Reading a great book called taking out your mental trash by rian e McMullen who is a psychologist located in the tropical beauty of Hawaii....I'm thinking he's got all this figured out. The book is on cognitive restructuring ie changing the way you think....it's got a lot of cbt vibe in the beginning but in a way that would be fully understandable even if you didn't know anything about cbt for example in the context of our thoughts impacting emotions he comes up with the scenario of a person experiencing pain in their stomach...the interpretation and negativity associated with the pain affects the emotional outcome. So example is a guy....stomach pain oh must be a tumor.....immediate negative emotions you know how will I deal with this am I going to die etc. in contrast he provides the example of someone who has worked out yesterday and is feeling achy...yeah they may feel kind of bad but because they know they aren't going to die or anything there is no emotional content. Another example....childbirth...much worse pain than a stomach ache but has a positive association of bringing a child into the world. So three types of pain with either neutral negative or positive emotional response. The basic idea of cbt is that a particular experience doesn't cause a set emotional reaction so much as your own thoughts about what is happening that for every emotional process there is an underlying thought process. The idea is that some of us skew these thoughts in a negative way and this book is designed to correct that kind of thinking.