One of the ways that we stress ourselves is by believing something because we felt some emotion or feeling when we had a certain thought or idea enter our head.  The stress arises not because we have that feeling, but because we become so attached to the idea via the emotional glue that is present that it becomes a struggle to let go of the thought in the face of compelling evidence that the thought was wrong or loopy.

For example, imagine you are attending a party with your partner and you notice that they are having an animated conversation with someone else that is there. At this moment, a thought such as “my partner is attracted to that other person and not to me” pops into your head, totally uninvited.  Now, for some people, they would just laugh at at this thought, and said thought would sulk off to find another victim.

But, imagine for some reason that this thought manages to find you at a weak moment: you’re having a bad hair day, or something equally dreadful. In your moment of weakness, you allow this thought to be taken seriously. And, next thing you know, you are feeling depressed or sad or angry or all three, plus a few more unresourceful feelings.

These feelings trigger all kinds of neural activity in your brain, creating what brain scientists call synaptic connections. You can imagine them to be like ropes that connect you to that thought. It becomes a royal mess inside your head, literally. (OK, I made that last part up. My brain scanner has been in the shop for months, so I can’t peek inside your head to confirm. But if you wanted, you could spend some time searching for information on what effects our feelings trigger inside our brains. Here’s a start).

Suffice to say that when you think a thought and have some intense emotional response happen at the same time, that thought gets pretty solidly linked into you. And therein lies the rub. Even if you later discover that your partner was actually arguing with the other person and not at all attracted to them, that thought that you had is still cemented in pretty tightly. No matter how much new information you get about the situation that is not in agreement with the thought (i.e., your partner clearly demonstrates not being attracted to the other person) it can be really hard to move on without that doubt continuing to arise.

In fact, if that thought got well and truly cemented in there, you’ll start to have some confirmation bias, looking for evidence that proves your thought it correct. You may even start using the “logic” that since you had such strong feelings, it must have been intuition in action. Many times, it will actually have been fear in action and the danger now is that you can start trying to make reality match your fear, driving your partner away with jealous accusations and comments. Can you see where a tiny little bit of stress might arise out of this? I can foresee a whole bunch of stressful situations happening, ranging from the jealousy to self-sabotaging to arguments and worse.  And all this as a result of intense feelings happening at the same time we think a thought. The stress which you could suffer could be rather significant, to say the least.

So, what can one do to stop this thought-driven stress from occurring?

The first thing to do is to realize what is happening – pay attention to your thoughts and feelings. Notice what happens, especially when they get together and party.

The second thing is to realize that we often have some feelings such as anger, sadness or jealousy, when we are fearful of losing something or someone. The fear underlies the other feelings but we might not notice that right away.  So paying attention to the feelings and what is really driving them is rather important.

Having cultivated a sense of self-awareness, we can then apply releasing techniques such as AER to any intense feelings which arise and threaten to lead us astray. In fact, given that so many of our feelings are the expression of years of accumulated stuff happening to us, there is no reason not to release these feelings once they become strong enough to stop us from having a peaceful day.

As one releases accumulated feelings of anger, fear, and hurt, unresourceful thoughts which might appear have little to grab onto and will drift away on their own. You may have to shoo them along a little, but you’ll have regained a measure of control over your life and reduced your actual and potential stress loads.

Nipping this stress in the bud is not so hard once one understands how easily it can develop from something as simple as having an unresourceful thought and some associated feelings get together and wreck some havoc in your neural circuits.

I wish you well on your journey

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, All rights reserved