomp off (it’s disrespectful), don’t, don’t, don’t… you get the idea.

That brings me to the first category of emotion, which is “normal.”

It’s important to understand what is within the normal range of emotion.  Some examples of normal emotions are sad, angry, anxious, happy, and afraid, to name a few.  And as we now know, with normal emotions come normal behaviors.

How does one act when they are angry?  Sad? Anxious? Happy? Afraid?

Naturally, if we “kick up” our actions, it’s because we have “kicked up” emotions.  It makes sense, doesn’t it?

If you’re angry, you stomp, yell, slam a door (all normal, by the way!).  When enraged, you hit someone, yell obseneties, and actually slam a door IN someone’s face (as opposed to 50 feet away from someone).

Someone who is acting out “sad” might cry, yell, hit a pillow, or isolate themselves (external actions).  They might even have a stomach ache or a headache (internal actions).

Anxiety might bring stomach pains, diarrhea, and ruminating thoughts. Breaking  a sweat and feeling queazy is also a common form of “acting out” or “acting in” the feeling of anxiety.

Those actions don’t always FEEL good, but it doesn’t mean they’re bad.

Going To Extremes

Just as we have extreme external and internal actions as we discussed in my last post, we also have extreme emotions.

So, what does “kicked up” anger look like?  Rage.

What does “kicked up” sadness look like?  Depression.

What does “kicked up” happiness look like?  Mania.

To feel anxiety to the extreme – panic.

To feel guilt to the extreme – shame.

You get the idea.

The “normal” range of emotions are just that – normal.  But the “kicked up” or “extreme” emotions don’t always feel as normal.  Just as we have internal actions, we also have emotions that are expressed internally, so rather than having rage, we feel numb.  Rather than feeling depressed, we feel numb.  Rather than feel shame, we feel numb.  And so it it goes…

Numb <— Sad —> Depressed

Numb <— Angry —> Enraged

Numb <— Anxious —> Panic

Numb <— Fear —> Phobic

You get the idea.

On one side of the spectrum we feel numb.  On the other side of the spectrum, we feel extreme emotion.  I would say that “numb” is extreme as well, it’s just emotion that occurs internally.  You can’t “see” numb when it’s acted out.  This person would have “internal” or “acting in” behaviors most of the time.  When you look at this person, they appear just fine and dandy on the outside, but on the inside, they are a wreck (consequently, this is the type of client I see most of the time!).

Many people don’t know how to feel a normal range of emotion (i.e. sad, angry, anxious, fearful, etc.), and so they either “numb out” or they “kick it up a notch” into the extreme emotions.  When someone kicks up their emotions to the extreme, they then have an excuse to get on medication or self-medicate.  Likewise, a person who is “numbing out” may be self-medicating.

Either way, what’s important here is understanding what is normal about emotion, and hence about the behaviors we use to act out those emotions.

Next time, I get into what’s so juicy and fun about change – the mind!  Not that actions and emotions aren’t juicy and fun – they are!  It’s just that, they’re so – there.  You can see actions and everyone has emotions (whether they know how to express them or not).  Many times, we think this is all there is to us – just feelings and behaviors.  But OH… the fun of the brain!

Until next time…

Related articles

• How People Change (Part 1) (ichoosechange.com)
• Anger: A normal emotion for Alzheimer’s caregivers (mayoclinic.com)
• Learning to Channel Anger: Help Your Child Cope (brighthub.com)

Yesterday I posted the super-simple initial process of change.  On paper, it seems very easy – and it is!

Thoughts create emotions.  Emotions create actions.

It stands to reason that if you change what you’re thinking, you’ll change what you’re feeling, right?  In theory, that is absolutely correct!

So, process done.

Well, not so fast…

There’s more to change than just reading a simple little diagram and snapping your fingers.

This is a great beginning though, and one I call the “TEA process.”  It’s obvious why:

T = Thoughts

E = Emotions

A = Actions

I love this acronym for other reasons, besides it simply being the initials of thoughts, emotions and actions.  The acronym is meant to be a reminder to slow down and, well, think.  Think about what you’re thinking.

I envision having a cup of tea on a nice patio, and pondering… life.  Pondering what’s going on in my mind, in my world, with my friends, in their worlds, and with my emotions.  While, having a cup of ice cold tea or warm tea. It’s a reminder to sip something, and ponder.   Hopefully that acronym will help give you a reminder to slow down as well.

You’ll notice in today’s diagram, I’ve placed the thoughts, emotions and actions into the figure of a person.  I want these words to come alive for you.  This is another reminder.

So here’s the thing…

Thoughts occur in your mind, obviously.  Emotions are in your mind, too, as with everything, but you feel them in your heart, which is where you see them on my “person” diagram.  And actions happen within your body.

I told you yesterday I’d talk about the two types of actions.  By the way, I’ll be starting with the lower part of the body (diagram), “actions,” and working my way up to the mind.  Then, I’ll spend a majority of my time in the mind, talking about how the mind and brain (not the same thing, and we’ll get to that!) work to create your emotions and actions.

Two Types of Actions:

1.  External.  This is what I like to call “acting out” – a term we’ve all heard.  When someone “acts out” they are showing us how they feel.  It doesn’t matter how old you are, your actions say something about you without you being verbal at all.

Your body can perform an action, and if I’m tuned in, I can know how you feel without you having to say how you feel.  This is one skill of a great therapist.  (And frankly, we’re all great therapists if we allow ourselves to be “in tune” as I just said – more on that later).

2.  Internal.  This is what I like to call “acting in.”  This is, of course, the opposite of acting out.  These actions aren’t always as easy as “tuning in” because they happen almost without anyone noticing.  The person who comes to my office who is “acting in,” is concealing how they feel.  Their bodies ARE performing an action, but it can’t easily be seen.

Here are some examples:

(Notice how our man has now grown legs!)

External / Acting Out:  These actions are easy, peasy to spot.  Remember the examples from yesterday of the crazy driver giving the finger, the husband snapping as his wife, and the husband hanging up on his wife?  Those are actions that are external.

Have you ever known someone who has an alcohol problem, an eating disorder, or a gambling problem?  Those are external actions as well.  I could make a very looong list of actions that are external and show emotions in outside of the body.  You can, too!  Here are a few that come to mind:

• overeating (binging / purging / not eating)
• over drinking
• extra-marital affairing (I know that’s not a word)
• sleeping too much
• sleeping too little
• erratic shopping
• gambling
• excessive irritiability
• raging
• gossiping
• eye-rolling

Image via Wikipedia

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to have a new feature on the I Choose Change blog.  I’m going to outline, just as I do in most all of my sessions, the process of change.

(You might also be wondering why I included a picture of 7-Eleven on this post.  You’re about to see…)

In almost all of my sessions, I take clients through, what I believe, to be the change process.  As you’ll see on our website, and on my biography page, I use a combination of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and Attachment Theory.

I start in different spots for different clients.  For some clients, I only touch on the CBT part of the process.  And for others, I only touch on the Attachment Theory part of the process.  Yet for others, I will give bits and pieces of some of the entire process, and for a remaining few, we barely touch on this stuff at all.

It all depends on the person in the room, what their issue is, how much work they’ve already done before they came to my office, and more importantly, how much insight they have.

Some people lack awareness and insight into the inner-workings of their own bodies and minds.  For them, they will have a hard time digesting parts of this process.  And, for that I say, at this point in their life, it’s not important to know they kit-and kaboodle.  I just start right where they’re at, feeling them out to know how much they can handle, and go from there.

For everyone, no matter who they (you!) are, we all fit in this process.  There are kinks in the process along the way, and that’s where I come in as a therapist:  To help work out the kinks in the process!

Indulge me.  For several years I’ve wanted to write up this little booklet (in reality, I don’t know how many pages this explanation will really be) about the change process, but I find myself always in a rut.  Stuck, and not able to write as clearly as I talk in my therapy sessions.  In fact, there are times I end my day, reflect on sessions I’ve had, and can’t for the life of me know what the heck I’ve said in there, and where in my being it came from.  The best way to describe the process I go through as a therapist is that I’m in the zone.  

If you’ve worked out with intensity, you know what the zone is.  You know that it’s sort of a meditative process where you literally “zone out” and work through some subconscious inner-workings of your mind.  Or something like that…

My therapy process is much the same way.  Hence, when I’m not in “the zone” (which is to say, not in a therapy session), I have a hard time putting the words of this process down in stone.

Nevertheless, it’s something I really WANT to do, and have wanted to do for quite sometime, so I am going to take the leap and try to get myself into the zone of change.  Specifically, I want to tell you how people change.

If you’re a reader of this blog, I welcome your questions.  They will actually help me.

The writing process, I think, will be a little like this:  I’m going to take each step of the process, little by little, each day, for at least 30 days.  Some days I’ll write more than other days.  Some concepts are more involved than others.

Overall, I won’t be writing about each step in an incredible amount of detail.  Some steps will require more detail, but I’ll give just enough to get the point across.  Why?  Because this process really is so, so easy, and I want it to read that way.  Giving more in-depth reviews of each concept will be mundane and boring, and I’d prefer save it for another discussion.

So here goes…

Assuming I am going through the entire process with all my clients, I start with a very, very simple diagram on my whiteboard, and I explain the very basics of the CBT process, which is this:

This diagram represents YOU.  This diagram represents ME.  This diagram represents your spouse, your child, your mom, your dad, the 7-eleven clerk and the person driving the car who gave you the finger this morning.  This diagram is every single person in the world who has the ability to process information in their brain on some coherent, functioning level.  And it’s simple:

Thoughts create emotions.  And emotions create actions.  (Some of you may be saying, “Duh!”  It’s simple, I know.  But hang with me… there’s more juicy stuff, I promise.)

In every single transaction throughout our day, this is the process we go through.

We have a thought in an instant that will create an emotion.  The emotion (feeling) is then acted upon.

Sometimes we don’t know we have a thought, but in fact, we have them all day, everyday.  In fact, it’s estimated that we have about 60,000 thoughts everyday.  If you’re an anxious person, you probably have more thoughts.  If you’re a depressed person, you probably have less thoughts.

An anxious person, by nature, has ruminating thoughts.  Their head spins with thoughts around and around and around, in an effort to predict the future.  (Predicting the future means you have to analyze things to DEATH.  You think of a scenario from this angle, from that angle, and from the other angle.  You try to predict every little part of what could possibly happen – in the future!  Thoughts are rampant with an anxious person!)

A depressed person, by nature, has slowed thoughts.  Their thoughts are hard to process and work through, like molasses.  They can be forgetful, get sidetracked, and slowed down in their cognitions.

Our job as humans in the change process is the slow down this process enough to think about what we’re thinking about, and on some level, think about what OTHERS may be thinking about.  It’s only in being able to know what we’re thinking that we’re able to change what we’re feeling.  And it’s only by knowing what we’re thinking and feeling that we can change our actions.

Thoughts are both conscious and subconscious.  I’ll get into that more a little bit later, but for now, what is important to know is this:

Thoughts create emotions.  Emotions create actions.  

Here are some examples:

• When you snapped at your kids because they wouldn’t eat their dinner, this was an action, obviously.  But it was fueled by an emotion.  What emotion?  Anger?  Frustration?  Annoyance?  Or something bigger?  And, what were the thoughts that preceeded that feeling?  Who caused that action in you?  (Trick question, watch out!)
• When the driver tailgated you then gave you the finger when he passed you a few minutes later, that was an action.  Several actions, actually!  And it was fueled by emotion.  What emotion could this person have had?  Rage?  Irritation?  Overwhelm?  What emotion did YOU have?  We don’t know about the driver, but we can assume many different emotions.  Regardless, his emotion was triggered by a thought, or MANY thoughts even.
• Your wife called and said she would be late coming home from work, but you’ve already made dinner.  You snap at her.   She yells back.  You hang up on her, then you both give each other the silent treatment the rest of the night  Many actions!

All of the actions, no matter how many within a single transaction, are brought on by feelings.  Our job is to know what feelings are at play so we can change the actions.  And, we also want to know what thoughts are at play – this is MOST important!

In the above example, wife is perhaps overwhelmed with work, frustrated that she can’t be home with the family, or even guilty because she feels inadequate (another feeling) as a mom and wife.  You feel angry because she didn’t call sooner, sad because you miss her, overwhelmed because you’ve been home with the kids all day, and perhaps, hungry.  All emotions!  And all of those emotions triggered an argument and the silent treatment.

What’s important to know for now is that this process happens all day, everyday, several thousand times.  It happens to you, it happens to me, it happens to the 7-Eleven clerk, and it happens to your therapist.  No one (who is of sound mind and body, and for the purpose of my writing, I’ll assume from here on out that I’m talking about people who ARE of sound mind and body, okay?) is exempt from this process of thoughts creating emotions and emotions creating actions.

Next time, I’ll talk about the two different types of actions.  Then, I’ll talk about the two different types of emotions, and finally, I’ll discuss the many ways thoughts are manifested plus the two types of memory that are connected to thoughts.

Until then, pay attention to your own thoughts throughout the day.  You have close to 60,000 of them, so there’s a lot!  Ever wonder why you don’t even KNOW what thoughts you’re having in a day, even though there’s so many of them?  We’ll talk about that, too…

Until next time,

Jennifer

Related articles

• Stop Self-Criticism With Compassionate Self-Awareness (psychologytoday.com)
• Leading Change: How Great Leaders Deal with Criticism (leadershipwatch-aadboot.com)
• My Therapy Homework for Processing Emotions (faithallen.wordpress.com)
• Our Emotional Subconscious (flowpsychology.com)