How to improve your mental heatlh pt.4

Reflect before responding to feelings

Author

Betterdo
December 01, 2023

Try to use distancing techniques. Actively poke holes in the way that I'm thinking about this thing so that I can try and find some reframing strategies to see the situation from a different vantage point.

Episode with Dr. Maya Shankar - Cognitive Neuroscientist, Yale, Oxford, Stanford

Ever wondered what your body is telling you beyond hunger and sleep cues? There's a whole world of internal sensations, called interception.

It represents your ability to sense and act on bodily sensations like faster heartbeats, breathing patterns, or how hot/cold you feel.

The people with the highest EQ are those with good interception. They’re in good tune with their feelings. Just look at Bruce Lee, he’s at peace.

When you know what a feeling is, and where it comes from, you know when to trust an emotion and when to let it go.

In Julie Smith’s book “Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?”, she shares the tactics that therapists use to help clients overcome mental challenges. The first is ‘Feelings are not facts’.

This stands for 2 things:

a) Feelings are subjective, shaped by personal perceptions, and past experiences. They reflect personal reactions, not objective reality.
b) Just because you feel something, doesn’t mean you need to respond like you usually do.

  1. Just because you are hungry, does not mean you need to eat

  2. Just because you feel like you need a cigarette, doesn’t mean you must smoke

  3. Just because you feel overwhelmed, doesn’t mean you need to freeze.

As we mentioned yesterday, this gives you agency. You’re no longer captured by a feeling. You start to understand that there’s no direct link between what you feel and how you respond to it. So, you’re always in control.

So all the stuff that you do to get in your way. All the self-doubt, the anxiety, the hesitation, stress, the frustration…. all of it becomes in your hands.

You no longer trust the emotion blindly, you see it as a mere data point. And you can do whatever you want to do. So .

Action for the day: Reflect before responding to feelings

Feeling: I am hungry.
Step 1: Am I really hungry?
Step 2: Just because I feel hungry, does it mean I need to eat?

Same for I am stressed, I am sad, I feel like drinking, I am depressed, I am frightened.

When feeling hungry

When feeling sad

Alright, this isn’t easy. But you have agency 😉. Keep it in mind when random thoughts or feelings come to you.

Good luck!

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