A traditional exercise in Gestalt therapy: «Looking at a person, speak your thoughts, your feelings and your sensations.» At the same time, everyone understands that “You must be about thirty years old” are thoughts, “I am drawn to you” is a feeling, and “My hands are sweating a little” is a feeling.
It would seem that everything is so simple and obvious, but in practice there are many errors, misunderstandings and just confusion. Yes, and from the point of view of theory, there are many difficult moments due to the fact that the prevailing word usage in practical psychology over many decades has become seriously different from the standards of academic psychology.
Feeling
Sensations are, first of all, elementary kinesthetic sensations: everything that we directly receive at the output from the contact receptors of the body with a direct impact on them.
Touch or muscle tension, pain or cold, sweet or bitter — these are all sensations, as opposed to sounds, pictures and images. I see — pictures, I hear — sounds, and I feel (feel) — sensations↑.
“Pleasant relaxation in the chest” or “tension in the shoulders”, “jaw clenched” or “feel warm hands” — this is kinesthetic and these are direct sensations. But the story of what you see and hear is less of a story about your feelings.
“I see light and hear soft sounds” is more about sensations, and “I see your beautiful eyes and a warm smile” is no longer immediate sensations. These are already perceptions, sensations processed by the mind, this is already a holistic and meaningful vision of what is happening with the addition of certain feelings.
Where perceptions begin, sensations usually end. Sensations are unprocessed, without interpretation, direct kinesthetics.
However, in life everything is more specific and more complicated. The phrase “I feel like my shoes are being squeezed” is still about sensations. Despite the fact that “boots” is a holistic perception of an object, it is no longer a sensation, but a perception, but the phrase focuses not on shoes, but on the fact that the shoes are “tight”. And «press» is a feeling.
Thoughts
Thoughts are interesting bundles of something with something that the mind gave birth to in the process of processing sensations, feelings, or any other thoughts. Thoughts are clear and vague, shallow and deep, confused and clear, they can be assumptions and associations, convinced statements or a story about doubts, but the head always works when thinking.
If feeling is perception through the body, then thoughts are figurative-visual or conceptual perception, perception through the mind (head).
“I know that we are strangers” – through the head is this knowledge, a neutral thought. “I feel like we are strangers” — if it is passed through the soul (that is, through the body), — this can be a burning or chilling feeling.
Attraction, desire can be neutral knowledge: «I know that by dinner I will be hungry and I will look for somewhere to eat.» And it can be a living feeling when the attention on all the signs is looking for a «cafe» and it’s hard to get distracted…
So, thoughts are everything that comes to us through the mind, through the head.
Feelings
When you are asked about your feelings, it is not about the so-called external senses, not about your eyes, hearing and other senses.
If a girl says to her young man: “You have no feelings!”, Then his answer is: “How not? I have feelings. I have hearing, vision, all the senses are in order! — either a joke or a mockery. The question of feelings is a question of inner feelings,
Inner feelings are kinesthetically experienced perceptions of events and states of the human life world.
“I admire you”, “a feeling of admiration” or “a feeling of light emanating from your beautiful face” is about feelings.
Feelings and sensations are often similar, they are often confused, but in fact it is easy to distinguish them: sensations are elementary kinesthetics, and feelings are sensations already processed by the mind, this is already a holistic and meaningful vision of what is happening.
«Warm hugs» is not about 36 degrees Celsius, it’s about the history of our relationship, just like the feeling «I’m uncomfortable with him» — says much more than the feeling of «squeezing boots»↑.
Feelings are often confused with intellectual evaluation, but the direction of the beam of attention and the state of the body will almost always tell you the right answer. In intellectual evaluation there is only the head, and feeling always presupposes the body.
If you said «I am satisfied» but it was out of your head, it was only an intellectual assessment, not a feeling. And the satisfied, breathlessly released from the whole belly, “Well, you are a parasite!” — an obvious feeling, because — from the body. See details →
If you look into your soul and feel a feeling in yourself, then it is true, you have a feeling. Feelings don’t lie. However, caution is needed here — you can not always be sure what exactly you feel. What is sometimes experienced by a person as a certain feeling may not be it, it may be something else. At this particular point, feelings sometimes lie↑.
So that people do not get confused in feelings, so that people do not mistake one feeling for another and less invent feelings where they actually do not exist, composing racket feelings, many psychologists offer a dictionary of real feelings and a method for recognizing them.
So, how can we briefly define feelings? Feelings are a figurative-bodily interpretation of kinesthetics. This is kinesthetics framed in living metaphors. This is a living thing that came to us from our body. It is the language our soul speaks.
Who defines whom?
Feelings cause feelings? Feelings cause thoughts? Is it the other way around? — Rather, the correct answer will be that the relationship of sensations, feelings and thoughts can be anything.
- Feelings — Feelings — Thoughts
Feeling a toothache — a feeling of fear — a decision to go to the dentist.
- Feeling — Thought — Feeling
I saw a snake (feelings), based on past experience, I concluded that it could be dangerous (thought), as a result, I got scared. That is, a different order.
- Thought — Feeling — Feeling
I remembered that Vasya promised to give me money, but he didn’t give me (thought), he was offended (feeling), from resentment he stole his breath in his chest (feeling) — a different order.
- Thought — feeling — feeling
Imagined that my hands were warm (thought) — felt warm in my hands (feeling) — calmed down (feeling)
How much do you need?
If we have sensations, there are thoughts and there are feelings, is it possible to talk about some desirable correlation between them? In fact, for different people this ratio is very different, and first of all there is a difference in the predominance of thoughts or feelings.
There are people who love to feel and know how to feel. There are people who tend not to feel, but to think, accustomed to and able to think↑. It is difficult to turn to such people for feelings: they can tell you about their feelings at your request, but when you move away from this person, he will return to a regular way of life, where he thinks, makes decisions, sets goals and organizes himself to achieve them, without being distracted by what he does not need, by feelings.
Men are more likely to choose reason, women are more likely to choose feelings↑. At the same time, it seems that it is important not only this or that correlation of thoughts and feelings, but the question of the quality of thoughts and the content of feelings.
If a person has empty, negative and incoherent thoughts, then it is better that he has more good and beautiful feelings. If a person has a beautiful head, deep and quick thoughts, then there is no longer any need to distract him with a large number of feelings.
Probably, a developed personality should have sufficiently developed (as a living wage) all these three abilities — the ability to feel, the ability to feel and the ability to think, and then everyone has the right to choose.
This is what happens in a good school: it gives a mandatory set of subjects, and then everyone chooses their specialization, their future.
A person as an organism will more often choose to live by feelings, a person as a person will develop his mind. See →