# RESOURCE: "You feel the way you think" - thoughts & moods



## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

Recently there was a post where someone asked about how anxiety could be caused by thoughts - and its a really important question, especially to folks that are only just coming to realise what social anxiety is and how it affects them. The poster had asked, how can you be sure that emotions like anxiety come from thoughts? Surely anxiety is totally irrational - how can thoughts be behind it?

If this is how you are feeling, then you are quite right to question this assumption - after all, for many people, when walking down a street and someone walks towards you, you don’t consciously hear any thoughts or words go through your head. You just suddenly feel anxious. When you walk into a room, and everyone looks at you, no 'thoughts' go through your head, there is no announcement inside your mind that 'tells' you to feel anxious. In this way I can see exactly what you are saying - thoughts don’t seem to come into it at all. There is calm, and then there is panic. No warning. However when we talk about thoughts being the basis of our fears, we are describing something that is JUST out of consciousness, but nontheless IS within reach to us.

So something I'd like to ask you is - how do you think you experience the world around you? There are people, things objects, events, actions ... there are credit cards, ice cream cones, ice cream vendors, girls at a party, a crowd of people looking at you. These are things that occupy the world. Then you walk into it. Your eyes and ears pick up the sounds and pictures of your world - dry data if you like.

What happens next? Well, the images must go through the visual part of the brain. Sounds must go through the audio part of the brain. The raw data is made into something useable - but right now it could be anything right? A road drill. A cow mooing. A police siren. The view of your computer. But when we look at our keyboard, we don’t see a mess of squiggles. We see LETTERS - which we can interpret. We know they can form words. We know words can be neutral, or words can have meaning ... in some way, words can have a link to emotion.

But how? Something has to happen next - and that thing is ASSIGNING MEANING to the things we experience. This is achieved in the seat of the brains consciousness - the thalamus. Also wired to this part of the brain is the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system is pure emotion, it works in imagery and feelings of fear. The cortex deals in reasoning and data. Thoughts. It is this data that describes and stores the descriptions of the world as you experience it. It originates in the thalamus, it is stored and processed in the cortex and emotional meaning is attributed by the limbic system. Lastly, attached to this whole thing are the motor centres - the parts of the brain that generate behaviours, based on the reasoning conducted by the cortex OR the limbic system.

The limbic system however is the primitive brain. If you like it is the stage in evolution before humans developed the ability to be 'aware of awareness' - the ability to reason that other animals do not have or have to a far lesser degree. Because it deals in baser urges such as survival, not only does it have A 'HIJACK SWITCH' which it can press to send us into a panic and override the reasoning cortex, but it also works on radically simplified generalisations of the world around it. These generalisations work EXTREMELY FAST (because they are designed to protect us from threat - and in humans, SOCIAL THREAT is just as fear-inducing as physical threat). They also work JUST BELOW CONSCIOUSNESS.

However, this is where we depart from animals. Humans, by dint of having the cortex, are able to 'observe consciousness' as it happens. To watch the emotions as they arise and to attach yet another layer of meaning to them. We are the only creatures who can do this. What am I driving at?

You are right - we do not 'hear words' when we are afraid or anxious, our chief experience tends to be raw emotion. However, due to the near-subconscious nature of these thoughts, there are parts that we tend not to notice.

What we miss is that we CAN pick up these 'interpretations' just as they arise. Because of the link between cortex and limbic system, it is possible to assign VERBAL MEANING to the emotions we experience. It is possible to understand why a stimulus is frightening to us and to 'describe' it in terms of thoughts. When we walk into a room and feel fear, we may feel that people will look at us. We may feel that someone will point out our clothes and laugh, or that we will be asked to speak. We may think that we will stutter or blush and that people will laugh or judge us badly. We are afraid of SOMETHING, and by taking a step back it is possible to describe what it is we are afraid of. 

As we become better at describing what the basis of the fear is and so essentially describing THOUGHTS, we come to notice other things. We are learning the skill of questioning our automatic, ingrained responses. We start t notice that IMAGES flash through our mind as well - pictures of people looking disgusted. People laughing. Just as this image flashes through the mind, we feel anxious or afraid.

As I said above, in fear situations the limbic system takes over - but it is based on a STEP DOWN evolution of thinking, made useful only because of the speed of its reaction (it takes 0.5 ms to respond - that’s quicker than you are able to understand this word I just typed). This step down is an APPROXIMATION based on the past, and if that past involves SOCIAL THREAT or PAIN, it ill be programmed to look out for it. Like a frightened rabbit, it is hypersensitive to ANYTHING that resembles the past painful situation. It becomes GENERALISED to all people and social situations and at this stage you have Social Anxiety Disorder.

However, it is much more valuable to be able to describe our thoughts than it first seems. Because the cortex deals in words, and the limbic system in images and emotions, there is a translation between the two and so A ROUTE OF CONTROL. WORDS that describe the self, the environment and others can be used to modify the EMOTIONS that the limbic system attaches to them. Access, and then change the words and so the THOIGHTS - and you change the EMOTIONS. When you have done that you activate the final part of the puzzle - the motor centres - and the straight line between action / meaning / emotion is complete. 

What you have now is the ability to change your interpretation of history to change the blanket assumptions that your limbic system made, to question and verify the meaning of new experiences as they arrive and - as humans have the ability to look into the future - the ability to change our EXPECTATIONS - which, connected as they are to BEHAVIOURS, are the final reinforcer of the loop.

As a final experiment if you still cannot see the link between thoughts, images and feelings ... Imagine a small, fluffy white bunny rabbit. See his little trembley nose. You can hear his little heart beating and he has these big, brown eyes that seem to be full of tears. He paws his food bowl towards you and nuzzles his warm little body up against you. Are you feel warm? Sympathetic? Maybe uncomfortable? Perhaps powerful? How about this. You are in bed, alone. The door opens and the woman of your dreams appears in the doorway, dressed in a satin dress and looking beautiful. She runs her finger down your bedclothes, looking you in the eye as she bites her glossed lower lip and looks at you .... what ya feeling now? 

The images of anxiety and the thoughts that go with them are just as able to make you afraid as a pleasant image or an erotic fantasy is able to affect your emotions. When you realise they are there, learn to describe what they are saying and talk BACK to them in the language of the higher, evolved brain, you can begin to change how you feel.


----------



## raymac_6262 (Dec 31, 2007)

Brilliant. I've had a major breakthrough in the last week as a result of this post. My anxiety level has reduced significantly and I am able to grasp more and more my sense of calm and how to use CBT. A lot of it is not only thinking the thoughts but imagining the feeling...You could rant positive commands at yourself all day for a month and not see any results but its the conviction you speak to yourself with and much you believe in your own thoughts. And being able to feel the true feeling of calm as you think to yourself. Thank you Ross,
you are truly an SP genius, you should become a psychotherapist and teach CBT specifically for SP once you are 100% better
All the best, Ray


----------



## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

Thanks Ray! That means a lot!  Super glad that the post made a real dent in your SP, may the progress continue!

Ross


----------



## bobbawobba (Dec 4, 2008)

ross,u r smart as u r understanding.u could really go far wit that intelligence!ive read about cbt but i never understood it as well as ur posts.im already making progress but i overlooked chaniging core beliefs till i read ur posts.i think itll help trmendously.thank u


----------



## yakubu (Nov 4, 2008)

i suggest you read gillian butlers book overcoming sa and shyness. and also look at the nlp communication models

thoughts create feelings. feelings do not arise ont heir own . thoughts are the casue and feelings are the effect

obviously there are times when thoughts arent the casue of your feelings eg you could have consumed a lot of junk food and the poor nturition could be the cause of your anxiety but most of the time thoughts are the culprit of your anxiety

ask yourself this. 2 people in a room with a dog. 1 hugs the dog and the other has a panic attack. whats the difference between the 2 people ? THOUGHTS. 

one has memories of beings bitten by a dog and these memoires are trigger which results in certain thoughts.

what happens is a person experiences an event. all the info of that event comes in through the 5 senses and is flitered through a persons memories and beleif. these memories and beleifs are uncocnious to a person so they are not aware of them 

the result of the filtering process leaves an internal representation of the event int he persons concious mind. the internal representation consist of automatic thoughts and images etc... and the type of internal representation with produce certain feelings. e.g people will have different internal representations. the person with a phobia of dogs will have a different internal represanetaion than the person who loves dogs. one internal representation will produce good feelings whilst another will produce anxiety and panic

the internal representation is in concious awareness of the person. the internal representation is a person thoughts. sometimes a person will not notice it but if they look closely they will.

there is always thoughts in your head when you feel anxious. sometimes those thoughts are blatantly obvious and sometimes you just have to look a bit closely in order to notice them

however the origional thoughts eg beleifs and memories are unconious and not in a persons head when feeling anxious


----------



## Kuyaz (Aug 2, 2009)

Bump.

This was an insanely brilliant post. I'm surprised it didn't get much replies. I'd recommend people to read through all of it well enough that you understand what is said to put it to use.

The key is in this paragraph here.

_It is much more valuable to be able to describe our thoughts than it first seems. Because the cortex deals in words, and the limbic system in images and emotions, there is a translation between the two and so A ROUTE OF CONTROL. WORDS that describe the self, the environment and others can be used to modify the EMOTIONS that the limbic system attaches to them. Access, and then change the words and so the THOIGHTS - and you change the EMOTIONS. When you have done that you activate the final part of the puzzle - the motor centres - and the straight line between action / meaning / emotion is complete._


----------



## beethoven (Jan 17, 2011)

Excellent post! You have amazing writing skills!


----------



## Karsten (Apr 3, 2007)

I remember this guy. Wonder why he left?


----------

