[jenluv]

I didn't want to jack Chopin's thread with this question.

So Chopin's T reminds her that "feelings can lie." I suppose that makes sense when you think about it.

But it made me think of something that happened in therapy today that I wanted to bounce off of you guys.

At one point during the session he checked in with me to see how I was feeling or what I was thinking. What I found really surprised me. I had these really sad somewhat helpless feelings but absolutely no cognitive thoughts to go with them. They didn't make sense with the conversation we were having. They were, in a way, intrusive feelings (as opposed to intrusive thoughts).

I sat with them for a bit and still couldn't find a "reason" for them. As I sat there I kept feeling sad and very, very small -- both physically and emotionally.

So I wonder. Was this some sort of emotion from my pre-verbal childhood? Is that why there were no words/reasons for the feelings, just the feelings?

What we were talking about at the time truly had nothing to do with the unbidden feelings. And believe me -- I can find reasons for and connections between things like nobody's business. If I were in a therapy beauty pageant it would be my "talent."

So what do you think? And also, what do you think about Chopin's T's statement that feelings can lie?

[critterlady]

I actually don't think that feelings can lie. I do think we can misinterpret them, though.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by jenluv

I sat with them for a bit and still couldn't find a "reason" for them. As I sat there I kept feeling sad and very, very small -- both physically and emotionally.

Were you able to talk to T about that?

[jenluv]

No, but I could have. My mind was all over the place. I'll likely email him about it as fodder for next week. I think I've got some crazy-strong transference going on that even I'm not aware of.

I sure hope feelings can lie. I have so much shame and guilt over stuff my therapist says I shouldn't that I wonder what is true.

I think the pre-verbal idea is interesting. I'm not sure how one would go about exploring something like that though.

[Chopin99]

jen...read my response to eastcoaster in my post. You'll see the context in which my T said this. Not ALL feelings lie. They CAN lie.

BTW...feel free to hijack my threads anytime. I don't rightly care.

[Wren_]

as background to what that statement brings up for me is that the "feelings can lie" stuff has been really big in recent years in the Christian counselling circle particularly; so much so that now there are people emerging from that background who are coming out saying things like they were abused by their therapist or church for being on the receiving end of those comments and how it minimised their feelings and made them doubt themselves. I was taught along those lines also; for example ... if I feel scared when I'm in a safe environment then my feelings "must" be lying and I should listen to the truth which is i'm safe and not the lies which is that there is something to be scared about. Like you said with the cognitive thoughts; then there is the line of thinking which suggests that ok; i'm in a safe environment but my thinking is remembering a past time of abuse (as one example) and has triggered the feeling responses to that so that it's my thinking that is "off" and once I change that my feelings will also change as in, acknowledging I'm safe, remembering that in my thinking and seeing how then I feel more secure. But then, that gets muddled when I'm in the safe environment; my thinking is on something totally unrelated eg. focused on a lecture, on a tv show etc and yet my feelings are still coming up as scared --- but; how do we know what is going on in our subconcious minds? eg. is there a smell that triggered us that we don't realise; a sound, it could be anything but for some reason we are responding to it. Then the feeling instead of being a "lie" might be a clue - a clue that something is happening and we are responding even though we may not be sure what it is. That all sounds so jumbled up; but then to me the thoughts, feelings, experiences, subconcious and concious thoughts are jumbled and often not easy to untangle. Not sure where the pre-verbal part comes in; but that may be connected or it could be some other trigger going on that you just weren't aware of at any concious level

[unaluna]

my T tells me feelings aren't facts. this was more often when I would report feeling depressed, he would say, you don't have to STAY depressed; like if you felt angry, you wouldn't have to ACT on your anger; you would wait and think about what you wanted to do about the situation. So you don't HAVE to sit and BE depressed all day - it's not a FACT, it's a FEELING, and it CAN pass.
This made sense to me, because I know that when i'm tired or thirsty, I sometimes FEEL that as hunger - so the hunger is not a fact; being tired is a fact, I only slept 5 hours last night is a fact; I am feeling hungry, but it would be more satisfying, more productive, more restorative to nap than to eat. I realize that's a physical example of a feeling, not emotional, but I liked the concreteness of it. I haven't been that gloomy since.

I've learned that feelings can be based on thinking that is sometimes not terribly rational, helpful, or accurate, and so often that thinking is based on old beliefs I took on years and years ago that are quite mistaken. T always has me work from what were the thoughts that flashed through my mind, usually in a matter a seconds. Then I need to really evaluate those thoughts for reality and accuracy and rationality. Once I can see where my thinking is inaccurate, I find the intense feelings that were based on errors in thinking really do neutralize and become more proportionate to reality as opposed to being disproportionate based on mistaken beliefs.

So maybe it isn't so much the feelings that are the problem. They are just a response to the thinking. It is the thoughts that can definitely lie and steer our emotions astray.

[Chopin99]

Originally Posted by farmergirl

I've learned that feelings can be based on thinking that is sometimes not terribly rational, helpful, or accurate, and so often that thinking is based on old beliefs I took on years and years ago that are quite mistaken. T always has me work from what were the thoughts that flashed through my mind, usually in a matter a seconds. Then I need to really evaluate those thoughts for reality and accuracy and rationality. Once I can see where my thinking is inaccurate, I find the intense feelings that were based on errors in thinking really do neutralize and become more proportionate to reality as opposed to being disproportionate based on mistaken beliefs.

So maybe it isn't so much the feelings that are the problem. They are just a response to the thinking. It is the thoughts that can definitely lie and steer our emotions astray.

I can see this going either way. Either the feelings come out of nowhere and causes irrational/inaccurate thoughts, or irrational/inaccurate thoughts cause feelings that may be pleasant/unpleasant.

My T's point is that feelings are neither good/bad/right/wrong; they just ARE. And sometimes they CAN lie.

I like the way hankster puts it: "feelings aren't facts".

The trouble with feelings are they unfortunately live in humanbinegs and man oh man don't we abuse them lol

[pachyderm]

Feelings may not lie, they may just be more about the past and not really about what is going on now. Displaced in time.

[Perna]

I think feelings are just feelings. You wouldn't say "pain" lies and it's a feeling. But people have words and one cannot think without using words so when one thinks about feelings, the descriptions or attributes one ascribes to feelings can be not correct. The minute we say, "I'm sad because. . ." we are using the feelings.

Feelings can be elicited in the moment, by something that is happening now or, later, when we are thinking something that reminds us of something else. I invented an entire fantasy world I lived in and when I tried to get rid of it by killing off the people inhabiting it, it was very painful and I cried. Was I really sad and distressed? Yes. But there was no real event that caused the sadness; it's similar when we watch movies or read books, etc.

So, there may be no way to know why you felt sad and small; we are often anxious in dreams (I had an aggressive poisonous snake in mine last night, chasing me and it originally came out of my bed blankets, etc. in my dream the night before!), sometimes happy or sad and I've had dreams that I can only describe as "dreary" where I woke feeling as if I were depressed; your sad and small may be like that, part of an almost unconscious thought or image that flashed across your brain and then was gone. You know how babies sometimes are thought to smile but have "gas" instead? Something like that?

I believe feelings are a lot like thoughts; they can be useful or ignored if we don't find them useful, but the more aware of them and the better we learn to deliberately use them to help us function, the smoother our life goes. I believe unpleasant feelings don't have to be used; they can just be "oh, there's that. . ." and then moved one from if possible. With the sad and small feelings you describe, I would have done something that that with them, said to myself, "curious, wonder where these came from" and, not finding anything, gone on to either another subject or found a sad/small feeling subject to explore that I used the feelings as a stepping stone to but which wasn't necessarily related to them; whatever I was feeling like working on at the time.

[likewater]

Oooh, Hankster is a genius. I will always thinl of that now. Feeling vs fact. That is so cool. Feelings arent facts.

[Sannah]

I agree with Pachy. Our feelings are valid but sometimes they are valid for the past and not the present (because they are triggered up). They lie when we are trying to put past feelings onto the situation of today. Once a person cleans out all the baggage and stored feelings, your feelings can come more accurately from today and what is occuring in the present.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by likewater

Oooh, Hankster is a genius. I will always thinl of that now. Feeling vs fact. That is so cool. Feelings aren't facts.

Thanks, but that's my T. I'm still trying to grasp it myself! He does get it right sometimes! I'll tell him you like it, I am waaaaay too rough on him, I know. Thanks again.

[CantExplain]

I think feelings are always genuine, but we can often be completely wrong about where those feelings are coming from.

For example, you're angry. That's a feeling and that's true.
You are angry with your husband when the real issue is at work? That's a lie.

[mcl6136]

feelings can lie. I have been faced with grave physical danger and because of growing up in a violent home, I underestimated the danger...because I had a feeling of numbness or detachment or indifference. Conversely, I have been super-anxious about something that, in retrospect, was trivial...because I sufffer from some level of anticipatory anxiety....my feelings of being amped are way out of proportion to the situation at hand.

Maybe this is not particularly helpful or salient but that's my two cents.