The effects of what we feel in the brain

___________________Dr. Cheryl Arutt_________________ What we are learning now about the brain and particularly I am referring to the field of interpersonal neurobiology and Daniel Segal would probably the leader of that. He is in Brentwood, California. He is really wonderful. But what were learning is that thinking is mediated by feelings. If you look at what parts of your brain attend to something, that same stimuli but you're in a different feeling state, it's going to get directed into different places in your brain depending upon what your amygdala is doing. Depending upon what your feelings are. Whether you're feeling safe or not safe. One of these will realize that we are not feeling safe, are we going to fight or flight. There is evidence now that the whole pre frontal cortex, the part that can think about consequences and planning, and remember that you know this person who just did this terrible thing to me is also someone I love and what's really nice to me an hour ago. You know that part completely offline when we feel in danger. We actually drop in IQ points. We lose certain areas of our brain. So by you know when we well regulated meaning balance and we're not in fight or flight, our brains process in one way. When were angry, or when we're excited, or when we're scared, we actually process that information differently. So thinking and feeling, they're different things but they interact with one another in interesting kind of way. And thinking can be helpful for our feelings or it can be hurtful for our feelings. If we feel depressed and we feel you know terrible about ourselves and we're thinking you know, "I am a loser, I am idiot. I never get anywhere". It's not gonna be as helpful as if we think as, "I feel really bad today but you know I remember that you know this isn't gonna last forever and I am worthwhile person and I just have you know doing that". Or you know you can think to yourself that person really pissed me off, I am gonna kill him. Or you can think of yourself, "I have to be very careful right now because I am really angry and I fell that ringing this guy's neck. I better count to ten". Those are different thought with the same reaction. And I don't think we should judge people's feelings and I think we should look at thoughts as helpful or unhelpful but behavior we can judge. Some behavior is not a good idea.