1.2 The psychology of emotions, feelings and thoughts {adv}  (Page 31/74)

Everything that is processed, not just spikes, follows the sequence of thought to emotion to feeling. That is because thoughts are clearer than emotions and feelings, and emotions are more similar to thoughts than feelings are (discussed previously) so when you see something or hear something or whatnot for the first time, it is clearer in your mind. Then it becomes less clear and you think about it unconsciously. You think about it unconsciously because it takes further processing in order to isolate the feeling that that things gives you. Some things are just too complicated to feel them right away. Other things, however, can be felt right away, say if you are touching something the feeling arises right away. That is because the physical stimulus is more immediate than emotional stimulus. [Emotion is very complicated, so the emotions something gives you you aren't going to understand well (for instance a feeling of depression is very complicated but the feeling of sadness that comes from it isn't that emotion lead to a more simple feeling). That also shows how this thought-emotion-feeling pattern occurs quickly, and is just based off of the thought period "dying off" and becoming less and less like a thought, and more and more like a feeling. You could think about it later and spike it again, and then the series would repeat. This doesn't mean that everything occurs as thought to emotion to feeling, only when you have a thought the thought is going to be brief, and when it goes away a feeling is left. Feelings and emotions last longer than thoughts (in fact, you're feeling all the time, but only thinking specific things some of the time).]

Emotional things, however, are simply to complicated to “feel” them right away, they need to be processed first. That is logical, just take looking at anything, say a book. In order to feel the feelings that the book causes in you, you are going to have to at least unconsciously think about it first (that is, after you start paying attention to it, which you do by starting to think about it or just see it and notice it more than you usually notice things in the area). Since you don’t need to think about physical stimulus since it is just a physical stimulus, (not something like vision) you don’t really unconsciously process it.

Spikes are dramatic rises in attention. They can be assisted by load noises or something dramatic visually, but they don’t need to be. In other words they can be internal or external. You can pay sharp attention to something in the real world or something in your own head. If there is a load sound in the environment, it is most likely that your spike in attention is going to occur during that period. It doesn’t have to, you could pay attention to something else in spike form, but the main point is that you have to have about one sharp spike in attention a minute at least. That is, you have to pay attention to something in your environment or something in your head, sharp attention in the form of a spike (lasting a second or a few seconds) every minute or so.