I happen to be taking an intro Psych course, and we happen to be covering psychotherapy. What I noticed is the striking similarity between what you, Stevie, are practising, and cognitive psychotherapy, especially the style pioneered by Aaron Beck. It seems you’ve figured out some things on our own that are well accepted in the psychotherapy community.

Anyway, Beck has an interesting way to deal with negative judgements as they happen, that I may incorporate. Essentially, the patient keeps a diary of all “dysfunctional thoughts”:

There’s 5 columns, with the headings: “Situation”, “Emotion(s)”, “Automatic Thoughts”, “Rational Response”, and “Outcome”:

• Situation: “Describe: 1. actual event leading to unpleasent emotion, or 2. stream of thoughts, daydream, or
  recollection, leading to unpleasent emotion.”
• Emotion(s): “1. Specify sad/anxious/angry, etc. 2. Rate degree of emotion, 1-100.”
• Automatic Thoughts: “1. Write automatic thought(s) that preceed emotion(s). 2. Rate belief in automatic thought(s), 0-100%”
• Rational Response: “1. Write rational response to automatic thought(s). 2. Rate belief in rational response, 0-100%”
• Outcome: “1. Rerate belief in automatic thought(s), 0-100%. 2. Specify and rate subsequent emotions, 0-100.”

It gives an example of a woman, which I find relevant to my case:

• Situation: “Store clerk didn’t smile at me when I paid for purchase.”
• Emotion(s): “Sad - 60, Anxious - 40″
• Automatic Thought(s): “Nobody likes me - 70%, I look awful - 80%”
• Rational Response: “Maybe the clerk was having a bad day, or maybe she just never smiles at customers. - 70%”
• Outcome: “1. Sad - 20%, Anxious - 30%. 2. Pleasure - 25%”

-taken from Psychology (5e) - Peter Gray.

Need to think this over before I try. Any thoughts

That sounds about right.

Thing that I have a problem with though are the following:

- How do you know you have an irrational thought? Is it because I have a negative emotion? If so why do all irrational thoughts cause a negative emotion?

- How do I know that a rational thought that I come up with is rational? Who defines rational vs. irrational?

- What causes emotions to happen?

These are the questions that need to be answered before you can go and do this method of thinking. I like to think that I can answers these questions where others cannot…

Steve

I have an irrational thought when I catch myself thinking something that conflicts with the rules/truths:

• I don’t know what you percieve.
• You don’t know what I percieve.

Overtime, I’ve noticed the patterns in my thinking, so I am familiar with these situations. It’s irrational, because I know it doesn’t make sense.

I don’t know if the irrational thought causes the emotion or vise versa, but it’s a feedback loop regardless. When I disable one part
(the judgement I control), then it weakens the negative emotion (which I don’t control).

If I can disprove it, or at least show there’s more evidence against than in favour, then it’s irrational.

I see this more as an issue of logic. It’s not so important, in my opinion, where emotions come from, because I can’t control them directly. Emotions can be turned on at any time by any number of stimuli, both internal and external. The important thing is that I’m accepting them when they come.

I can pretend to be in control of my emotions. I can be happy all the the time, but in reality, I’m just suppressing any negative emotions that come up.

I think the reason to write them down is to become more aware of to what degree they arise, and to chart the progress over time, and effectiveness of the individual reframe

See the answer you just provided would help countless others if they knew this… so many people don’t feel empowered, but you are mentioning here is the control of self that so many people are looking for.

You just mentioned in the same post that you do have control over your emotions. You explained that the negative feeling comes from the idea of expectation of yourself and others. Or in other words, if you think these thoughts, you will feel bad. Since you control thought, then you control your emotions.

Usually the next comment is that I don’t control all my thoughts because some of them are unconscious. The answer to that thought is that we have been given the ability to choose what can be unconscious. Take English for example. I am writing now in a language that you completely understand from an unconscious level. You know exactly what I am telling you without consciously thinking about it. The benefit in having unconscious thoughts are to allow you to figure out other problems. If you had to relearn English every time you woke up, you’d basically learn English the rest of your life and you’d never get anywhere. So there is a benefit to having unconscious thoughts.

So if English is an unconscious thought, then why don’t I know Chinese, Spanish, Esperanto or a host of other different languages? The answer is because I have not consciously chosen to make those languages unconscious. So you see. You choose what becomes unconscious. If you don’t like what is happening unconsciously, then you can consciously choose to stop having that unconscious thought.

Therefore, you do control your unconscious thought and you do have control over your emotions.

Steve

I can’t control the feelings, but I can control judgements/reactions that give rise to feelings.

For instance, somebody dies. I can’t control the feelings of grief, sadness, fear, anger etc. What I can do is change my outlook and choose to focus on the positive. This doesn’t make the sadness go away, but it eventually helps me feel joy.

If I’m hungry, I can eat. I control the eating, not the hunger.

Emotions/sensations are body based, and we know we don’t control our bodies. I’d really say I influence my emotions, more than control them. Then again, I’m still struggling with the concept of influence; I’d like to hear your thoughts in response to my earlier try at defining it.

The problem comes when I feel angry, and I don’t acknowledge it. “I can’t be angry. I’m not an angry person. etc etc.” Anger, and all emotions are natural, and part of life. When I feel anger, my body wants to sort out the conflict on its own. Anger will pass through if I let it. If I don’t, it will stick around suppressed, possibly turning into tension in the body.

I feel confused and tired. Time to sleep on this.

1) Daily affirmations still going. I’ve changed it to a simpler and more positive form:

“I only know MY perception.”

It’s better, but still not ideal. The word “only” sounds limiting.

Anyway, I am feeling more confident. I think the time lag between logic and emotions will be a while, but lasting changes will come.

2) I’ve got another conundrum: If can’t possibly know your perceptions, then how am I supposed to practice empathy
towards you? I want to be free of your judgments, but I also want to be able to feel into your situation and better understand you.

Thoughts?

How does the thought “What you believe about yourself, you project onto others” ring with you? Would that statement lead you into a direction to answer your question?

Steve

The way empathy works in my mind is that you put yourself in another person’s shoes, and look at things from their perspective. You’re looking at how you would view the world with your own perceptions, not theirs, so indeed yes you are projecting your beliefs onto them.

That means what I empathize about them, might not be so. So then what is the point of empathy? Can I not connect with people more if I try to see things their way? Does it not help me react more appropriately to certain situations?

I’ve always seen it as a very helpful thing when interacting with people. It especially helps with conflicts to understand another’s
perspective.

How do I resolve this?

It sounds like you did solve it. You just need to understand another person’s perspective in order to be empathetic with them. Hearing what their perspective is will give you a very good idea about their perspective. When you understand their perspective, then you will project that belief and understand how they feel.

Even though you aren’t this person, you can still get a pretty good idea about their perspective by talking with them. It won’t be the whole story, but you’ll understand why they feel the way they do.

Steve

It doesn’t feel clear to me, because there’s a conflict of judgements:

Judgment A: “I cannot know your perceptions.”

Judgment B: “If I imagine myself from your perspective, I can understand why you feel the way you do.”

So if somebody gives me a dirty look, Judgment A tells me “that look could mean anything, and probably isn’t about me.” However, judgment B could mean “I see evidence to support that you don’t like me, so it’s probably the case.”

There’s probably a better example, but the point is that there’s this gray area created by these two judgments. “I don’t know, but I suspect.”

It sounds like you want me to answer this question. What is your answer?

I guess I’m looking for an excuse to believe the bad things I tell myself (as messed up as this sounds). Saying I don’t know how others perceive me is a pretty good argument to disarm my negative self-talk. Saying that I can make a good guess about it weakens this argument, thus strengthening the self-talk.

I want a rock-solid way to defeat the self-talk. To have this, I need to resolve the conflict I am creating between the concepts of empathy vs only knowing my perceptions.

In order to change my beliefs I have to prove to myself that these judgements I make are false. If I do that, it should feel obvious right away. But it doesn’t, so I know Im missing something.

I ask you because it seems like you’ve figured out something I don’t know. It seems like the distinction is clear to you, and you have trouble seeing a conflict. I need to do that clearing.

Maybe it’s related to the difference between perception and perspective. I can imagine your perspective and see through it with my
own eyes. Perception, however is more than that; it’s perspective + the way you understand the world. I can’t know your perception.

So when I practice empathy, I am attempting to see your perceptions, using your perspective. There are certain things I can know more definitely than others.

Let me sleep on this.

You seem to know more then you lead on too… Tell me what you think about after you sleep on it…

Steve

You perception is the filter that you see the world through, based on all the things that have shaped you: the way you learned about how the world works, the perspective from which you observe the world, and biological mechanisms that you use to perceive.

Your perspective is simply the the external angle that you perceive from; ie. the direction you are looking.

It is improbable and next to impossible to have the same perceptions as you. It is less improbable to have the same perspective as you, but you can get pretty close.

So your filter is different from my filter. We can stand in the same place looking at the same thing, and interpret it differently.

So far this still works to disarm my self-talk.

However, there’s a certain amount you can estimate about another person through 1) looking at their perspective and 2) reading their gestures/behaviours/expressions etc.

1) While I can’t often be where you are, and experience what you experience, I can observe your situation and imagine myself there in your place. Instead of labelling you by your behaviours, I can guess what is causing those behaviours, based on knowing your situation.

2) I can read directly into your behaviours and make assumptions in the moment. You frown, therefore you are angry. You smile, therefore you are pleased with something.

Some things we communicate to others are more universal than others. Smiles almost always communicate some sort of pleasure, but crossed arms can mean tired/upset/insecure/angry/cold, etc.

So empathy can be helpful, but how close is it to reality? How close does it need to be? I suppose I can use it to form hypotheses, so I can then test them.

I can try to understand your perspective, and then form a guess as to why you behave the way you do. I can then either ask questions and find out, or test my hypothesis by assuming it’s true, acting on it, and seeing if it works. If it doesn’t work, then I recognize that, and I form a new hypothesis.

But is the hypothesis the same as judgement?

When I am perceiving another as disapproving of me, I think it usually based on at least one of the following

A) They frown, look “disapproving”, look at me confused

B) I make a mistake, or do something that I expect disapproval/disappointment for

C) I expect them to automatically disprove of anything I say/do

I guess empathy comes in here those times when it’s obvious to me that I did something worthy of disapproval. Maybe I told a bad joke, and I get glared at. They glared because of my bad joke….

Maybe I’m not actually using empathy when it would help me. I’m making bad hypotheses based on too little information.

You frown at my bad joke, but I don’t wonder, “what would I think if he told a bad joke? would I lose respect for him? would I take it personally? would I even care?”

But do these questions represent the reality of the situation? I don’t know.

I’m on to something, I know it!

———

So maybe step-1 is simply acknowledging that 1) I don’t know what you’re thinking and 2) your judgements don’t affect who I am. Then step-2 might be practising empathy to form more realistic hypotheses.
So I could affirm:

I choose to recognize my negative judgements about others, and test these judgements by imagining myself from their perspective.

Maybe…

.