Thinking vs. Feeling

Have you ever noticed how we use the phrases “I think” and “I feel” interchangeably?

“I feel like you’re not being honest with me,” and “I think you’re not being honest with me,” express the same idea, perhaps the only difference being “I feel” comes across a little softer than “I think,” and both are preferred to “You aren’t being honest with me,” if you are trying not to be too confrontational.

But this is not a feeling. It is a thought. Unfortunately our language blurs the line between a cognition and an emotion by using these words as if they are synonyms.

This is problematic.

Our thoughts can be good or bad in the sense that they can be useful or not useful. True or untrue. Clear or distorted. Helpful or unhelpful. Rigid or flexible. They can be complex, nuanced, incomplete, or biased. They might even be moral or immoral in many cases.

Our feelings can be complex, even contradictory, nuanced, and many things, but they are not good or bad.

Read that again. You do not have “bad” feelings.

Feelings are like data. A useful analogy is they are like lights on a dashboard. When your check-engine light comes on, it could indicate that there is something wrong with your engine. That might be a bad thing, but is the light itself a bad thing? No, in fact, it can be very useful.

Your emotions can be looked at the same way. Sure, it is not comfortable or enjoyable to feel sad, anxious, afraid, angry, lonely, or scared. But the fact that you feel that way is not the problem. These feelings are trying to bring your attention to something, because something inside you has sensed that a problem is lurking.

This is where differentiating your thoughts from your feelings becomes very helpful.

Let’s start with anxiety. No one likes feeling anxious, and there are volumes of books, pills, workshops,  and at-home-remedies out there that are bought and sold on the premise that they can help you eliminate anxiety. But what if I told you that anxiety serves a purpose.

Our brains are designed to scan the environment for threats. There is a part of your brain (the amygdala) that is doing this 24-7. It calms down a little bit when you are in a familiar environment, but it is still scanning. When the amygdala detects a threat it “sounds the alarm” and puts you in a higher alert state to protect you from danger.

Over thousands of years this was rewarded and enhanced through the natural selection process. In our hunter and gatherer days, when Ug heard a rustling in the bushes and said to himself, “Oh that’s nothing,” but Thag said, “I don’t know what that was but I’m outta here,” Ug got eaten by a saber-toothed tiger and Thag went on to have kids and pass down his ability to detect and avoid threats to his ancestors.

“So why does my dumb amygdala fire off when I have to talk to a human to order my coffee?” Asks the person struggling with social anxiety.

That’s a good question. Let’s say Thag was able to avoid all the wild animals that could kill him, but he was also kind of a jerk. This would have been a threat to Thag’s survival. Early humans survived because they learned to live and work together. Without the support of a tribe, it was nearly impossible to survive. This would also, naturally, make it impossible to pass on your genes. So the laws of nature favored those who were able to maintain a healthy social bond with their tribe or group. So if Thag got kicked out of his tribe it was not merely an inconvenience, it was a death sentence. So it makes sense that eventually our brains began to equate social connection with survival.

As Gabor Mate points out,

"The very same brain centers that interpret and feel physical pain also become activated during experiences of emotional rejection. In brain scans, they light up in response to social ostracism, just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling hurt or of having emotional pain, they are not being abstract or poetic, but scientifically quite precise."

To the brain, pain is pain, and pain is associated with a threat survival. And if you are not afraid of pain, you will likely not survive long.

Anxiety is useful.

However…

Anxiety, like other feelings, can become problematic if it is allowed to drive the bus.

This is where the dashboard analogy breaks down, because your check engine light cannot take over your car take you places you did not intend to go.

Feelings drive us. They are the fuel that propels us to forgive others, seek forgiveness, fight injustice, and stand up for what we believe in. If my car is going to fast, it’s not inaccurate to say that “if you didn’t have any fuel you’d be going a lot slower.” That is accurate, but is also unhelpful.

If we didn’t have any emotions, we would probably not say mean hurtful things, or make rash decisions out of fear, but we would also, probably, not go anywhere.

So our emotions play a role—an important one—in the human experience. So do our thoughts.

Western society highly values rational thought, and rightfully so, but rational thought does not have to be emotionless thought.

Our feelings are real—but they are not reality. They are important, but they are also fickle, and temporary, and easily swayed or distorted.

In the executive board room of our minds, emotions deserve a place at the table, but something else has to be in charge of making the hard decisions.

This “chairman of the board” is our higher self. Neurologically speaking, this is the pre-frontal cortex. Spiritually speaking, this is our spiritual nature—that part of us that best represents the imago dei, or “image of God.” It is grounded and connected to our sense of morality, our values, and our goals.

When in a fear state this part of our brain is dark, and we are primarily being driven by our brain-stem and cerebellum, which is all about survival, and not so much concerned with being nice or keeping up with social etiquette.

This is why emotions get a bad wrap, because it is in this fight/flight/freeze mode where a lot of mistakes are made, and a lot of negative consequences are earned. Our fear system is triggered, we disguise that fear as anger and rage and lash out to protect ourselves from some feared outcome, and we are told we have an “anger problem.” We are told we need to “get it under control,” not to be “so emotional.”

But maybe the emotions aren’t the problem at all. They might be what is fueling the behavior, but blaming them is like blaming the gas in your car for your speeding ticket.

Your emotions are there for a reason, they are trying to draw your attention to something important. If we stop, breathe, and pay attention to what matters most to us, we can move forward with intention. We can advocate assertively. We can hold healthy boundaries. We can avoid blaming, defensiveness, contempt, and over-reactions—all the things that lead to behaviors we might regret later.

This begins not with stuffing, dismissing, or denying emotions, but paying attention to important information about ourselves that we might otherwise miss.

Your emotions might be distorting your thoughts, but the way to self-control is not ignoring or stuffing them, it is recognizing them for what they are, allowing them to help you be aware of what matters most to you. Once you have that information you can talk about them intelligibly without unloading them onto people. You can advocate for justice without becoming unjust yourself. You can protect yourself or others from threats without losing control and taking on unnecessary risk.

There’s a reason the only control we are commanded to have in scripture is self-control. And the best way to control your emotions is to understand them, and give them a proper seat at the table. Otherwise, they will—eventually—make you listen.

So breathe. Slow down. Listen. Think about who you are and to what you are called. Then choose your path with intention and clarity.