Do emotions cause thoughts, or do thoughts cause emotions?

[too-open-minded]

I believe that our thoughts impact our emotions but ultimately it is the subconscious being our newly evolved senses like emotions that truly cause our complex thoughts. Our emotions are registrations of our environment and our subconscious mind projects emotions for us to sense the world around us and make relative sense of it.

 

So what do you think? What are thoughts and how do you explain the psychologically?

 

Something I wrote in reply to a facebook thread that made me want to start this thread - Some of this maybe wrong as my education in psychology is rather shallow.

Our thoughts are secrets of the brain, in a way. For instance, the more positive your thoughts are. The more you use your cerebral cortex than your limbic system. Cortex being responsible for calm, happiness, curiosty, majority of cognitive function. While the limbic system is more primal/fight or flight like anger, fear, sexdrive, anxiety. Whichever part of your brain you use more, tends to be more active and effect your decision making processes. The subconscious is very powerfull and believe it or not impacts you more than your conscious mind. However you can learn to control your subconscious relatively more. Through certain types of therapy or meditation.

 

I

[iNow]

How are you making the distinction between a "thought" and an "emotion?" It strikes me a bit like trying to make a distinction between "six" and "half a dozen."

Or, perhaps more accurately, it appears that you are trying to separate two things that are inextricably linked... like space and time or nature and nurture.

[too-open-minded]

Well to be honest, I like the way you put it. In a way, thoughts are a collaboration of different emotions but also they are not just emotions. They are involved with interpretations of environment, processes of related and past experiences, and maybe a few other variables. Don't you think thoughts are a little more influenced than just by emotions?

[Phi for All]

If you look at thoughts as being influenced by the input from our senses, emotion is another filter we use like color, texture, smell and sound. We have quantitative sensory data (this object is rectangular, pink, plastic, lightweight and makes various stimulating noises) and that's being filtered also by emotions (the size feels good for my hand, I hate pink, afraid I'll scratch it, kind of cheap feeling, I love those ring tones).

 

I agree with iNow, I think it would be very hard to remove any emotional judgements from your thoughts. They seem linked to how we make qualitative observations.

[too-open-minded]

You guys are right, you can't remove any emotional judgement from our thoughts. I guess emotions in a way, are one of the first building blocks of our complex thoughts.

 

Well in the context of this thread, do any of you think it is possible through biofeedback/Neurotherapy to change our thoughts by being aware of our subconscious?

 

​Is it possible for our thoughts to actively effect our emotions or state of mind, which in turn will make our thoughts more positive/negative?

 

I had to edit this. Could our short term thoughts impact our longterm brain activity? Thoughts as in cognitive function in the sense that their is a realization and understanding of the subconscious brain interpretting it's environment, the hows and why of that. Could these short term thoughts, effect brain activity in the sense that if you can recognize yourself getting anxious or agitated, that you can focus your thoughts more positively and calmly? Changing your negative thoughts to positive and then after different intervals of time seeing if it effects your normal brain activity under less variable'd circumstances?

Edited October 29, 2013 by too-open-minded

[iNow]

do any of you think it is possible through biofeedback/Neurotherapy to change our thoughts by being aware of our subconscious?

Yes, to an extent. We can control our reactions and calm our mind, and through time this will change our thoughts, as well. This is in many ways similar to the concepts underlying buddhist meditation.

 

​Is it possible for our thoughts to actively effect our emotions or state of mind, which in turn will make our thoughts more positive/negative?

Yes, our prefrontal cortex (which is responsible for higher level thought and reasoning) has a direct inhibitory effect on our amygdala and hippocampus (which are more basic and ancestral parts of our brain related to emotion). With higher thought, we can suppress emotion and even train the emotional response to be significantly lower magnitude with practice.

 

Could our short term thoughts impact our longterm brain activity?

Absolutely. It's like many other muscles in the body. Through training, they change and do different things in the future. Training your mind today is an impact on your mind in the future.

 

Could these short term thoughts, effect brain activity in the sense that if you can recognize yourself getting anxious or agitated, that you can focus your thoughts more positively and calmly?

Yes. It's hard to do any of this absolutely or fully, but with training you can certainly alter your thoughts to be more calm and positive. Some people face underlying challenges with their genetics or neural infrastructure that can cause this to be much more difficult (like an insensitivity to dopamine, for example), but with practice and training improvements can almost always be made. Much of this is the basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

[too-open-minded]

You guys are helping me more than you know. If you've seen my related posts to this subject then you know what you're helping me with. So Inow, what are some training methods and examples or practice you can give me for this?

[iNow]

It's really about self-awareness and breathing and relaxation. The rest is practice and maybe getting help from a professional to work with your specific challenges and come up with a plan of action that is designed for your personal circumstances.

 

In the meantime, a quick google came up with this for me to share here (I haven't checked the link for accuracy, but the part below resonates with the topic here and is itself a good overview):

 

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_therapy.htm

 

Thought challenging in cognitive behavioral therapy

 

Thought challenging—also known as cognitive restructuring—is a process in which you challenge the negative thinking patterns that contribute to your anxiety, replacing them with more positive, realistic thoughts. This involves three steps:

• Identifying your negative thoughts. With anxiety disorders, situations are perceived as more dangerous than they really are. To someone with a germ phobia, for example, shaking another person’s hand can seem life threatening. Although you may easily see that this is an irrational fear, identifying your own irrational, scary thoughts can be very difficult. One strategy is to ask yourself what you were thinking when you started feeling anxious. Your therapist will help you with this step.
• Challenging your negative thoughts. In the second step, your therapist will teach you how to evaluate your anxiety-provoking thoughts. This involves questioning the evidence for your frightening thoughts, analyzing unhelpful beliefs, and testing out the reality of negative predictions. Strategies for challenging negative thoughts include conducting experiments, weighing the pros and cons of worrying or avoiding the thing you fear, and determining the realistic chances that what you’re anxious about will actually happen.
• Replacing negative thoughts with realistic thoughts. Once you’ve identified the irrational predictions and negative distortions in your anxious thoughts, you can replace them with new thoughts that are more accurate and positive. Your therapist may also help you come up with realistic, calming statements you can say to yourself when you’re facing or anticipating a situation that normally sends your anxiety levels soaring.

To understand how thought challenging works in cognitive behavioral therapy, consider the following example: Maria won’t take the subway because she’s afraid she’ll pass out, and then everyone will think she’s crazy. Her therapist has asked her to write down her negative thoughts, identify the errors—or cognitive distortions—in her thinking, and come up with a more rational interpretation. The results are below.

 

Challenging Negative Thoughts Negative thought

 

#1: What if I pass out on the subway?

Cognitive distortion: Predicting the worst

More realistic thought: I’ve never passed out before, so it’s unlikely that I will on the subway.

 

Negative thought #2: If I pass out, it will be terrible!

Cognitive distortion: Blowing things out of proportion

More realistic thought: If I faint, I’ll come to in a few moments. That’s not so terrible.

 

Negative thought #3: People will think I’m crazy.

Cognitive distortion: Jumping to conclusions

More realistic thought: People are more likely to be concerned if I’m okay.

 

Replacing negative thoughts with more realistic ones is easier said than done. Often, negative thoughts are part of a lifelong pattern of thinking. It takes practice to break the habit. That’s why cognitive behavioral therapy includes practicing on your own at home as well.

 

Cognitive behavioral therapy may also include:

• Learning to recognize when you’re anxious and what that feels like in the body
• Learning coping skills and relaxation techniques to counteract anxiety and panic
• Confronting your fears (either in your imagination or in real life)

Edited October 30, 2013 by iNow

[too-open-minded]

Well what I am really trying to do is devise a curriculum for general groups of people from ages 3-16.

[Akpolarbears]

I'm extremely interested in these sort of concepts as well (using thoughts, words and other similar triggers to change your behaviors or state of mind). I've read some on neurolinguistic programming but it seems to be considered a psuedoscience.

[iNow]

Look up cognitive behavioral therapy. A lot of it is about training yourself to recognize the cues that lead to certain mental states or negative emotions or responses and to consciously change how you react to them.

 

Commonly, CBT is used to treat phobias like fear of heights, but it works for many other things both large and small, as well (overcoming social anxiety, presentation fear, smoking cessation, etc.)

Edited December 4, 2013 by iNow

[Akpolarbears]

Look up cognitive behavioral therapy. A lot of it is about training yourself to recognize the cues that lead to certain mental states or negative emotions or responses and to consciously change how you react to them.

 

Commonly, CBT is used to treat phobias like fear of heights, but it works for many other things both large and small, as well (overcoming social anxiety, presentation fear, smoking cessation, etc.)

-Very- much appreciated. Recently my interest in this sort of thing (not sure what term to use exactly) has been reignited and I've been looking for things to google in order to find more information.