Chapter 9 - Where Do Emotions Come From? Flashcards
Unlike a newly purchased appliance, your emotions do not come with a manual.
People don’t have anxiety troubles because they’re stupid, misinformed, weak, or looking for excuses. It’s just that their emotions overrun their logic.
Millions of people have anxiety problems. Fears, phobias, worries, obsessions, etc.. They get afraid. They resist it out of fear of it being dangerous in some way.
—> They try to talk themselves out of fear, suppress it, or get rid of it somehow. <—
THIS LEADS THEM TO FEEL MORE AFRAID AND KEEPS RATCHETING UPWARDS, NERVOUSNESS LEADING TO MORE NERVOUSNESS, UNTIL IT SEEMS OUT OF CONTROL.
IT IS NOT DANGEROUS. IT JUST FEELS THAT WAY.
You get afraid, then you get afriad of being afraid, and you keep getting more afraid until that particular episode ends. Then you go back to whatever you were doing.
> < They try hard to get rid of the fears, and that effort makes them more afraid. ><
UNDERSTANDING HOW EMOTIONS WORK MAKES IT EASIER TO RESPOND IN WAYS THAT CALM YOU DOWN INSTEAD OF GETTING YOU MORE UPSET.
IN THIS WAY, YOU CAND DEVELOP A “USER MANUAL” FOR YOUR EMOTIONS.
(not answerwed)
- Where do emotions come from?
- What produces the specific emotions you experience?
Most people believe that emotionas are caused by external events - that if something good happens to you, you feel good, and if something bad happens to you, you feel bad. They feel emotions are things the world throws at you. We have to look to others, and to outside events, for the changes that would make us feel better. Viewing emotions as something beyond our control tat just happens to us, like the weather, makes a person feel more helpless.
Suppose you were in a class and took an exam on which everyone received the same grade - a B.
What would you predict about the emotional reactions of the students?
- Everyone would have the same emotional reaction.
- Different people would have different emotional reactions.
DIfferent people would have a different reaction, wouldn’t they? Can you explain why?
Many factors can come to play here. The amount of effort the student put into studying and taking the exam is an example of one. A flunking student would rejoyce receiving a B. A Straight A student would feel disappointed.
If someone throws a bucket of water at me, and their aim is good, I get wet - regardless of what I think about it. That’s a purely physical result of something the external world does to me. But if somebody throws an insult at me, the result is not nearly so automatic. My reaction depends on what I tell myself the insult means.
Consider the following scenarios in which you might receive an insult. Would you expect the same emotional reaction to each one, or different reactions?
- Your best friend calls you a slob
- A panhandler on the street calls you a slob
- A tourist calls you a slob in German
- An actor reads this like from a script: “You are a slob”
- A comedian calls you a slob
- Your mother calls you a slob
- A friends mother calls you a slob
- Your two-year-old son calls you a slob
Your reaction is heavily influenced by what you tell yourself it means. A bucket of water tossed at you means you get wet, period. But when an insult is tossed at you, your reaction depends on what you think about the insult, the person saying it, the context, and so on.
AN EMOTIONAL MANUAL
If we had a manual for our emotions, it would include these central points:
- Out thoughts shape the emotions we experience.
- The meaning we give to events - the way we think of various events as good or bad - influences out emotions - No matter whether out thoughts are true or false, they will still shape our emotions.
- It does not matter how true or untrue our thoughts are; they shape our emotions all the same. For instance, if a bank teller dropped a book out of your field of vision, making a sudden sharp noise, you might assume it was a gunshot and feel afraid. However, if you actually saw him drop the book, you’d know it was harmless and wouldn’t have a strong emotional reaction. Whatever you believed would dhape and color your emotional response. - Our emotions are influenced by thoughts even, or perhaps especially, when we’re not paying attentino to those thoughts.
- One reason people think that emotions are cause by external events is that they may not notice or remember the thoughts that preceded them. What I ask people what they were thinking just before a panic attack or an angry outburt, their first reply is often that they weren’t thinking anything - that the emotions and physical sensations just came over them “out of the blue”. It attracted their attention and memory. When tey review the situation objectively, peoplecan usually recall subtle thoughts and images that preceded the emotion.
The truth is, we’re always thinking. There’s hradly ever a time when we’re “not thinking anything,” even when we’re sleeping. We don’t always pay attention to what we’re thinking - or even notice that we ARE thinking…but we are.
- We can become uncinsciously repetitive and “stuck” in our thoughts, causing us to become “stuck” in emotional cycles.
-There is reason to believe that thougohts are like other habits - that once we fall into a particular way of thinking, we tend to stay with it, thinking automatically withough taking time to review or question the validity of our thoughts. - Opposing phobic thoguhts often give them more energy. Deliberate exposure to those thoguhts deprives them of energy.
- The more you try to protect yourself from your scary thoughts, the more your emotions will override your logic. If instead you accept scary thoughts and work with them, you’ll find that you recover from them more quickly.
Emotions are largely shaped by our thoughts. They are reactions to what we tell ourselves is happening, much more than to what is actually happening, much more than to what is afctually happening.
