0.5 The psychology of emotions, feelings and thoughts  (Page 9/89)

I say in this chapter that thought, feeling and emotion is just paying attention to concrete things in your head. If you talk to someone and they make you feel bad, it might be because you are unconsciously thinking they think you are stupid. Or you could say that you are just feeling like they think you are stupid. I guess it doesn't really matter if you say you are thinking they think you are stupid or you are feeling like they think you are stupid. If you are thinking that they are thinking you are stupid it is conscious, you are aware that they might be thinking you are stupid, and this might be making you feel bad. You pay attention to the thought you have of awareness of their thinking about this. You could also pay attention to the emotion of you feeling bad because you are thinking this. Or maybe you could describe what is going on as the other person is thinking you are stupid, and because they are thinking this you feel bad, no matter what you think or want to feel. They could be influencing your emotions by treating you as stupid. Maybe you're thinking unconsciously back to them, no actually i'm really smart. Maybe that is what you are thinking, but you could still feel bad about it. The point is, the difference between saying you have an unconscious thought and you have an emotion is just how much attention you are paying to each one. You are probably going to be paying more attention to it if it is an unconscious thought because that is what thoughts are, something you think and are aware of. You think you are smart, so unconsciously you are thinking that they shouldn't be thinking you are stupid. Maybe you thinking that unconsciously determines how you feel, so you don't feel bad because they think you're stupid because you know and are thinking that you're actually smart. So when someone treats you as stupid, you could in response a) feel that they are wrong, or b) be thinking that they are wrong. Those are two types of responses to things, you could respond with thoughts, or respond with feelings. If someone is mean to you, and you feel good in response, maybe it is because you are just a happy person, or maybe it is because you are "really" thinking they are stupid and ignoring them. However you want to label what is going on by saying you are feeling something or you are thinking something, you are ultimately just paying attention to your emotions or their emotions or what ever it is you are paying attention to, you don't have to think about it with words necessarily. If you are paying attention to your emotions or what you are thinking or what they are thinking or feeling, you could notice a lot. There could also be a lot going on that you don't know about because you can feel emotions for a lot of reasons you aren't aware of. Emotion is unconscious thought.

So what is the difference between someone thinking something and someone feeling something? You can feel bad, or you could think negative things about yourself that make you feel bad. When someone thinks, they are aware of what they are doing and what they are thinking about. When someone feels an emotion, they might not be aware of it or know how it was generated. What is an unconscious thought then? If thoughts are something you know you are thinking and are paying attention to, then how could you not be aware of them? A thought is something you are thinking, you know you are thinking it. You don't always (or maybe even never) know if you are experiencing an emotion, on the other hand. Emotion is unconscious thought because emotion is just you feeling something about something, so you could express it as a thought. "I feel bad because they treated me like I was stupid", could be the unconscious thought, and the emotion would be, "I feel bad because they treated me like I was stupid". They are exactly the same. If you are aware of what an emotion is, then it is a thought because you think about what the emotion is. It is also an emotion, because you are feeling it, but when you realize what caused the emotion or think about the emotion in your head, it is a thought because you are thinking about it (its still an emotion obviously though).