Interlude: Thoughts & Feelings

And how best to respond to them

What, exactly, is a thought? What is a feeling? And how do they differ? One way to better distinguish the two might be to notice the very different relationships they have with reality.

I suggest a “thought” is a mental representation of reality, while a “feeling” is an embodied reaction to reality.

A “thought” is like a story.

It’s an abstraction—a collection of words, symbols, and images used by our minds to describe and conceptualize ourselves and our world (in exactly the same way, for example, that the words “boxing match” relate to the activity pictured above).

A “feeling,” in contrast, is what happens when reality punches you in the face.

Thoughts, like all stories we tell ourselves, may or may not be accurate—and even if accurate, may not be useful. Whereas feelings by definition represent valuable, real-time information about reality.

Just as we wouldn’t want to ignore the boxer, we probably don’t want to ignore our feelings, either—which suggests we need something other than mindful distancing or cognitive “defusion” to deal with them.

So how should we respond to feelings?

That is the question we turn to next.