Thoughts vs Feelings – Who’s Right?

I used to be a professional overthinker. There was no topic my mind couldn’t turn into doomsday scenarios.

Of course all of this was accompanied by all kinds of unpleasant feelings. Because thoughts were keeping all my attention, naturally, I believed that all those negative thoughts were the cause for the negative feelings.

Consuming a lot of content that claims my thinking is the problem didn’t help much.

There is a tendency in self-improvement circles to blame negative thoughts for negative feelings. In other words, if you’re miserable, it’s because you are thinking miserable thoughts.

This leads to another tendency — the tendency to demonize thought and glorify feelings. Thought bad, feeling good.

But is that really so? Are negative thoughts responsible for negative feelings? Are thoughts the bad guys and feelings the good guys? What comes first, thoughts or feelings?

Let’s solve this puzzle once and for all.

What Comes First, Thoughts or Feelings?

This is classic chicken and egg problem.

Most of us assume that thoughts make us feel things. In other words, if you think good things you feel good things; if you think bad things you feel bad things.

Although it makes sense, there is no reason for us to believe that the opposite could be true.

If we take a look at thoughts in comparison to feelings, wouldn’t it make more sense if feelings came first? Are feelings not more primal? Every sentient being has feelings, but thoughts, at least the way we think about thoughts, seem to be reserved for the hairless primates, at least on this planet.

Also, it’s safe to assume that our less hairless Stone Age ancestors could feel before they could think. So how have we arrived at the notion that thoughts are the cause of feelings?

What if feelings are dictating our thoughts and not the other way around? If you reflect on your life, don’t you get the feeling that feelings dictate your thinking?

This is not to say that feelings always come first, but that there is evidence for it in our experience.

We like to believe that we are rational creatures but it’s not hard to see that the opposite is actually the case. We are irrational creatures with the capacity of rationality.

The heart dictates the brain and the heart has been conditioned to hang on to its feelings no matter how painful and irrational they are. Are our opinions and beliefs rational or are they not mostly empowered by our emotional attachment to them?

I think it’s fair to say that most of our opinions and beliefs are not powered by rational thought but by emotional investment.

Thoughts vs. Feelings, What’s the Point?

Does that mean feeling is to blame?

No, not necessarily. After all, it’s all about in what direction we channel feelings and thoughts. They can work in unison but most of the time they don’t. A lot of the time, thought doesn’t like feeling and feeling doesn’t like thought.

But from the negative point of view, they tend to agree with each other. If you think “negative” thoughts, then “negative” feelings are right there to approve, and vice versa.

Note: I put negative in quotation marks because labeling thoughts and feelings in this way is unnecessary.

One problem is we don’t really know when to trust our thoughts and when our feelings. At times both can seem divinely inspired. Other times, both can seem like absolute garbage.

The reason for that, and it’s a good reason, is that we don’t know which feelings and thoughts are ours. Most of what we think and feel is the result of conditioning coming at us from all angles and directions.

And because we easily feel lost in the maelstrom of our minds, we opt for the positivity train.

Naturally, a lot of people peddle positive thinking. But in reality, we don’t give a rat’s ass about positive thinking. We want to feel happy not think happy.

If you were absolutely happy, you wouldn’t care what your thoughts are claiming. On the other hand, if you were thinking positively 24/7 but still feel unhappy then who cares about the positive thoughts?

Positive thinking is a big scam, which doesn’t mean it can’t make you feel better. It sure can. But it’s like a bandaid. It’s not solving the problem of suffering at the deepest level.

No one cares about positive thinking itself except as a means to an end.

Now, what if I told you that positive thinking is not the means to the end you’re looking for? It’s not.

This answers the question of why we even care to figure this whole thinking-feeling dilemma out. We want to be happy and we assume being happy has something to do with fixing the way we think and feel.

Why You’re Thinking and Feeling Bad

Okay, now that we know that all we want is to be happy, we have something to work with.

The next question everyone wants to ask is: What do we do about this?

How can we make thought and feeling work together? Do we change thoughts or feelings? Or none? Who is the bad guy here?

Well, what if nothing needs to be changed? What if no one is the bad guy?

I know, I indicated that feelings precede thoughts, but the truth is there is no way to know. If you look at your experience and try to find the preceding feeling to a thought, you’ll find it, but if you then try to find the preceding thought to that exact feeling, you’ll find that too, and sometimes they might even seem to arise in tandem.

So, considering this, is there any purpose in finding out if the chicken or the egg came first?

Not really, but when it comes to transforming our way of being, some approaches work better.

Some people say you can just force your way into thinking and feeling good. Basically, you just make it a habit to think and feel as good as you can and come back to it every time you slip into negativity.

From experience I can say that it works to some degree, which is determined by your current level of understanding of yourself. But true happiness is not something that you attain through habits.

The real way to free yourself from negativity is to hawk up all the accumulated emotional debris and get it out of your system. The only reason you’re thinking negative thoughts is because your conditioning and beliefs compel the thinking process to do so.

The underlying emotional tension that we carry around all day every day is steering our lives to a great degree. And to a great degree, we’re unaware of it.

Solving the Thinking-Feeling Dilemma

Thoughts are way more numerous in their potential expression, meaning one feeling can have thousands of associated thoughts.

So, if there is a mental construct that bothers you and you want to dismantle, starting from the top with all the thoughts is a rather tedious endeavor that in most cases won’t get you anywhere as by the time your right hand has unscrewed one thought, your left hand has already added two more.

The problem is that we want to start from the top. Why not start from the bottom?

There is no need to neatly deconstruct the construct. Just take the lowest supporting structure out and let that whole thing crash down violently (or gently). What this means is to go straight to the feeling complex.

Instead of dealing with self-perpetuating thoughts, get in touch with the feeling and allow yourself to feel it. Be with the feeling no matter how uncomfortable it is.

By doing so, the energy behind it is running out and when all the energy is run out the feeling vanishes. And because the supporting structure is gone the thoughts have most likely disappeared as well.

This approach is usually confusing for most of us.

For a long time, I didn’t understand how to do this whole feeling thing. Until, one day, I realized that this is not a cognitive process. At that moment it clicked: I can pay attention to the underlying felt-sense no matter what thoughts are running through my mind.

Thoughts are not a hindrance. Overthinking is not a hindrance.

Instead of focusing on the thoughts that are saying, “I’m confused, I don’t get it,” go to the feeling behind those thoughts. What does confusion feel like?

And all you need for this is our good ol’ friend awareness. Shine the light onto those feelings and don’t try to make them go away. The only way they will “go away” is through understanding and to understand you have to observe them diligently as if they were outside of you. Understanding follows observation.

If you want to understand a Hippopotamus in the wild, you don’t go up to it and push it around or tell it to stand differently. If you try to do this, you’ll just get hurt.

The same is true with feelings, trying to change them and make them go away, just leads to more feelings that you’ll try to change and make go away. It’s one hell of a cycle and most people are stuck in it their whole lives.

To break out of the cycle, shift your attention to that part of your experience that you’ve been avoiding/unaware most of the time.

Look at all the recurring fears and sufferings in your life. Then move from the thoughts about them to the felt sense of them.

The repetitive thoughts that are associated with emotional pain are not solved by continuing to think about them even more. They are solved by shifting to the unresolved feeling that perpetuates them.

Thoughts that make you feel bad, simply point toward unresolved emotional tension. Instead of focusing on all the things in the world that make you feel bad, focus on that underlying general distress.

It’s almost like a metaphysical anxiety about life in general, which seeks to express itself through the various aspects of your life. We might call it the cause of suffering. Or we might call it you.

In the end, what are you but an idea based on psycho-somatic tension that reacts to the world? This is the linchpin we have to remove.

Thinking and Feeling in Their Best Form

Although it can take a while until the last vestiges of “me” and all its pains and sorrows fall away, there are benefits even before that.

Stop trying to think your way out of worries and anxieties. Every day worries and anxieties you can’t solve through immediate action are not worth thinking about.

You know what is worth thinking about?

Think about what it is you actually want. Ask yourself what is actually true. Free your thinking from conditioned feelings and then methodically and systematically think things through.

This is a powerful way to use thought. And this is where you start thinking for yourself because your thoughts are no longer dictated by moods you haven’t chosen.

Contrary to common new age doctrine, thinking is not the bad guy. If you like thinking, then keep thinking. But don’t waste it on worries and things you don’t want to think about.

Feeling is also not the bad guy. Except for temporary experiences of control, we can’t control how we feel. Ironically, realizing that reduces the perceived seriousness of feelings and leads to more pleasant feelings.

You no longer try to reel your feelings in or control them in any way. You quite simply feel them which is all feelings ever want — to be felt.

At the same time, feeling is also freed up and takes on a new role. Because your feeling is no longer primarily an expression of the past, it becomes a new sense to use as a guide for your life. You’ll be increasingly capable of discerning which feelings to trust.

Some call it intuition.

Previously your feelings were merely a re-creation system for your false life — your past and future life. Now your feelings are anchored here and now and no longer in the past and future.

Feelings are now your subtle antenna for perceived rightness and wrongness. They indicate when to do gentle course corrections. They are part of your navigating system for your true life, which is only ever happening now.

Everything becomes more harmonious and thoughts and feelings take on a new flavor. Less and less do you feel like fighting against them. More and more they start to work in unison.

And then, suddenly, both are no longer your adversaries but your allies in living life the way you like.

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Luka

Hello friend! My name is Luka and I am the creator of mindfulled. Here you'll find illustrated essays and stories about spiritual awakening and the art of living.

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