Hi (friendly place this, hehe).

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alexandra_k said:

> they don't differentiate between mind and emotion - they are not the same thing. So you can have a very damaged feeling-life, and i think mine is, but have an OK or even a more than OK mental life. I'm a good thinker, a good writer, stuff like that.

Ah.
:-)
There is this little theory that goes like this:
Thoughts cause Emotions.
If you are having an intensely distressing emotion then you are endorsing a cognitive distortion. By definition. If you won't admit to that then you are *unconsciously* endorsing a cognitive distortion. [

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I dont think I agree with that. Its trying to dissect and analyse human capacity using scientific method, characteristic of medical based psychiatry. Which is frequently undertaken by such incredibly dry, un-intuitive, and arrogant people who presume to judge and understand others based not on their own self awareness, but on external data. Really not interested in people like that - in fact, I recieved some psychiatry when I was about 16, which was a referral from a doctor, which was a referral from well meaning but esentially impotent parents who were, actually, implicated in the whole problem. All along the line, no one bothered to consider the importance of self awareness, human relations, and the "systems" in which people live - family the system I was in, which was dysnfunctional. So finally: the psychiatrist sat me down and I remember, nearly 30 years later, him asking me if I heard voices in my head. It was a disgusting intervention then, and it still 'feels' like an assault on my psyche now: "how dare you suggest I am mentally ill, when I'm just a young lad being bullied at aschool rejected at home, and as a result I' m vulnerable and in considerable emotional pain, because I'm dependent on these environments and they are hostile to me!" If I'd been strong enough, and mature enough, i would have said that. But I was neither, so it was another damaging little encounter.

Anyway, feelings affect thoughts just as much as the reverse. To suggest otherwise implies that an arena like politics, for example, would be an emblem of rationality. Which of course it isn't; you typically see people entrenched in political positions that have a subjective-emotional basis: feelings dictate their thinking, not the reverse. Music-making and creativity also demonstrate this different process: you got something emotional to express, ie feeling based, and then you give it shape with your thinking - so the feeling comes first.

See? I can do this stuff, and actually find it very interesting; I could write essays about this, citing Jung, Freud, Maslow, Perls, Reich, Alexander Lowen, etc etc. In fact the latter two have excellent ideas centering around the idea that the *body* creates thought/feelings, and until you change the body, mind/feeling just goes back to its old patterns.

But....sheeeesh....none of this talk helps me. I'm quite serious, and sincere, in what I initially said.