Not believing in your emotions

[xuenay]

One of the many things that I've learned from theferrett is that I don't have to believe in my emotions.

Here's an example of what I mean. Last night, I was suffering from insomnia. As frequently happens when I do, I got frustrated and started worrying about everything. It did not take long before this proceeded into severe self-doubt issues: will I ever amount to anything, will any of my projects actually succeed, et cetera. I was quickly - as usual - becoming convinced that the answer was no, and I should just stop being ambitious and settle for some safe but boring lifepath while I still had the chance.

Now, previously I'd only thought of two options in this kind of a situation:

A) Get rid of the thoughts by distracting myself or finding something that will cheer me up and get me out of that mood.
B) Fail to get out of the mood, keep thinking these thoughts.

For some reason, it had never occurred to me that there could also exist a third option:

C) Keep feeling miserable, but stop thinking those thoughts.

So that's what I did. I thought, "I'm feeling miserable because I can't sleep and I'm frustrated, but that has nothing to do with whether my projects and ambitions will be successful or not. My current emotions convey me no information about that topic. So it's pointless to doubt myself because of these emotions." (Not in so many words, but that was the general idea.)

So I stopped thinking those thoughts. And while I still felt generally miserable, the thoughts stopped making me feel even worse.

Previously I had thought that emotions and thoughts were connected in such a way that in some kinds of bad moods, you had no choice but to think negative thoughts. Now it appears that this isn't the case. Is this something that everyone but me knew already, or is it something that should be talked about a lot more?

Cross-posted: G+, FB.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It's something it took me a long time to figure out, and I don't manage it reliably.

Cognitive psych is based on the idea that people can make choices about their thoughts, but it has to be taught. So I don't think you're the only person who wasn't born knowing that you don't have to amplify feeling bad.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Happily, I seem to have largely succeeded at persuading myself that whatever major mistakes I'm making, and whatever serious thinking I need to be doing, the time when I'm trying to fall asleep isn't a good time to think about it, and that a better time would be while I'm travelling to work in the morning.

[aerothorn.livejournal.com]

I do this as much as I can. Not something I can really explain to people, though - as I'm sure you understand, being a rationalist about these things often just makes people think you're an asshole (don't ask me why).

[xuenay.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I think the issue is that many people want to feel miserable (or at least be comforted), and don't appreciate the suggestion that they could stop doing so on their own. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that, per se - I've certainly done this myself. But these days, if I realize that I want to feel miserable, I'll at least try to avoid burdening other people with it.

And to be clear, I don't think that people who react negatively to such suggestions always want to feel miserable. These kinds of skills are hard to communicate in writing or speech, and often it might just be the case that somebody is genuinely feeling miserable and would want to stop being so, but the feeling is so strong that any kind of "just ignore it" advice just sounds like the other person has no idea of what they're talking about. Which, to be fair, is sometimes the case, as some people seem to genuinely have no idea of what serious depression is like.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I would love to have a better understanding of misery-seeking behaviour.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Me too. It's very odd that feeling bad can act as an impetus to make myself feel worse.