Emotions and Your Thoughts

Another component of emotions has to do with the thoughts that you have when you feel certain emotions. You can think of these thoughts as passengers coming along for the ride on the emotions bus (Hayes and Smith 2005). In contrast to emotions (which have to do with what you feel), thoughts are the things you say to yourself or the images you picture in your mind. For instance, Things are hopeless is a thought that might go along with a feeling of sadness or despair. Thoughts have to do with what you are saying about a situation, an emotion, yourself, or other people. And, different thoughts often go along with different emotions. Next, we list some of the types of thinking patterns that might accompany different emotional states. Although this is far from an exhaustive list, it will help give you a sense of some of the thoughts that often go along with certain emotions. Of course, it is important to keep in mind that you may have other thoughts or different kinds of thoughts that go along with these emotions for you. These are just examples.

· Thoughts that go along with anger might include I can’t stand him! Why is he always like this? What a jerk. She should never have said that! This is awful. How dare they do this to me? This should not be happening like this!

· Thoughts that go along with guilt might include I should never have done what I did. I really hurt her. I need to make up for this. I don’t know why I keep doing these things.

· Thoughts that go along with sadness might include This is so awful. What am I going to do? I can’t believe this is happening. I’m going to miss this person so much.

A very important point to remember about thoughts is that they can both fuel your emotions and be fueled by your emotions. Sometimes, you get angry only after you have a bunch of angry thoughts, and at other times you might find that you get angry and then that feeling of anger sets you down the road of having a bunch of angry thoughts. Or, you might find that they all come at once in a big bundle of anger. There’s a back-­and-­forth relationship between thoughts and emotions; thus, you can change your thoughts by changing your emotions, and you can change your emotions by changing your thoughts. This is not, however, to say that if you have strong emotions, the problem is in your head. We’re not saying that thoughts are the main or only cause of emotional distress, or that all you have to do is change your thinking and everything will be fine. Thoughts play a role sometimes, but they are just one part of the picture.

Exercise 4.2 Relating Your Emotions to Your Thoughts

Using this table, write down different types of emotions that you experience, including both positive and negative emotions, and then note the types of thoughts that go through your mind when you feel these particular emotions. There is an example in the table to get you started.