why your feelings don't matter (part 2)

So, how do you control your thoughts?

I left off in part 1 saying that you can control your feelings—but first you have to learn to control your thoughts…

This is where it gets really good….

Most people tell me they can’t control their feelings.

When you say, “I can’t control my feelings,” you usually mean that right now, at this very moment, you have upset yourself so greatly that your autonomic nervous system has temporarily gone out of kilter and that you cannot immediately control it.

True.

Your heartbeat, gut reactions, and sweating may be blocking your sensible functioning. But even then, if you look at the irrational beliefs with which you are upsetting yourself and if you interrupt these beliefs, you would discover that you can bring your feelings under control again—and sometimes in a surprisingly short length of time.

The first thing you must do to learn to control your feelings is to observe your own thinking.

When I start to feel annoyed, I have a tendency to disengage completely with whomever I’m talking to. I then start an internal dialogue in my head of everything I want to say to this person but know that I shouldn’t because it would cause more harm than good. 

Instead of reacting and saying, “my GOD that person annoys the sh&% out of me” (which is something you’ve probably heard me say)…I can choose to stop, and observe my thinking….”Hmm…this person is annoying me…no, they aren’t…I’m allowing them to annoy me…why are they annoying me? Because I feel like what they are saying is a waste of my time. Is it really a waste of time? Is giving rapt attention to another human being ever a waste of time? Do I think I’m too important or have better things to do than be available to this person?

The answer is usually no.

And then I notice, almost immediately, my feelings of “annoyance” disappear. And I take note of the small amount of compassion creeping in.

Other techniques that can be used to observe and control your feelings are these: (by the way, these come directly from Albert Ellis’ book “RationalEmotive Behavioral Therapy”—which is actually the basis and reason for me writing this series in the first place)

1)     When faced with actual physical injury, deprivation, pain, or disease, you can attempt to eliminate or to improve your painful condition. If you cannot, accept it philosophically and try, as best you can, to ignore or distract yourself from it. Instead of telling yourself: “What a frightful thing is happening to me!” you can say to yourself, “Too bad that I find myself in this unfortunate situation. So it is too bad! But not awful!”

2)    When faced with severe criticism, you can first question the motives of your critics and how correct they are. IF you think their comments are warranted, you can try to change your behavior or to accept your own failings and others’ disapproval about them.

3)     When you feel overwhelmed with anxiety, anger, depression, or guilt, you can realize that your own irrational beliefs and not outside people and events largely create your feelings. Even in the midst of these feelings, you can still look at your own ideas and images, figure out the irrational shoulds, oughts, and musts that you have woven into them and vigorously dispute and challenge these beliefs.

4)    You are in your own saddle. You cannot expect complete happiness at all times. Freedom from all physical pain and frustration won’t be your lot. But you can reduce your mental and emotional woe—if you think you can and if you work at changing your belief system.

The main problem that I see is that people aren’t willing to put in the work it takes to become a healthier person.

I can’t tell you how many times I hear and/or encounter people that desperately want to change. They know they are in over their head with alcohol and drugs—they know they are in a codependent relationship, they know there’s a better way to live life. They know they want to work out their marriage. They know they should quit enabling their children…..ad infinitum.

And when the pain gets great enough, they really believe they want to change. In that moment, I know they do. But what happens is that strong conviction of wanting to change dies, usually within a 24 hour period—sometimes they make it a week—and they forget the pain and they convince themselves that it really isn’t that bad.

NEWS FLASH WALTER CRONKITE: YES IT IS.

It is that bad.

But the amount of work it actually takes to change their thought process—thus changing their feelings—is just too much for them. And they settle.

This is a pattern I see on an everyday basis:

Person wants to change. Person recognizes that what they are doing isn’t working for them. Person is aware that there is another way to live. Person starts fresh from the pain and does a little inside work. Person gets really uncomfortable with what they find. Person begins to get frustrated that they aren’t changing fast enough. Person convinces themselves that what they were trying to change in the first place really isn’t that harmful or that bad. Person reaches the wall. Person bounces off the wall and lands at the bottom of the hill.

(I’m serious.)

Very, very few people make it over the wall.

BUT…

What they fail to realize is that on the other side of the wall IS that life they envision themselves having. It DOES get better on the other side of the wall.

But first you have to make it over the wall.  

The easy way out is often just that—the “easy” way out of the most rewarding lifestyle.

Face the fact that, because you are a fallible human, you often will have great difficulty getting over the wall and that normal principles of inertia will tend to hold you back and make starting a chore. Expect these problems to occur and accept that you will often have to use extra push and extra energy to retrain your thinking…

To be continued…