let's talk about thoughts versus feelings I received a question on the podcast last week and it was such a great question I thought we should really dive into it and it reads hi Katie I've learned how to feel my feelings and emotions in therapy and I also realized that before that I used to not allow myself to feel my feelings I have bad anxiety and a lot of times my thoughts spiral out of control and I end up worrying about all kinds of things and I feel so much more anxious I realized that if I
don't give into all of my thoughts I feel a lot less anxious yes but is this avoiding my feelings this is a great question essentially if we don't give in to all of our thoughts are we avoiding feeling our feelings now I want to talk today a little bit about the definitions of thoughts versus feelings then I'm going to get into kind of the nature of them like what's their purpose why are they there we'll talk about where they originate thoughts versus feelings the timing and interaction of them their the expression and experience that we
can have with our thoughts versus feelings and finally why it's important so important for us to differentiate between the two okay now for starters we're going to Define them and I have my notes if you see me looking down it's because I I'm old school I have notes on paper thoughts are essentially like a mental process it's something that goes on constantly I think the research says we have something like 90 something thousand thoughts a day and almost all of them are repeat thoughts so this is just what we tell ourselves about in a event
uh an experience that we're having and they often reflect our beliefs our judgments our interpretations right our perception of something you know for example we could be thinking I'm not good enough that's a thought okay so thoughts are mental processes now feelings on the other hand are more of like an emotional response such as sadness fear Joy anger you know like inside out they are more visceral and they're rooted in like I guess like our body's physiological response we feel sadness for instance and it can bring us a like heaviness right we can feel like
a heaviness in our chest or it can cause us to have tears right we have a a physiological a bodily response to something so thoughts are mental processes or processes feelings are more of an emotional response that is physiological we experience it in our bodies okay the difference of where they come from right we're moving into where these each originate so thoughts themselves come from the mind they are shaped by our past experiences I like to think that like the thoughts that we have are seen through like these lenses that we've put on our eyes
almost like imagine if we had like those bottle cap you know glasses that are super super thick it's like every time we have an experience in life it's like a little layer goes over our glasses and so how we view the world is through that and so that's where our thoughts come from come from a lot of our past experiences our beliefs about ourselves um they also could be reflective of our culture or our society as a whole and it could be even the words we use to describe things those are our thoughts and like
where they originate also another uh visual if this is helpful is you know when you go to the eye doctor and they're like which one's better this or that and they swipe down I always think of that too that like those are our filters those are our past experiences our beliefs um our percep perceptions of things and I just like the idea of perception CU it's like visual anyway so that's where thoughts originate now moving on to feelings feelings arise from the body they come from what is known as our brain's lyic system and that's
what houses our amydala I talk about this all the time right it's kind of like the fire alarm or the emotional response system in our brain and within our lyic system it kind of tells us or can ready us to take action right like fight flight freeze Fawn that stress response it's what creates starts that process and allows it to come to fruition and it can also be the thing that allows us to get really angry to get really excited it's that emotional response so feelings originate in our body and in our limbic system of
our brain they often happen as a reaction to a situation before we've even had time to think about it you know how sometimes people well the body keeps the score that book right we talk about how like we wish our body would stop keeping the score cuz it's like oh my God but I hear from so many of you that you won't have a real thought or a memory about something that happened to you but you will have a feeling about it you will have a body memory you'll have an like you have a visceral
reaction to it or to something you're like I don't know why but I really that person like is triggering or I all of a sudden you know felt super triggered and I don't know why feelings can exist without us having a thought about it that's really important as we move forward so just keep that in mind okay so again thoughts come from the Mind shaped by past experiences Society cultures feelings come from our body and our brain's emotional response system so they're more in like the lyic system and in our um in our brain as
a reaction to a situation before we've even had time to think about it okay now timing of them and kind of like the way that the ways we interact with them feelings often occur before thought just like I said we can have a feeling about something before we even have an opportunity to think right it's almost like that gut you know everybody says follow your gut like give that gut response like somebody asks you to go to this party and you're either immediately excited that's a feeling I'm immediately excited or immediately feel dread I don't
want to no no no no no no right and that I don't want to those are thoughts as a result of the feelings do you see what I'm doing here if not it's okay we're going to talk about this but it's important to understand the timing so feelings often occur before we have thoughts um and the example that I wrote here as like for example you might feel a rush of fear before your mind can label the threat like noticing a car that's swerving towards you you like feel that first and then you don't even
have time to think about it right and conversely thoughts can trigger feelings so if you think everyone is always judging me you might feel anxious or embarrassed because you're having a feeling as a result of that thought okay now thoughts are often expressed in words and are easier to articulate making them more you know accessible we can discuss analyze we can really break down each and every word right feelings can be harder to describe as we've talked about I feel like a ton on here is like sometimes we have a feeling and I've talked about
the feelings wheel and how it's important for us to be able to identify some of our feelings each and every day and I learned through our beautiful Community as well as when I was writing my first book are you okay I reached out to friends and family and asked them to write some of their feelings from that day and so many of them were like I don't know and Many Of You' have told me I don't really know how I feel it is and is numb a feeling and I'm like no num is not a
feeling it's a lack of feelings right so we often struggle to describe them to put words to them to be able to explain to someone what it is we're quote unquote feeling right in order to identify feelings it often requires a little extra effort right we have to tap in into our body and figure out which feelings words feel the most authentic to us and that can take time because tapping into our bodies especially if we have trauma in our past can feel like off limits okay keeping that all in mind okay we've talked about
I'm look at my nose that thoughts are a mental process feelings are emotional responses you know they we have physiological responses to them thoughts come from the Mind feelings arise from the body and feelings often occur before thoughts I'm hoping you can realize why it's so important that we differentiate between the two because confusing thoughts for feelings can not only limit our emotional awareness but it also can cause us to question who we are right like intrusive thoughts those are thoughts can be ego distonic right they don't feel like they match up with who we
believe ourselves to be and they're often violent and sexual in nature and so we're like oh my God is that who I we can have feelings about that right so if we confuse thoughts for feelings for example here's another example if we say I feel like they don't respect me this isn't naming a feeling it's stating a thought or belief and the underlying feeling might be sadness frustration or hurt and those of us such as myself who like to intellectualize or like analyze things instead of feel things we can be overthinkers I saw this meme
uh on Instagram that was like oh and I I'm sure I re-shared it it said overthinkers are often under feelers and I was like it's true because it's way more easy for us or way easier proper English Katie way easier for us to think about things rather than feel them that's why the feeling of the feelings is something that we have to work on in therapy because it's really uncomfortable and personally I'd often times rather just think about it instead of letting myself feel it right I can analyze it keep it in my mind like
just thinking not PE pulling it into my body and allowing myself to feel it understanding the distinction between thoughts and feelings allows us to process and validate our emotions without overintellectualizing them that's why it's so important because feelings don't have to make logical sense right I can feel some kind of way because I feel some kind of way period we don't have to have all this evidence to support it we should check in with ourselves to recognize maybe where it comes from but at the end of the day feelings just get to exist I get
to feel this kind of way because I do they just are feelings just exist and acknowledging and accepting them even when they don't align with our thoughts is crucial to our emotional well-being so I'm going to say say that one more time cuz I have it my notes underlined a lot acknowledging and accepting your feelings even when they don't align with your thoughts is crucial for your emotional well-being it's also what I feel is like part of accepting yourself for who you are accepting your experience it's it's all about that like personal acceptance they don't
always have to make sense I don't always have to know exactly why um I also saw this girl talking on Tik Tok the other day and I think I saved it if I can find it I'll have it play here but if not what she's saying is she's walking it's really dark you can't even see her face in this video and she says I was I heard someone say to me that getting stuck in the why or always wondering why why is this happening why why do they do this is the rejection of what is
I'm going to say that one more time CU it I mean I watched that video a couple times to hear her to absorb it that getting stuck in the why or constantly asking why is a rejection of what is is oh and that couldn't be more true for what we're talking about today thoughts versus feelings we can get stuck in our thoughts because that's safer than acknowledging how we feel because it can be uncomfortable right and if I keep wanting to understand the why I never get to the acknowledgment in the personal acceptance of how
I feel and thoughts on the other hand can sometimes be irrational or unhelpful and requiring us to challenge or reframe them how many times have I said in live streams or maybe in other conversations on the podcast that we've had where I'm I'm like you know let's reframe that we're we're thinking about this only from a negative Viewpoint what if we thought about it this way right that's because thoughts aren't always helpful and we often have these repeat thoughts that grow into our beliefs about who we are and they're not rooted in any feeling they're
not they sometimes go unchecked and just accepted as is and we have to pay attention to them because that's how we honestly change our reality is by acknowledging our thoughts and you know reframing them challenging them uh forcing ourselves to think slightly more positively like Bridge statements and things like that and so going back to this original question that we had from the podcast where this person asked I've realized that if I don't give into all of my thoughts I feel a lot less anxious but is this avoiding feeling my feelings absolutely not when we
don't give into our thoughts we don't allow our thoughts to become our reality and impact our feelings that's when we're in a healthier space when we give ourselves a beat I feel like a lot of therapies finding space space between a thought and an action in cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT we often hone in on this thoughts versus feelings because of the the whole way that CBT works is we we track our thoughts we often start with thought tracking we track our thoughts because our thoughts if we continue to engage with them often become our
feelings and then our feelings feelings become our behaviors and if we want to change our behaviors which is usually why we go to therapy like uh I keep finding in these types of shitty relationships or uh I don't like that I I ghost people and I I'm so anti-conflict averse I don't like whatever that's a behavior I want to change that behavior so how do I do that I go back to the thoughts I pay attention to them attract them because that's a very very empowering place to be when I'm able to acknowledge and recognize
the thoughts and then decide if I even want to engage with them because a thought can just be a thought be like I don't know I don't think those people like me and I can I can think on that and worry I can pull it into a feeling oh my God I'm not worthy I can get embarrassed I don't think they liked me at all and this is terrible and I can't go back there cuz cuz now I'm embarrassed I can do that or I can say I don't think those people like me and I
can say that's just the thought I don't have any facts to support it I always talk about checking your facts I any facts to support that I'm going to let that thought go and yeah that's it I know it sounds wild but I'm telling you that if we can create the space between the thought and the feeling then we're in an empowered place then we can make change and so I have practical application final thing practice naming your feelings like I said the feelings wheel you can go to feelings wheel.com that's a great place to
start but you can ask yourself like what am I feeling in my my body right now and I'd encourage you to always frame it that way because we want to try to reconnect our brain to body I know a lot of us are disconnected but we want to reconnect it's really important so what am I feeling in my body right now instead of relying solely on our thoughts I know that gives you some space and us intellectualized we like it but I challenge you and then finally separate the thought from the feeling for example instead
of saying I feel like this is hopeless try I think this is hopeless and it's making me feel defeated so instead of conf like combining the two or confusing them we are taking the time to separate them to acknowledge the difference and let me know if you want more tips and tricks on this you want me to keep talking about I'm happy to but also feel free in the comments to let us know do you struggle with this too it's really hard and I thought it was really important for us to break it down so
have a wonderful wonderful rest of your week and I'll see you soon [Music]
