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Do Your Thoughts Control Your Feelings Or Do Your Feelings Control Your Thoughts?

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MainerMikeBrown

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Years ago, a psychotherapist told me that recovery from mental illness is fifty percent biological and fifty percent psychological.

I think she was right. Psychiatric medications can change how you think and feel in a good way. And psychotherapy can help you change your beliefs which, in turn, can also change how you think and feel.

This makes me have to ask this question; do your beliefs/thoughts control how you feel, or do your feelings control your beliefs/thoughts?

With me, anyway, I think it's a little bit of both. Sometimes a thought will cross my mind which will influence how I feel at the moment. If I have a positive thought cross my mind, and if I believe it, it can make me feel happier at the moment. And at other times, how I feel emotionally will influence what I believe. Like if I start to feel happy, my thoughts/beliefs can become more positive.

What do you think? What about you?
 
Siphonophorae

Siphonophorae

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I think my thoughts control my feelings. A thought can come out of nowhere and I’ll feel sad or angry. But if I’m happy the thought can still come. Thoughts come from everywhere, I can’t stop them.
 
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JustBeHappyG

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MainerMikeBrown said:
Years ago, a psychotherapist told me that recovery from mental illness is fifty percent biological and fifty percent psychological.

I think she was right. Psychiatric medications can change how you think and feel in a good way. And psychotherapy can help you change your beliefs which, in turn, can also change how you think and feel.

This makes me have to ask this question; do your beliefs/thoughts control how you feel, or do your feelings control your beliefs/thoughts?

With me, anyway, I think it's a little bit of both. Sometimes a thought will cross my mind which will influence how I feel at the moment. If I have a positive thought cross my mind, and if I believe it, it can make me feel happier at the moment. And at other times, how I feel emotionally will influence what I believe. Like if I start to feel happy, my thoughts/beliefs can become more positive.

What do you think? What about you?
Click to expand...
For me I think it’s both. With my anxiety my feelings control my thoughts. An example would be looking at my husband playing with my dogs- on an anxious day it annoys me “how childish”- on a normal day, I think “that is so sweet!”

On the other side I can let my thoughts and worries take over in situations and those create uncomfortable feelings.
 
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Joshua1

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I would say thoughts control feelings, every good and bad intention is first thought of the mind is the head of the body, literally and symbolically. Feelings can come first sometimes, but the mind makes things official, its why someone can like someone at first, but then start to hate them.
 
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Belizz

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I've been thinking about this for a long time after my psychiatrist mentioned it, and after years I came to the conclusion that feelings come first and bring anchored thoughts.
Of course there are many occasions when we think that thoughts usually trigger but I think that it's because we notice thoughts easily. You may be in claws of a persistent subtle but disturbing feeling all the time and never notice that.
 
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