Perceptions Rule Your World
Regulate Your Emotional Temperature
TSK-TSK
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” Epictetus, 1st century A.D.
“If you think you can or you think you can’t you are right.”
Henry Fordb
My Favorite!
“I’m an old man, and in my life I have known many problems, most of which never happened.” Mark Twain
Relationships are the foundation of our life; our relationship to ourselves, to others, the environment and the universe. We are matter interacting with all the forces of nature, and to everyone on this planet.
All of our ideas about ourselves are formed through relating to the world around us. All of our information must first come in through our senses; something we hear, something we see, something we touch or that touches us, something we smell, something we taste. As this information comes in through our senses it is labeled good, bad, or neutral. This process is how our thoughts about ourselves and others are formed. We have millions of pieces of information floating around in our brain. Some of this information is accurate and useful and some of it is inaccurate and detrimental.
It is time to clean the attic. Every day we have thousands of thoughts flashing through our heads, and they are the same thoughts day after day. What each of us needs to learn to do is capture these thoughts and evaluate them. I liken it to cleaning out the attic. First you need to capture what you think, then decide if you want to keep the thought or throw it out, and then decide what else you want to store up there. What new thoughts are worth keeping.
These thoughts in our head are translated into emotions and behaviors. What is most significant, is to be consciously aware of what how you think and the emotions and behaviors these thoughts and feelings produce.
You can’t manage anyone else until you can manage yourself!
The most important relationship you will ever have, is with whom? If you answered with yourself, you are correct. What we say to ourselves, the thoughts in our head will affect every cell in our body. To be really healthy a person needs proper nutrition, exercise, and good thoughts. Start to think about how you think. Most of us operate most on automatic pilot, with a knee-jerk reaction, one good old stimulus-response, thought-emotional reaction.
The following is an exercise that will help demonstrate how your thoughts work. This exercise is best done if you relax, close your eyes and visualize a scenario. If possible find a partner, who will read the exercise to you.
In these exercises as in so many occurrences in life there are no mistakes or errors, only learning opportunities.
Exercise:
Make yourself comfortable, put you feet flat on the floor, close your eyes and take a deep breath, breath in and breath out, take another deep breath, hold it and let it out very slowly, and let your body become very relaxed.
Once you feel completely relaxed, imagine yourself in your kitchen. Be there. See what you see. Hear what you hear. Feel what you feel. As you are standing in your kitchen, to take out a cutting board. Now, take out a paring knife and put them on the counter. Now, walk over to the refrigerator open the door and take out a nice juicy lemon. Take the lemon over to the cutting board and as you are walking, feel the pliable texture of the lemon’s outer skin and smell the lemon’s aroma. Place the lemon on the cutting board, cut the lemon in half, see the juice running out, pick up one of the lemon wedges and take a nice big bite.
What happened? Did you have some kind of physical response? . Did your mouth pucker? Did you shudder?
When I do this exercise with a group of people, I can see the facial expression change.
Now do a reality check. Where are you? Where is your kitchen? Where is the lemon? The kitchen and the lemon are in your head, but your body responded as if you were really biting a lemon.
If you don’t have someone to take you through this exercise, try this one. Close your eyes and imagine yourself picking up a live cockroach.
Tell me what happened. You had some kind of physical response. Did you cringe?
All of us are familiar with the physical sensations that can be aroused by imagination. The important point to remember is that our thoughts influence reactions in our body and our body can influence reactions in our mind. Every cell in the body has its own form of intelligence and so mind and body acts as one.
Exercise:
The C Store:
Here is another exercise. If possible find a partner, who will read the exercise to you.
Make yourself comfortable, put you feet flat on the floor, close your eyes and take a deep breath, breath in and breath out, take another deep breath, hold it and let it out very slowly, and let your body become very relaxed.
Imagine yourself at your neighborhood convenience store. It is a dark rainy night. You are standing at the cash register, in front of the cashier waiting to check out. Just be there. Look around. See what you see. Hear what you hear. Feel what you feel. As you are standing there a man comes running in with an umbrella. Monitor your response.
Now go back home and come back to this same convenience store. It is the same kind of dark rainy night. You are standing in front of the same cashier, at the same cash register waiting to check out.. Look around. See what you see. Hear what you hear. Feel what you feel. As you are standing there a man comes running in with a gun pointed right at you. Monitor your response. Now discuss your responses with your partner.
When the man ran in with the umbrella what happened? When the man ran in with the gun did you experience a physical response that we associate with fear?
Why would you have a different response with the gun?
Oh yes, of course, the gun is dangerous. But how do you know this? Did you experience the physical response before or after you told yourself a story? Of course it appeared as the gun created the response, but lets stop to think about what really happens.
Suppose you are a person from the Outback, away from civilaztion, and you have never seen or heard a gun, You hunt with a spear and live off the land. You are miraculously transported to this convenience store. Of what do you think you might be more fearful, the gun or the umbrella?
Probably the umbrella because it resembles a weapon.
Now think, when the man ran in with the gun, did you hear the information you gave yourself before you felt the fear? Did you hear yourself say something like, “Oh my God, I’m in a convenience store. Convenience stores get robbed. He has a gun. Guns shoot bullets. Bullets can kill. I can be shot and killed?”
Did you hear yourself say in the first situation, “It’s raining outside so no wonder he has an umbrella?” Maybe.
The point to remember is that your physical response was based on the information you told yourself about the gun and the situation and not triggered(excuse the Pun) by the gun or the pliers. Your response is determined by the story you tell yourself about a situation.
GET OFF AUTOMATIC PILOT AND PUT CHOICE IN YOUR LIFE
The first step in getting off automatic pilot is to be able to hear the thoughts in our head. Automatic thoughts are just that. They are so fast and so automatic that we don’t even hear ourselves talking to ourselves.
YOU CAN REGULATE YOUR EMOTIONAL TEMPERATURE
Think of yourself as if you are a washing machine. Have you ever seen a washing machine so overloaded with suds that is couldn’t operate? Well, when our suds level is up to the top, we can’t operate well either. When we experience consistent and/or constant overload, we have names for the physical consequences, stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, or in the extreme a nervous breakdown. These names describe a cluster of symptoms, physical responses in our body, and the physical reactions are real. Changes take place in every cell in our body in response to feeling threatened. When we perceive a threat to ourselves, the body prepares for flight or fight. Powerful chemical messengers are released, and over time these chemical messangers can cause severe damage to the body. The best thing you can do for yourself is learn to prevent setting these damaging messengers into action. How does one do this? There are no quick fixes or easy answers. First comes awareness, then comes a process, a procedure to work on over and over until this new way of thinking becomes automatic.
You Can Change your Emotional Temperature
What is an emotion? An emotion is a physical sensation connected to a thought. If you think a different thought, you can create a different emotion. The body does not distinguish between what is real and what is imagined.
Try it. Think about something or someone wonderful and funny, something you really enjoy. Are you smiling? Do you notice a change in your body?
The way in which we perceive events shapes our responses to them, and unfortunately, much of our thinking is, at times, illogical and irrational.
In his book “Feeling Good,” Dr. Burns says, “Your feelings are not facts! Your feelings don’t even count, except to mirror your thinking. If your thoughts make no sense, feelings they create will be just as absurd.”
Our perceptions rule our world.
No one is truly free from the ideas, notions and beliefs we bring to any situation. To be able to put choice in our lives it is necessary to be able to access these beliefs.
To learn how to control your own emotional responses, it is important to begin to think about certain concepts.
What you THINK
How you FEEL
What you DO or SAY
Each of us needs to understand the importance of separating out how you feel from what you think, and then from what you do. People who act out all their emotions, are not making choices. “Feel-do” people usually live chaotic lives with many difficulties. Again life is about choices, and about the price one pays for our choices, about the logical consequences of our behavior.
To get off Automatic Pilot it is important to distinguish thoughts from feelings. In speech most people will say I feel when what is more accurate is I think. A thought is an idea, a notion, a feeling is the physical sensation connected to the thought. It is very important to learn to differentiate and use the correct word to distinguish thoughts from feelings to be able to do the exercises that will put choice in your life. It is essential to learning to think about how you think. The next time you say I feel, stop and check it out. Do you really mean I think?
Learning to use this technique will give you much better control of your emotional temperature.
Life is nothing but Small and Large Choices made every minute of the day.
Our aim is to differentiate and identify thoughts and the feelings produced, and then take charge by choosing the appropriate behavior.
On the following page is a worksheet that is designed to help you capture your thoughts and then begin to understand how these thoughts govern your words and deeds.
TSK…TSK
This sheet is designed to help you understand how you create your own emotional response to a situation. The more you use this sheet the better your results. As soon as you experience a strong feeling, take this sheet out and work it through as you were instructed. Used properly this exercise will help you identify how you make yourself happy & how you make yourself sad.
Response Sequence
Experienced-Actual
T. Trigger Event: Describe what happened. 1 1
S. Self Talk: (Automatic Thoughts) What did you say to yourself about 3 2 the above trigger event?
K. Kinesthetic: Physical response; emotion; What are you feeling? (anger, 2 3 joy, rejection, fear, guilt, etc.)
Take Time
T. Trigger event: Take Time, Think, avoid Trouble: Identify the trigger, 4 do not say or do anything until you proceed to the next steps.)
S. Self Talk , Sane: Substitute new or more rational self talk. Dispute irrational 5 beliefs.
K. Kinesthetic: New emotion, new physical response. Now you are ready to choose 6 what you want to say or do.
MARLA GALE, LCSW BCD 1-561-605-GALE (4253) 1-800-RELATE-1(735-2831) © 1992 Marla Gale
Example of how to use the above sheet:
Trigger Event
Dirty Dishes in the sink after I had repeatedly asked him to put them in the dishwasher.
Self Talk
I’m just a maid around this house. No one cares about what I want. It’s fine for him to ask me to do things for him, but he can’t do the smallest thing for me. Just wait till he wants something. He doesn’t give a damn about me, so why bother.
Kinesthetic Emotional Response
Anger, Depression, Helplessness
Trouble or Danger
You yell or holler or name call. Your reaction is just a way to release your own emotions.
Self Talk Sane
Maybe he was in a hurry. These are dishes in the sink and not really a message about how he feels about me. Maybe he really doesn’t understand how important this is to me. I need to find a way to make him understand.
Kinesthetic New Emotional Response
Reduced anger, relief.
T
Your boss breaks the news that the company is downsizing and your position is being cut.
S
“I really must have something wrong with me. They could have kept my position. I’ll never find another good job. I’ve worked hard and they still don’t want. This is awful! Everything happens to me. It shouldn’t be this way. I can’t stand it. Life is unfair and lousy.”
K
anxiety, depression, hostility
S
“Where is the evidence that because they are cutting my position there is something wrong with me? Of course I may find another job. I can find lots of things that I do well. Everything doesn’t really happen to me, and whoever said that life is fair. I’ll get over this and be just fine.”
K Sadness Annoyance Determination
During the coming weeks listen carefully to your self-talk, use the worksheet, write down your self talk and you will find that certain themes occur. You will find that you may tell yourself the same thing about very different situations.
Case Example:
I had a client, Rob, a 39-year-old strapping body builder whose father used to beat up on him as a child and still belittled him. When he was 17 and bigger and stronger than his father he had put an end to the physical abuse. He sought therapy because he had decided that he would no longer tolerate the verbal abuse, but by refusing to see his father he would have limited or no contact with his,mother.
Also, Rob had never sustained a meaningful relationship and had walked away from numerous jobs. As we worked using the above sheet, his theme became evident. When he was a kid nothing he ever did seemed to be good enough, no matter how he tried he couldn’t please or make any difference in the treatment he recived.
Can you guess his theme? “Why bother?” This is the theme he acted out in life. He was convinced that no matter what he did it wouldn’t make a difference, so when a relationship went sour, or a problem developed on the job, he said “Why bother?” and walked away.
This story has a happy ending. Rob learned to work through problems, and as a way of ventilating his emotions we wrote a letter to his father… a very scathing letter detailing the harm done. Rob decided to mail the letter and invite his father to come to therapy and try to develop a new relationship. His father accepted the offer and we had some very heavy and emotional meetings with the father expressing intense regret at the harm he had unintentionally created.
Why is the above so important? You need to learn how you create your own emotional climate. It is difficult to resolve differences or settle conflicts when the persons involved are out of control emotionally.
Remember. the mind does not distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. After a trigger event occurs, we automatically tell ourselves something about that event, our interpretation. We are constantly writing stories in our heads.
“Buzz Cut” By James Hall Dell Publishing 1996
“The past,” Thorn said. “It’s just a bunch of stories you’ve decided to tell yourself. You can always tell different ones if you want. It takes some work, but it’s possible.”
“You can, huh? Just lie to yourself?”
“Not lie, but go back, find some stories you’ve forgotten. Things just as true as the ones you’ve been holding on to. Tell the new ones to yourself for a while. Slant it a different way. Everybody has got a shitload of stories, a shitload of different pasts. No reason to get stuck with just one set.”
Optimists write happy or successful endings.
Pessimists write sad or disastrous endings.
Helpful Hints
Ask yourself, “what is the worst thing that could happen?”
Rehearse a situation. It may be helpful to go over a scenario in your imagination and try out a few different responses. Remember, it is more beneficial to imagine yourself doing something the way you want to do it.
If you in your imagination see yourself messing up then you are rehearsing how to mess up. In tennis, if you get up to serve and think “I hope I don’t double fault” you have made a mental image of yourself double faulting, and your body will say okay and you’ll double fault. If you say, I’m going to serve deep into the box and down the middle you increase your chances of doing just that.
It has to take some time before you are able to capture and change your thoughts. There will be ups and downs in your progress. You cannot expect to have overnight results. It is very important for you to be aware of whatever progress you make, however small, however gradual. If you are like most people who have gone through these procedures, the effort will be well worth the results.
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