How Our Thoughts Influence Our Feelings

Our bodies are miracles. But they aren’t “smart.”

It’s true! The connection between our thoughts and the way we feel has been extensively studied. You probably understand what flight or fight means. Simply put, our bodies have evolved to follow the instructions our deepest subconscious thoughts put out.

We may not be running from sabretooth tigers anymore (and experiencing the physical symptoms that would allow us to more easily flee from that danger), but have you ever had a stomachache before a big test? Did it go away after you got on the bus, sharpened your pencil, and sat through the exam? Have you ever thought the physical symptoms you experience when you are under stress are the manifestation of nerves and anxiety?

Try this experiment. Wherever you are right now, think of this word. Say it out loud to yourself if you’re in safe, private place:

LEMON

What happens when you read or even say that word? Does your mouth water? Maybe your lips pucker a bit. You may get the feeling of dread at the thought of tasting that lemon and feeling the bite of sourness in your mouth. If you love the flavor and taste, you might notice you’re craving lemon bars or candy!

Regardless of your specific response, what is important to notice is that your body did something just as a result of seeing or hearing that word.

Your body responded.

Not only one response though; an entire chain of events happened! From a single word.

The same type of chain reaction happens with all the thoughts you have, all day, every day. Every thought you have elicits a chemical reaction in your body. Your cells produce very specific chemicals according to the type of thoughts you have.

I you’re like me and you are not a fan of lemons, the thoughts are negative. That leads to the body producing chemicals that cause the nervous system to move into fight or flight. You may not want to get up and run away from a lemon, but I bet if you felt a sense of unease and discomfort, you’re not a fan of lemons.

But if lemons remind you of summer lemonade stands, your grandmother’s lemon bar cookies, or a favorite chewy candy, the thoughts you had in response to the word lemon were probably quite positive. As a result of those immediate positive reactions, your body produced chemical that the nervous system would interpret as safe, happy, or pleasurable. Those types of thoughts have been proven to promote health and healing.

Isn’t that powerful? A single word can set off a chain reaction that makes us feel safe and loved—or disgusted and uncomfortable.

Maybe now you can see why I feel so strongly about the messages we send ourselves. Every thought you have each day—both the intentional messages you spend time with as well as the unconscious messages—have a direct impact on how we feel.

Thoughts. Reactions. Emotions. Health.

See the loop that is created? Just imagine how easy it is for you, me, anyone at any age or stage of life, to get stuck someplace we don’t want to be. If you’re bogged down by worries, you don’t just think the fears; over time, your body and the functionality of your body will change as a result of those thoughts. Is it any wonder that addiction, disordered eating, hoarding—any number of unwanted behaviors—invade our lives?

The good news is there are ways to train your mind and, as a consequence, heal your body. Let’s look at some relevant research.

The Placebo Phenomenon

I’ve linked above to a 2013 article in Harvard Magazine. This article talks about the work being done by Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, Director of the Program of Placebo Studies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School.

The study charted the effects of prescription medicine vs. acupuncture for various chronic pain conditions. Two hundred and seventy participants were told they would be given either medication for their pain or they would undergo acupuncture. The enrolled participants were warned of possible side effects and then the study began.

Please read the full article above for details, but I’ll summarize this much for you: about a third of the 270 participants reported awful side effects—everything from swelling from the acupuncture needles to physical symptoms related to the medications. Some patients found their pain actually got worse as a result of the treatments!

But here is the real shocker: none of the participants received real treatments. The pills were actually made of cornstarch and the needles weren’t needles at all; they were retractable shams!

The people who believed there would be side effects and negative experiences had that exact experience. The subjects who believed the treatment would lead to positive and helpful outcomes likewise had that experience.

Playing the Piano...Without a Piano

Can you imagine learning to play the piano without ever touching the instrument?

An article from 1995 in the Journal of Neurophysiology recorded the results of study done on two groups of people trying to learn to play the piano. The results are amazing. The second group never touched a piano but had the same expansion and development of neural networks as the first group that actually played the piano every day. By thought alone, the second group was able to change their brains!

How can this information transform our lives? Why does what we think and ultimately feel impact our physical bodies?

Every action you take begins with a conscious or subconscious thought. You don’t get up and go to work without the mental awareness that you have to go to work. If you have a day off, your habits and routine change, and likewise, your thoughts and mental focus will shift. Nothing happens in life until your brain sends a signal to your body to make it happen.

Now let’s get real about your thoughts.

If you wake up every day thinking about how unhappy you are about having to go to work, how do you think you’re going to feel? You may love the feel of the hot shower for the first minute, but pretty soon, your awareness of the dread, frustration, and resentment about the work day ahead will take over. That momentary pleasure in the shower is going to shift. You might feel irritated, anxious, or even experience pain.

Think back to the lemon example. If you hate the fact that you have a mess of unpaid bills stacked up on your kitchen table, you can’t run or hide from the reality that they are there. That chronic condition is going to create a chronic, almost subconscious reality in your mind.

You might feel depressed, sad, isolated, resentful, without hope. One chronic condition can lead to persistent thoughts, and those thoughts lead to feelings which influence how your body feels which in turn drives your behaviors. The truth is your problems have power over you, even if you don’t fully realize how!

And what happens when humans feel sick or stressed or sad? We react. We self-soothe. We double-down on the bad habits that feel safer than facing the truth of our situations. Drinking too much after work to drown out the worries? Overindulging in food or TV or anything else to cover up and mask the pain?

You’re not alone. You’re human. You’re doing exactly what everyone else does: trying to cope.

Let’s talk about doing more than coping. Let’s talk about living.

What would you feel like if you woke up and felt excited every day of your life? If you couldn’t wait to get to work, if you looked forward to that workout?

If you want to change your life, the very first place to start is reviewing the behaviors you want to change.

I missed this step in my own journey for a very long time. I was stuck in elements of trauma, my story, and addiction. I woke up every day reliving my past over and over. I’ve experienced severe mental health and complicated emotions around my circumstances. And I was clueless about the powerful connection between those thoughts and my behaviors.

When I was able to start examining my thoughts and changing them, then I started to see a huge shift in my momentum towards wellness in every way. And I believe you can experience this too.

I can’t fix those things that hold you back. But I can tell you that you’re in the driver’s seat, and you can steer your thoughts in a direction that changes your health, your happiness, and even your material circumstances.

I’ve done it, and I hope you’ll read my other posts and join me on the podcast to be reminded that you’re not alone. I’m cheering you on while you work toward living beyond your limits!

Sources Cited:

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2012/12/the-placebo-phenomenon

“The Placebo Phenomenon,” Harvard Magazine, Jan-Feb 2013.

https://www.alfred.com/blog/visualization-and-mental-rehearsal-using-movie-theater-your-mind/

“Visualization and Mental Rehearsal: Using the Movie Theater in Your Mind” by Thomas J. West. June 1, 2017, on the Alfred Music Blog at Alfred.com

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Why Do We Use and How Do We Stop?

By Marcy Langlois • 26 Sep, 2023

Addiction is the thief of dreams and good intentions. It is stigmatized in the US as a moral failing. It doesn’t discriminate against socioeconomic status, race, gender, or cultural background. It infiltrates families and destroys lives both for the addict and the people that love them. My intention for our time today is to get to the bottom of what causes addiction and provide some tips to get on the path to recovery. Defining addiction: When I use the word addiction, I am referring to any substance someone uses to change the way that they feel. While there are many different types of addiction, I want to focus specifically on drugs and alcohol. Are you are abusing mind-altering substances to deal with things that feel intolerable? Have you ever looked closely and asked yourself why you drink or use drugs? Most people are not even aware that at the bottom of that glass of pinot or bottle of beer is a dark, soupy mess of trauma, unresolved pain, and fear. For years, even as the daughter of an alcoholic, I was oblivious to the fact that I was dependent on alcohol. A lot of people think that they drink to have fun, and I was one of them. But for people who have a problem with substances, there's a very big difference between social drinking and disordered consumption. Addiction is a spectrum disorder. Some people see that they are in trouble at the first signs and reach out and get help. Some people lose everything and still aren’t able to stop no matter what the consequences are. Addiction can look different to different people. What is consistent within addiction is that there's a line with it and it seems once you step over that line, then any freedom that you had to choose the substance, how much or how often you consume it is gone. There are no choices anymore once you become fully addicted and are in the throes of addiction. Using becomes a necessity both physically and mentally. It is a cycle: the more you use, the more you have to use. Understanding Your Why Learning why you use is so important if you are interested in stopping because it gives meaning to the actions that you will take to stay stopped . 1) Addiction as Disease According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) there are approximately 46.3 million, or 1 out of every 8, Americans currently struggling with addiction. More concerning is that it doesn’t seem like we have any incredibly reliable avenues for treatment. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 85% of all people that go to a treatment facility will relapse within the first year, while the US National Library of Medicine discovered that two thirds of all people in treatment relapse within weeks of starting the treatment program. The medical community has addiction labeled as a disease and treats it as such. They throw medications and treatment plans at people without any consideration for what might be causing the behavior. 2) Addiction to Mask Trauma This has been my lived experience. I have witnessed this by sitting in thousands of meetings and worked with people in a one-on-one situation to hear the stories of their lives and the pain that they are still carrying. 3) Codependence and Addiction Pia Mellody, the author of Facing Codependence , looks at codependence as the leading cause of addiction. Codependence comes from growing up in an environment that is less than nurturing. While growing up in the care of adults who are unable to provide for the needs of a child, the child always feels as though something is wrong with them because they aren’t getting their needs met by the adults. Codependence is an incredibly massive topic but I have just tried to put things in a nutshell here for today’s topic. I will circle back to codependence in future episodes. I’ve sat in thousands of AA meetings over the last 20 years. I went to a meeting every single day for the first five years that I was sober and sometimes I went twice a day. I think managing addiction starts with understanding what drives you into the addictive behavior. Why do I wake up every day say I'm not going to drink or use and within an hour or two I'mdrinking and using again and I don't know why. And then I am completely discouraged because I don’t understand why I can’t stop and so you say well what's the use of quitting today? I'll try again tomorrow. And tomorrow you do the exact same thing. This never-ending cycle and you can’t stop no matter how much you want to or what parameters you set in place. You feel huge amounts of shame which then fuels the need to drink even more because you have no tools to handle the shame. What You Can Do So how do you turn an addiction around and get your life back? A lot of people want to change everything at once, lose weight, stop drinking, quit smoking... My experience shows that is a recipe for disaster. If you have a deep desire and willingness to be clean and sober, maybe take some time with yourself. Addiction is no joke and if you truly want to stop then you have to be fully committed. I needed to see the reality of my life and all of the ways that I was not showing up how I wanted to. I needed to see that I had let my family down, that I was repeating the cycle of addiction and dysfunction, and that my future was not looking good if I stayed on that path. No matter what happens today, you don't use. Let me say this again: no matter what happens today, you don't use. That seems so simple. But it is a hard truth. If you really want to stay sober, that's how you start: no matter what happens today, you don't pick up the substance. Once you make that commitment to yourself, you need to follow up on the other steps quickly because you will need help to take this journey. After you’ve committed to stopping, find support . Whether you’re better suited to something online, in person, or something in between, you can attend a Twelve-Step Meeting, show up at an online forum, or listen to people who discuss successful recovery. Finding support is essential. If you feel safe enough, you can tell someone close to you that that this is your struggle, and that you need help, ongoing support, and accountability. If your circumstances allow you to afford a therapist, ideally a therapist who is a certified addictions counselor, find someone you trust to work with on this journey. A lot of certified addictions counselors are in recovery themselves so take the extra step to ask that question as you are interviewing people. No Matter What... The journey to breaking your addiction can be isolating and difficult. Sometimes it is minute by minute that you actively choose not to use and sometimes you might go the entire day and not even think about using; it ebbs and flows. No matter what, don’t stress and worry about the future because it isn’t here yet. Don’t think about not drinking tomorrow. Commit to living for today. And when the going gets tough, remember who you are. What are all the things that you loved to do before you started using? I love to go to the park and shoot hoops, ride my bike, go hiking. I love to be with my animals. I love all of these things. And I had forgotten because using took up all of my time. While you’re working to break your addiction, rediscover things that you remember you used to love to do and you haven't done for so long. Go do that today! It is incredibly important to know that you may need to seek medical attention to stop using. So please know this. I’m not a medical provider. Assess your own personal situation accordingly and get whatever help is appropriate for you. Just know that things will shift. It does get easier as you go. I know that using will not solve one single problem for me today and I am certain that it will only make everything worse. Staying stopped and not using is difficult in the beginning but it isn’t nearly as difficult as it is to continue to use when it is literally killing you. Choose your difficulty today. Staying the path can feel overwhelming at times but all of the things that I was looking for in drugs and alcohol I ended up finding in recovery. I truly hope that reading this will help you on your path to your recovery. If you know other folks who could benefit from this information, please share this podcast with them. Until next time, keep striving to Live Beyond your Limits. Sources and Resources: Pia Mellody’s book Facing Codependence . https://www.amazon.com/Facing-Codependence-Where-Comes-Sabotages/dp/0062505890 Alcoholics Anonymous https://www.aa.org/ Narcotics Anonymous https://na.org/

The Power of Radical Acceptance: Embracing the Present Moment