In one of our groups we were asked, what’s the difference between thinking and thoughts? Can we control either one?

Thoughts are automatic. They just show up. They are things. Thinking is an action. Things that show up without our choosing them aren’t under our control, therefore we can’t control, get rid of, or stop thoughts. Thinking, being an action, is something we can control. You’ve maybe heard about thoughts landing on your head like a bird, but it’s up to you whether it builds a nest there. It’s the same concept.

There were two exercises we tried at TK. The first exercise was to help us see that thoughts are inevitable. We were asked to not think about a specific item. It’s impossible. The mind works by addition, not subtraction, so trying not to think about something is impossible.  The other exercise involved seeing our thoughts come and go in order to get used the idea that thoughts show up without our consent and we can let them go without dwelling on them. We were instructed to picture sitting by a stream. We were to see each thought on a leaf floating in the water and notice as they came and went, soon replaced by another thought.

In an earlier post, I said that “understanding emotions ARE” is one vertebra in the backbone of therapy. Another is self-talk. There are thoughts coming into our minds all day, and we make choices about what to continue thinking on as this stream of chatter flows through. Of those choices, what we tell ourselves about ourselves is self-talk. It’s very enlightening to monitor your self-talk. Try it sometime – write down every thought you tell yourself about yourself.  If your self-talk is consistently negative, it’s time to change the recording to something positive.

This is a powerful illustration God gave me a few years ago…Picture a train depot with advertisements, announcements, a schedule, and some warnings hung on the walls. The depot personnel come around periodically to change the advertisements and the schedule. Sometimes they add a warning or remove an announcement. Now imagine this station as your mind, where every thought shows up and travels to every other area of your life.

• Are the posters outdated? Do they keep your mind occupied by the past?
• Are the warnings in line with the Bible, or are they about attaining wealth, doing as much as the next person, keeping your reputation intact?
• Are the advertisements comparing your life to someone else’s?
• Does the schedule take up the entire wall? Is the schedule etched into the wall and not open to God asking something else of us?

It was amazing to me how much I just cruised through life without considering my thoughts and how my choices to think on them affect my view of myself, of others, and of God.

I struggle with being critical – it’s the direction I gravitate. I’ve shared with our kids that we all need to beware of ANTs – automatic negative thoughts. Something happens and we automatically think we’re to blame. Or we automatically blame the other person. We automatically think the situation should be different. So much in the mind happens automatically!! It’s our job to slow it down and understand what’s happening in there. We need to take back managing the train station again!

The human body is a marvel and a testament to the power and creativity of God, the brain being the most complicated and mysterious of all. Babies are born with virtually all of the brain cells a human needs, but there are limited connections. As babies experiment and repeat movements, sounds, and thought patterns, connections form, and as long as there’s repetition, these connections continue to form and solidify throughout life. Where pipes and valves make up the circulatory and digestive systems like plumbing, the brain’s electrical system develops over time.

The brain has three main physical parts – the brain stem, the cerebellum, and the cerebrum. The brain stem is at the base of the brain, connecting the rest of the brain to the spinal nerves. Its main task is to control automatic functions, such as breathing, heart rate, digestion, and body temperature, and is where the startle response and the fight, flight, or freeze response are generated.  Sometimes it’s referred to as the reptilian brain because reptiles have all of these functions. This part of the brain is fully functional at birth and can keep the body alive even on life support.

The cerebellum, sometimes called the emotional brain, is located directly above the brain stem. Information about our surroundings is relayed through our senses to the cerebellum where sensations, emotions, and movement are coordinated. While the startle response in the brain stem will cause you to pull your hand away from the hot stove, the cerebellum would take in the feeling of being overheated, irritability at being hot, and tell you to move your arm to fan yourself. This all seems to happen instantly. Because this is the emotional brain, it’s also the information processing center for relationships. People are born with mirror neurons that allow them to mimic others, which gives them the ability as babies to watch their caregivers, copy them, and develop the neural pathways in their brains. We employ these mirror neurons all through life. Think of the last time someone yawned and you followed suit. How we affect others and how they affect us is processed in this part of the brain by way of mirroring (doing things together), repetition (spending time with someone), and allowing the emotions that are felt (pleasant or unpleasant) to be noticed.

The third section of the brain is the cerebrum, also known as the frontal cortex or neocortex. It’s the two halves that you usually see depicted at the top and front of the brain. You’ve probably heard people say they’re more right brained or left brained. This is because the right hemisphere is predominantly emotional, creative, and intuitive, and the left is predominantly logical, rational, and analytical. (At some point, I’ll write about Wise Mind which is how the two halves work together best.) When babies are born, their right brain has more connections than the left. They express their emotions through crying, smiling, cooing and they explore through creativity and intuition. As they grow and learn, the left brain starts to make connections and their logic and reasoning kicks in. The cerebrum is the center for executive function and decision making, and as we mature into adults, the connections there multiply faster and faster.

Within the cerebellum are two small organs called the thalamus and the amygdala. The thalamus converges all sensory input in one pot and passes it on to the amygdala (closer to the brain stem) a little faster than to the frontal cortex (decision making). The amygdala sifts through to see if there’s any danger present. If there is, the sympathetic nervous system is engaged, and adrenaline and cortisol are secreted causing the heart rate and blood pressure to go up and energy supplies to increase. This constitutes the fight, flight, or freeze response. The bottom of the brain hijacks the rest, and logical thought is impossible at that moment. The frontal cortex catches up right after, and the person can decide if they want to keep responding the way they started. Once the danger is past the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in to slow the heart back down, deepen the breathing, and restore calm. The parasympathetic system can be jump started through deep breathing, hence the deep breathing exercises for calmness. Essentially the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are the accelerator and the brake respectively.

When a person lives with trauma – whether it’s a one-time event like a car accident or ongoing like abuse or neglect – they are more sensitized to real or perceived danger. Adrenaline and cortisol levels don’t come down to normal baseline because the fight or flight is always simmering, especially if the threat is ongoing. The body may be trying to settle through the parasympathetic nervous system while the brain is trying to rev up the sympathetic nervous system to protect the body. We know that driving with both the accelerator and brake pressed down wreaks havoc on a vehicle, and likewise, the conflict between systems wreaks havoc on the body. Hypersensitivity to real or perceived danger over a long period of time can show up through autoimmune diseases, bowel problems, sleep problems, migraines, and so on.

Earlier I explained how the brain forms connections through repetition. We all react instinctively, but when trauma happens to children, the short-term survival instinct may be detrimental in the long run. Because it’s helpful at that moment, the child will use that coping mechanism the next time they feel threatened. Over time that neural pathway solidifies. Obviously, if it is detrimental in the long run, that will show up in the long run.  Some examples may be…

• A child hides, and as an adult they cut off relationships that get too close.
• A child tries to be as good as possible in order to be invisible, and as an adult their perfectionism causes depression and possibly suicidal thoughts.
• A child, helpless in stopping abuse, retreats into their mind, and as an adult they become anxious about everything as they continue to spend too much time “in their head.”

Many times the long term effects of hypersensitivity include anxiety and depression as mentioned above, and also post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), self-harm, eating disorders, and addictions. People are trying to cope. This was the case for so many residents at the treatment center. Through understanding how the brain and body work, understanding our own coping mechanisms, learning how to find other creative resources, learning to be in the present moment through mindfulness, and many other lessons, we were able to begin healing. Those that begin to understand God’s unconditional love for us are able to heal faster because knowing this allows one to let that hypersensitivity rest. God is there to comfort through all the hard work and tough times in the healing process.

For me, accepting God’s unconditional love, being able to forgive myself, and learning to stay in the moment were key. Christ says Come to me and I will give you rest. When I do come to him, I do find rest. When I forgive myself, I’m not chained to my past actions that God has already forgiven. When I pay attention to the moment I’m living right now, I can steer away from depression due to dwelling on the past and anxiety about what’s going to happen in the future. All of this really does lead to true rest.

One last brainy fact…There are ways to reprocess neural pathways – essentially breaking connections and forming new ones. The brain is capable of being retrained. It’s takes work, hard work, but it can be done. Someday I’ll write more on that!

I had a few other introductory ideas, but I decided to put out a meat and potatoes topic to give you an idea of the things I’ve learned along the way. In my opinion, one of the vertebras in the backbone of counseling/therapy is to understand that emotions ARE. Emotions are not good or bad. They are not right or wrong. Emotions don’t predict anything or decide anything about you, such as how much God loves you. Emotions just ARE. When emotions are viewed as information our mind and body give us about how we feel in a specific situation, we can then choose how we’d like to respond.  When emotions are viewed as good or bad, right or wrong, then shame and struggle come into play.

In the Bible, God is shown to have emotions (Gen 6:5-6, I Kings 11:9, Zeph 3:17), and Jesus displayed emotions while here on earth (Luke 10:21, 19:41, Matt 26:38, John 11:35). We are made in His image, so it stands to reason then, that having emotions is normal. It’s normal to be sad when there is loss. It’s normal to be disappointed when expectations aren’t met. It’s normal to be excited when a baby is born. Emotions inform us how we feel in different situations because they are based on thoughts and body sensations we’ve learned.

We all have mirror neurons designed to help us learn from others. Children mirror facial expressions and actions of their care givers. If a child is crying and they hear “You must be so sad!” they will associate the thoughts and sensations they’re experiencing with the word sad.  Same for happy, angry, disappointed, etc. This happens over and over as children begin to understand how different emotions feel and can start to label those for themselves.

Emotions are 70-80% physical sensations and 20-30% thoughts. One of the exercises we did was to reverse the process in naming an emotion. We had a chart to fill out – first the situation that took place, then the thoughts in response, and the body sensations that went along with it. These sensations and thoughts produce urges to react. In stepping back to examine the pieces and parts, it’s easier to name how we feel.  Sometimes people would say “I feel bad.” But emotions aren’t bad. Bad is not a feeling. It’s useful to then list out the thoughts, sensations, and urges to name the true emotion. This might look like…

• I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow
• My whole body is tense and my heart is racing
• I want to stay home
  →My emotion is anxiety

• I’m worried what someone else will think
• My stomach is churning and I feel small
• I want to hide from them
  →My emotion is guilt

These are just two examples, but you get the idea. Some might mistake state of being as their emotion, using words like bad, good, elevated, depressed, spun up, calm, intense, and mellow – these words do describe the intensity of an emotion. If in group we did say “I feel bad,” some instructors would say “bad is not a feeling” and ask us to come up with a different word that described how we felt.  If I say I feel calm, I’m describing my state of being, not my emotion. It’s more accurate to say I am calm instead of I feel calm. I’ve noticed that I’ll say, “I’m good” when asked how I’m doing, and I realized I use this as a shield so I don’t have to use feeling words. It’s not accurate for a couple reasons – 1. Good is not a feeling and 2. I’m not good of myself! If I use that expression, God should get the glory because he’s the only one that can make us good.

For a great visual tool that gives names to the range of emotions, check out this PDF –
https://med.emory.edu/excel/documents/Feeling%20Wheel.pdf

I started here by saying that emotions aren’t good or bad. It’s our reaction due to the emotion we have that can be good or bad. One instructor talked about the ways our reactions trip us up:

• If our emotion is not normal for the situation
• If our emotion is too intense for the situation
• If our emotion lasts too long for the situation

Science says that emotions last 60-90 seconds. If we continue to have the thoughts and sensations that go along with that emotion, it’s because we continue to think about the situation that came immediately before the emotion showed up. If something good happened and we continue to think about it, we’ll sustain the emotion of happiness or joy. If we’re angry about something that happened and we continue to go over it in our mind, we’ll keep having the same thoughts and sensations, and stay angry.

In an ideal world, not this broken one we live in, we’d be able to acknowledge our emotions and choose to respond in ways that aren’t sinful and don’t cause unpleasant consequences. Sounds like heaven to me! For now, it’s our job to take stock of our emotions and make choices by God’s grace to respond in healthy ways and not react in ways that damage relationships. It sure isn’t easy in our humanness, though!

So many of these topics are intertwined, it’s difficult to know where to stop writing!
More to come on:

• Slowing down the process to help us make better choices
• Separating identity from emotion to diffuse the emotion’s power
• How thoughts and emotions affect each other
• Our circle of influence