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

[MainerMikeBrown]

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]

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.

 

[JustBeHappyG]

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?

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.