One of the goals of therapy is to be able to identify feelings. What if I told you that many of us have been communicating it incorrectly most of our lives? Maybe we didn’t have adult figures who modeled appropriate ways of expressing feelings, or we had ones who did not want to express them at all. The importance of being able to attach a feeling to an experience is to help you understand your motivations to your actions either past or present. Feelings get a bad rap because we like to label them “good” or “bad”. Being unable to express a feeling can cause depression and anxiety. I am here to tell you feelings are just feelings. We need them to understand our motivations, our boundaries with others, to increase our self-esteem, and they play a big role in what you have to offer the world. I will teach you the difference between a feeling and a thought so you may be able to communicate your feelings correctly to yourself and others. I will provide you examples in how we have been using it incorrectly, and share with you examples in how to change it.
Feelings vs. Thoughts
First let’s begin by looking at the differences between a feeling, a thought, and an emotion in the dictionary. A thought is “to have or form in the mind in order to understand, know, or remember something else; to consider for evaluation or for possible action upon.” To make it simpler a thought is what we think of a situation. A feeling is “readily affected by emotion”, and emotion means “an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorry, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced. To make it simpler a feeling is stating an emotion.
Mistaking a thought for a feeling is a common problem most of us encounter in our interaction with others. Have you ever talked to someone who is venting about a disagreement with a child or a spouse and they state “I feel they are being unreasonable?” If we are basing this sentence off of the dictionary definitions then this is an incorrect sentence. In this sentence an emotion was not stated. It sounds like an evaluation, and the correct way to say it is “I think they are being unreasonable.”
Substitution Test
So here’s the thing, people who do not know how to identify feelings end up mistaking them for thoughts. According Tina Gilbertson in her book “Constructive Wallowing” she provides a substitution test to know the difference between a thought and a feeling. Gilbertson writes “anything you describe using the words ‘I feel (that)’, followed by a complete sentence is not a feeling. When you are describing a feeling the sentence ends after you mention the feeling.” By utilizing the substitution test you can begin to become mindful about whether you are stating a thought or a feeling. Gilbertson also points out “if you can change the words “I feel” in a statement to “I think” without changing any other words, and still be left with a meaningful sentence, you have described a thought not a feeling. In these sentences when we changed the word “feel” to “think” the sentences still made sense.
| Incorrect “I feel” Statement | Correct “Thought” Statement |
| I feel this situation is dangerous | I think this situation is dangerous |
| I feel you don’t listen to me | I think you don’t listen to me |
| I feel you are always focused on work | I think you are always focused on work |
| I feel sometimes you don’t care about me. | I think sometimes you don’t care about me. |
In the following examples the thought statements do not make sense. When changed to “I feel” the sentence becomes correct. You explained the emotion and ended it there.
| Incorrect “Thought” Statement | Correct “I feel Statement” |
| I think jealous | I feel jealous |
| I think remorse | I feel remorse |
| I think lonely | I feel lonely |
| I think unsure | I feel unsure |
You can also use your feeling in a compound sentence since compound sentences is two independent thoughts that are separated by a comma. For example I feel angry, when you forget commitments you agreed to.
Identifying feelings can be confusing to navigate if we have been taught the incorrect way of communicating it. With being mindful and using these simple changes the next time someone asks you “How do you feel about that?” you know it needs to be described in as little as 3 words.
References
Gilbertson, T. (2014). Constructive Wallowing. Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press, Inc.
