Controlling Emotions through the Mental Filter

Yesterday I talked about learning to control your emotions so that you can better learn to do certain things, like gain more self-confidence, overcome anger and depression feelings. Well I’m going to continue that article today. We got a little better response yesterday, but let’s keep those comments coming eh?

So yesterday I started off with the notion that we have a little more control of our emotions than we tend to believe. Today I want to talk about how that’s true. There are three steps to “feeling” an emotion. Let’s talk about them.

1. The event – first, as I pointed out yesterday (and as Lauren stated) we can’t just bring ourselves to imagine a feeling, nor can we make ourselves feel it. Something must happen that brings us to that emotion. This is called the event in my little example here. This is where something takes place to trigger the start of this process that eventually brings us an emotion.
2. Passing through the “mental filter” – the second step is where the event passes through our mental filter. The mental filter will be explained at great length as this is the key concept in this series. Suffice it to say that the mental filter is our interpretation of an event that then sends a message to us that comes out at the end as the third step.
3. We begin to feel something – Once the event passes through the mental filter, it moves on towards whatever it is in us that triggers an emotion. The mental filter decides where to send out thought process to so we feel the appropriate feeling associated with our perception of the event.

Consider the following picture:

Basically it is my belief (and the belief of many behavioral psychologists) that if we can learn to change how the neurons from an event are interpreted, then we can control where we send the emotions. I will talk about what the mental filter is and how it can be changed tomorrow, but today I want everyone to do a little exercise that will help you see the way this whole system works.

The Challenge - I want everyone to think back on today about different feelings that you had. If you have a hard time remember things, do this for the next day for the feelings that you are going to have. Pick out one of those feelings and fill in the blanks. I feel _________ because I thought __________. For example, I feel sad because I thought that person didn’t want to talk to me. I feel depressed because I thought I would never get out of that situation. I feel anxious because I thought about everything I still have to do. These are just general examples, but try it out. Email me if you have questions about it and I’d be happy to try and explain it further.

*I’m not a health professional and I am not doing this in any manner that I can promise anything will happen. This is just my opinion.