Thoughts And Feelings

HOW THEY INTERACT TO MAINTAIN EMOTIONAL BALANCE

How are Thoughts & Feelings Related?

Most people assume that the events in their everyday lives directly lead to their feelings. If we’re running late for work, we may become anxious or annoyed. If someone gives us a compliment, we may feel happy. This seems obvious enough, but what is usually missed is a crucial part… our interpretation of what that event means to us. Ever notice how people can react very differently to receiving the same compliment? What makes them react differently is their individual interpretations of what that compliment means to them. It is the belief we have about an event that influences our feelings about it. This is summarized with an ABC sequence:

Activating event à Belief à emotional Consequence

Where the Activating event is the situation or thing that happens to you, the Belief is your interpretation of the event or what that event means to you, and the emotional Consequence is the emotion or feeling you end up having about the event.

An Example…

Joe sees a good friend across the street and waves at him. The friend ignores Joe and keeps walking. In this example, the Activating event for Joe is being ignored by a friend he waved at. Below are 4 possible beliefs Joe might have, and how he’d emotionally react to each one:

Belief Emotional Consequence

Notice the first 3 emotional consequences—3 different ways to feel, but it’s the same event each time! Can you see how it may not be the event that would make Joe feel a certain way, but his interpretation of the event?

Joe concluded that the most likely explanation for the event is captured in belief # 4. The emotional consequence is left blank—how do you think you’d feel in such a situation? Most people would probably not react strongly with any emotion at all. So if we had to assign an emotional consequence to #4, the best answer might be "neutral" or "no change in emotion"—which certainly sounds better than anger, hurt, or worry!

The above example should also illustrate that Joe is not a passive recipient of the things that happen to him. Instead, he, like the rest of us, actively creates and interprets the world around him. In other words, we have a lot more responsibility and control over how we feel than we realize. How do we realize this? By being aware of our own thoughts.

A Little More about Thoughts

Human beings are thinking creatures. We think all the time. All of us are constantly thinking about ourselves and the world around us as we go through our everyday lives. You had several thoughts this morning as you got out of bed, as you decided what to have for breakfast or whether to have it, as you first walked into the room you’re in now. Throughout your waking life, your mind keeps a running commentary on what’s happening. This happens so continually that we learn to "tune it out." Because the thoughts (beliefs) about the day-to-day activities of our lives can occur so quickly, almost without our conscious notice, they’re also known as automatic thoughts. Sometimes these automatic thoughts are realistic, but at other times they may be distorted.

How Does This Relate to Psychological Problems?

The A-B-C model provides a useful framework for explaining how various psychological problems can be maintained. For example, a person with depression will frequently have a tendency to interpret situations negatively. The automatic thoughts of depressed persons often center around feeling inadequate, or the environment being depressing, or the future looking bleak. For people suffering from anxiety, their automatic thoughts tend to interpret the environment as dangerous, threatening, or demanding, and they may view themselves as unable to deal with that environment.

So Where Does Distorted Thinking Come From?

All of us, depressed or not, anxious or not, will have distorted or negative automatic thoughts from time to time—it’s human nature. No one is always perfectly objective. But where do these distortions come from? A popular theory in psychology holds that our everyday automatic thoughts come from more stable beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. We call these core beliefs. Core beliefs are formed from our life experiences, often in childhood but also throughout our lives, and they can be very stubborn. That’s because we tend to interpret our everyday life experiences in ways that fit our core beliefs, thus making the core beliefs even stronger. If you were to record the hundreds of automatic thoughts you have in a typical week, it’s likely that you’ll find common themes in them—those themes reflect the core beliefs you have.

An Example…

Vince is depressed. He sees himself as a "loser" and believes things never work out for him. Throughout a typical week, he’ll have several negative, distorted, automatic thoughts: "My girlfriend isn’t really attracted to me." "My boss isn’t happy with me." "I know I’ll do a bad job on this project." To the average person looking at Vince from the outside, these thoughts may seem puzzling—it may appear that his girlfriend is indeed attracted to him, or his performance on the project may seem fine. But to Vince these thoughts are his reality. Where do they come from? Well, Vince had some early experiences with rejection and failure. These experiences were difficult for him, as they would be for any child. Vince grew up with several core beliefs, such as, "People will reject me" and "I’m a failure." As you can imagine, these core beliefs drive Vince to interpret future situations—which may not actually be rejections or failures—as if they were.

Putting This Information to Work for You

Try testing out the ABC model yourself. The next time you’re feeling upset, first identify the emotion you’re feeling. Is it anger? Sadness? Worry? Fear? Once you identify the emotion, try to identify the exact thoughts you had with that feeling. This is harder than it sounds—we’re not used to thinking about what we think about! Here are some questions to ask yourself that might help:

Once you’ve identified your thoughts, ask yourself these questions:

If you do recognize that your automatic thought(s) are distorted, and you can find a more realistic thought to have about the situation, it’s likely that the emotional feeling you have will be changed—it may be a different feeling, or it may be the same one but the intensity may be slightly reduced. Don’t underestimate such an achievement! It shows that you can exert some control over how you react and feel!

What can you do about the core beliefs? Those are a bit more challenging—since they’re based on a lifetime of experiences, they rarely change overnight. They are definitely changeable, but it will require more time and effort for this. A mental health professional can assist you. Researchers have found that a several kinds of therapy—some that directly focus on thinking, some that don’t—are effective in changing people’s core beliefs about themselves and their lives.

A Cautionary Note

We hope you better appreciate the role that negative thinking can play in emotional distress. But we want to clarify some things. First, we are not suggesting that the solution to all your problems is simply to think positively. Often people will try to "look on the bright side" and say positive things to themselves, but don’t really believe the positive things they’re saying. The point is not simply to think positively, but to think realistically, and reasonably. You’re far more likely to change a thought if you take the time to evaluate it and search for how and why it might be distorted, rather than to simply "plug" a happier thought in its place.

Second, it is important to note that no one is asking you to be a robot—somebody who rigidly cuts off feelings if they do not appear logical or rational. Bad things DO happen to people, and some negative beliefs about those things ARE justified. And in those instances, feeling upset is normal, expected, and human. But psychological problems like depression and anxiety can occur when people continue to berate themselves for extended periods with negative thinking about those events, or apply that distorted thinking to new, different situations where the beliefs might not be justified.

Instead, we hope that whenever you’re feeling emotionally distressed, you take the time to acknowledge that feeling and recognize your right to have it—but to also recognize that the feeling is based on your thinking, and that sometimes there’s a way to think about the situation that is more realistic, more accurate, and more fair to yourself.

Finally, these "cognitive psychology" approaches have been found to be highly effective among Western cultures. However, there are some cultures whose values may conflict with the premises at the heart of these listed methods. No technique works for everyone.

Your Counseling Service:Timely, confidential, and professional assistance is available at the UniversityPsychological Services Center(8:00am – 5:00pm, M-F) for UC students located at 316 Dyer Hall. Phone (513-556-0648) or stop in for a no-charge screening interview.

Web Resources: The best psychology sites with valuable information and links to hundreds of other sites on the World Wide Web are Psych Centralby Dr. John Grohol and Internet Mental Health.

This fact sheet is provided as a service by the University of Cincinnati Psychological Services Center and the Division of Student Affairs and Services. This fact sheet was prepared by Rahan Ali and the professional staff of the Psychological Services Center.  You may print a copy for yourself from this page.