Manage Your Thinking: Dealing with emotions

Deal with emotions mentally and physically

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Solution 1: Cognition (How we think) — CBT therapy

People can express a negative emotion with:

I don’t like x because it makes me feel y.

To manage our emotions effectively, we can learn how to control what and how we feel about thoughts and situations that lead to emotional responses.

1. Cognition and thoughts

Cognition is the mental process through which we get knowledge and understanding of the world around us, through the senses, thought, and experience. In simple terms, it relates to our preconceived assumptions or understanding of a situation.

Cognition relies on our existing knowledge and understanding to generate new knowledge and understanding. Since our behavior is dependent on our thoughts, it is essential to become aware of your cognition, to gain more control over how you gain new knowledge and understanding through more experiences. Learn to ask yourself questions such as:

● What are my thoughts about it?

● Why do I have such thoughts?

● How true or accurate are my thoughts?

● What evidence do I have to support or refute my thoughts?

● What value do I place on those thoughts?

● Has anything happened to generate such thoughts?

● What are other ways of thinking about this situation?

In other words, always explore why you think the way you do, and never just take your thoughts at face value. Learn to critically examine your preconceived notions and self-evaluate your own thinking, whether conscious or subconscious.

2. Cognition and belief (core and intermediate)

Our core belief system is formed and influenced by our past experiences, upbringing, culture, society, values and current circumstances. It consists of how you think about yourself, how you think about others and how you think about the world. These are beliefs deeply ingrained in your psyche. Often, these are also the most rigid, inflexible, or stubborn beliefs as well.

Intermediate beliefs are attitudes or guidelines which a person follows in his or her life that typically apply across different situations. These arise out of our core belief system. Automatic thoughts are the immediate or instinctive streams of thoughts about ourselves or others that arise in response to a situation. They are formed from intermediate beliefs, and they go on to affect emotions and behaviours.

The chain of thoughts can be understood in this way: core belief –> intermediate belief –>

automatic thoughts.

An open, holistic and balanced core belief system will create an environment that supports positive and constructive intermediate beliefs, which in turn will lead to healthier and happier automatic thoughts. On the other hand, dysfunctional core belief systems created warped intermediate beliefs that lead to unhealthy automatic thoughts.

3. CBT summary and sample steps

CBT stands for cognitive-behavioral therapy, a practice initially developed to improve mental health through developing personal coping strategies that solve current problems and fix unhelpful cognition patterns. CBT also seeks to create healthier behavior and emotional regulation.

The essence of CBT is cognition – our patterns of thinking. As a form of behavior therapy, it helps one to observe patterns and fallacies in your own thinking. It facilitates understanding of the relationships between cognition and behavior, whether conscious or automatic.

With CBT, a person can manage to step outside his or her automatic thoughts and corresponding behaviour. By changing your cognition and/or behavior, you can create healthier and more constructive perspectives that open up the possibilities to any given situation.

CBT step 1 - Identify the situation:

● What happened?

● When did it happen?

● What else was going on?

CBT step 2 - Identify your cognition:

● What thoughts, images or sensations did you experience just before or during that time?

● Did anything disturb you?

● If your thought manifested as a question, could you answer it?

CBT step 3 - Identify your emotions/feelings and your physical responses:

● What emotion(s) did you feel?

● Did you experience any physical response(s)? E.g. rapid breathing, light-headedness, sweat, heat etc.

CBT step 4 - Identify your actions:

● What did you do?

● What did you not do?

● How did you cope with the situation?

CBT step 5 - Make notes:

Notice and note down your thoughts, feelings and behavior so that you better understand your behavioral patterns.

You may make a list under five headings :

(i) situation

(ii) thoughts and images

(iii) moods or emotions

(iv) body or physical sensations

(v) behavior – what did you do or not do

Solution 2: Thought (How true is our thinking) - Byron Katie

American author and speaker Bryon Katie introduces a simple process teaching people how to identify and question their very own thoughts. There are just four steps with some simple questions. This user-friendly method can help you easily identify the causes of some of your problems.

Step 1 - Write down a stressful statement about someone or something:

When answering this question, close your eyes, stay still and witness (or be aware of) what comes to you to you.

Step 2 - Answer some questions concerning the thought / belief:

1. Is it true? (If not, move to question 3)

2. Can you absolutely know that it is true? (Yes or No)

3. How do you react and what happens when you believe in that thought?

> Does that thought bring peace or stress into your life?

> What emotions arise when you believe in that thought?

> How do you treat the person in this situation when you believe in that thought?

> How do you treat other people and yourself?

4. Who would you be without the thought?

Step 3 - turn the thought around

Example of a thought statement: “He hurt me”

Possible turnarounds :

> to the self (I hurt Me)

> to the other (I hurt him)

> to the opposite (He didn’t hurt me)

Then find at least three specific and genuine examples of how each turnaround is true for

you in this situation.

Step 4 - re-examine your belief

After the turnaround, you have an opportunity to experience the opposite of your original belief. You then become more open to new realities. By identifying the interrelationships among thoughts, feelings and behavior, we can learn to change our thoughts and/or behavior in order to break free from unhealthy patterns.

Change your behaviour

Reflect on your thoughts, feelings and behavioral patterns. To begin with, review your alternative responses, and ask yourself:

● If I had tried that instead, how would the situation have been different?

● How would it have affected what I felt?

● How would it have affected what I thought?

Notice that an alternative response will bring about different consequences, thereby

changing the situation.

Next, focus on your behavior part and ask yourself :

● What would someone else have done in that situation?

● Have there been times in the past when I would have done something else?

● If I had a break before responding, what would I have done?

Solution 3 Values (Manage through our inner self) - ACT, Russ Harris

(Manage through values and breathing ) - Heart Math

Psychological flexibility

When things get tough or don’t go your way, stay flexible so you can cope with the situation with greater ease and grace. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you to develop a mindset known as “psychological flexibility.”

Psychological flexibility is the ability to adapt to a situation with awareness and openness. It is about being focused and taking effective action, guided by your values (ie. Mindfulness + values + actions). The greater your psychological flexibility, the better you can handle difficult or challenging thoughts and feelings.

Values

What sort of person do you want to be? What is significant and meaningful in your life?

Values are our directional pointers that guide us in how we live our lives. This can be an ongoing evolutionary process, since there will be changes in what we feel connected with, and thus have new bearings our own values.

Heartmath - Values and breathing

Heartmath is a technique used to help us focus on things that are more constructive in handling challenging circumstances. You might be aware that certain images or pictures will trigger your emotions and feelings. Can you identify the types of images or pictures which resonate well with you and connect you with certain desirable values? Can those values be connected to positive traits such as: joy, forgiveness, courage, connectedness, self-reliance?

Next focus on your heart and look at those images or pictures. Breathe consciously and slowly to feel the energy represented by the objects. Allow yourself time to resonate with them. Through breathing while looking at the images, you will feel connected to the values.

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