WHs do come back--Piecing--acceptance & time

[BluWave]

I don't think feelings change.....
Because feelings are a choice of response to an emotion.
An emotion is a built in protection system for humans

If feelings don't change because they are a choice does that mean that choices don't change either? Somehow it feels as if my feelings are often changing without my choosing. ... That or someone slipped something in my drink because I am confused!!!

Save me from myself, SH! :-)))

-Blu

[Coly23]

Oh gosh now I'm really confused as well!

I keep reminding myself that love is a choice and that my H chooses to not love me but as you say that means he can continue to choose not love me whether I am successful at DB'ng or not! :0(

[SH_]

I don't think feelings change.....
Because feelings are a choice of response to an emotion.
An emotion is a built in protection system for humans

If feelings don't change because they are a choice does that mean that choices don't change either? Somehow it feels as if my feelings are often changing without my choosing. ... That or someone slipped something in my drink because I am confused!!!

Save me from myself, SH! :-)))

-Blu

Blu, It's late, but I do want to respond.
If you have a chance, google it as I mentioned, as there is much info.
And then tomorrow we can chat a bit, because this is a topic that has much of my attention now.....my anxiety and depression issue after BD scared the hell out of me and I have to understand this....unbelievable the info on this, but it is so empowering.....
D18 is my living proof of this....
Can't wait to share with you and get your insightful thoughts as you look into it.

[BluWave]

OK, I found some quotes that I will share, but I can't site my source as that goes against DB rules. I took this from a John Voris site. 2 paragraphs I found interesting:

- "Learning the difference between feelings and emotions is crucial in understanding ourselves and initiating personal long-term change. Experts in many fields of behavior agree that our deep feelings come from an unchanging belief about life that holds our identity together, while our emotions are purely physically based, subject to change and are basically reactions to life events."

- "As the objects in your world produce emotions within you, those emotions are collected in the subconscious and begin to accumulate. This is especially true when similar events are experienced repeatedly. Ultimately, they form an emotional conclusion about how to live life and, more importantly, how to survive physically and mentally in a world of chaos. When this happens a feeling is born. In this way, emotions serve as a sort of, “feelings factory.”"

So what I am gathering this much is that while both can change, we do not have control (influence) over them both. I cannot change my emotional response, however as I go through life the way I feel about things will change. As we make different choices in general, we are more able to mold and thus influence the way we feel.

Thoughts?

[J5K]

Bluewave

I have read something similar to this and agree that if we understand the difference we can become better people.

[Coconut]

Blu,

The way I read it is that we do have control over our emotions, as that is how we react to external stimuli. We can control or reaction to events.

But feelings are a deep rooted, take time to build, and therefore are not controllable in a singular event.

i.e. - emotions are the little boats, we can turn them on a dime, if the wave causes us to tilt to much, we can adjust how we point the boat when the next wave hits and have less impact.

Feelings are the big cruise ships, they take forever to change course, you can't change course because a wave is coming so every "wave" has a similar impact.

If someone asks me on a date, but when I show up they stand me up, I would be upset and really disappointed because I was really looking forward to meeting up with them. The next time they ask me out, I decide that I'm gonna have a drink, strike up conversation with someone at the bar so if they don't show up, I didn't waste my time... they don't show up, but I'm not as upset (my emotions).

After getting stood up hundreds of time (no, I'm not that gullible), my feeling is that when asked out, I can expect to get stood up. When I get asked out next, they show up, but my deep down feeling doesn't just change to expecting people to show up when asked out, it would take a while of someone showing up to change my overall feeling.

[RSG]

- "Learning the difference between feelings and emotions is crucial in understanding ourselves and initiating personal long-term change. Experts in many fields of behavior agree that our deep feelings come from an unchanging belief about life that holds our identity together, while our emotions are purely physically based, subject to change and are basically reactions to life events."


Thoughts?

This makes sense to me. I hate my W right now, but I still feel love for her in my heart. Weird that it can be so, but this explains it well.

[SH_]

Good ones.

i did not forget.
It is late, but tomorrow I will have time.
Good start for this convo.
I see some good learning ad stuff here for us.

Sleep tight.

[SH_]

Okay....Tons of info, but I am seeing a consistency in the patterns and principles in my research of the topic, Emotions versus Feelings.

Blu, the quotes you share are in line with what I have studied.
Short definitions are
Emotions are physical response of the body.
Feelings are the definitions, beliefs and habits that we assign to the emotions.

Some interesting info I quote here as I found information with the best brain possible...

"Emotions are lower level responses occurring in the subcortical regions of the brain, the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortices, creating biochemical reactions in your body altering your physical state. They originally helped our species survive by producing quick reactions to threat, reward, and everything in between in their environments. Emotional reactions are coded in our genes and while they do vary slightly individually and depending on circumstances, are generally universally similar across all humans and even other species. For example, you smile and your dog wags its tail."

So I see this as emotions are those basic life form instincts meant to protect us.
The gazzelle in the African plains experiences the fear emotion when a lion shows up.
The emotion leads to heightened physical responses such as adrenaline and running for their life.
The moment the lion drops the chase or catches one of the gazelles, the emotion turns off and the herd of gazelles literally stops running and returns to grazing....

This is where we humans start our struggles as it relates to emotions....

"Feelings originate in the neocortical regions of the brain, are mental associations and reactions to emotions, and are subjective being influenced by personal experience, beliefs, and memories. A feeling is the mental portrayal of what is going on in your body when you have an emotion and is the byproduct of your brain perceiving and assigning meaning to the emotion. Feelings are the next thing that happens after having an emotion, involve cognitive input, usually subconscious, and cannot be measured precisely."

The human brain tends to kick into overdrive trying to assign meaning to the emotion.
This starts at an early age, and unfortunately in a day and age that we teach ourselves so many things in our education systems, we have failed to teach ourselves how to balance the natural survival instinct with the realities of our situations.

Basically it is the difference between having and knowing that this is happening within us.
Meditation has started me on the path to make these distinctions......

This is something I read that really caught my attention as it was literally me for the past 44 years....

"An emotion is a physiological experience (or state of awareness) that gives you information about the world, and a feeling is your conscious awareness of the emotion itself. I hadn’t really understood why the distinction was such a big deal, because I don’t experience a huge gap between emotion and feeling. I mean, if there’s an emotion going on, I feel it. Bing.

But this isn’t true for everyone. Many people are honestly unaware that they’re having an emotion. For them, the emotion and the consciousness of it are not strongly connected, and they don’t even realize that they’re fearful, or angry, or depressed. Their emotional state has to become so persistent that it drags them into a severe mood (or is pointed out by someone else), and then they can realize, “Oh, I guess I’ve been really sad about my mom, or afraid about money, or angry about work.”

For many people, there’s a disconnect between emotion and feeling; there’s no consciousness of the emotion at all. They have the emotion, but they don’t know about it. The emotion is certainly there, and their behavior displays the emotion (to others at least), but they aren’t feeling it properly."

I see now many of my mood states where I could not tell what it was, may actually been my inability to connect the two.

This information has helped me stop anxiety attacks, maintain calm in moments where anger use to boil over, listen and validate instead of argue or get worked up, and basically maintain more calm over all.
I see where years of poor habits and instinct reactions were futile, and now I more consciously respond.....
I see the key to gaining control here is through response, not reaction.
Reaction is to jump back from the ledge of a cliff when to close.....this protects my life
Respond is to sense the emotion raising up inside...assign a true principle to it....determine the value i can bring through influence, not force...and then respond accordingly.
This protects my true character and benefits those that I serve.
Most importantly it builds up the true me that I am meant and working to be.

Okay, so not so short and to the point, but hopefully food for thought and discussion.

[Coconut]

Wow SH, everyone should really read and re-read what you just wrote. You explained it much better than my IC did when we were focused on me controlling my anger. Even though I got a basic understanding of how I could control my reaction to anger, I didn't correlate it to other emotions, such as responding to a comment from WW that I felt I had to defend myself.