Emotional Intelligence Course

Probably expect a heap of know-it-all baseless and circular logic from arrogant individuals who assume that using a few 'intelligent sounding words' coupled with terms like 'social', 'cognitive' and 'perception'.

All the seminar will need to tell you (of value) is that your thoughts create your emotions. If the seminar doesn't tell you this, then you have wasted your money.

Every emotion, no matter what the emotion is, is somehow created by thoughts.

Some emotions are complicated, and these have multiple thoughts to blame, and others are simple. Of course, your life is an interconnected web of thinking, so there is no single thought to track down to find the cause of a particular emotion, but you can certainly identify a 'grove of Belief Trees' and then deal with them accordingly.

I would recommend you read about EQ on the internet instead of spending money on hearing very basic information discussed by some very financially motivated individuals. You could also read Mind Garden at dreamvine dot org and see how nature is involved (everything and everyone around you).

(If the seminar is free, I'm sorry haha - I'm sure it will be great :p)

Every emotion, no matter what the emotion is, is somehow created by thoughts

That is not correct. When an emotion is produced from an external stimulus the emotion occurs before the thought, which comes more as an ex post facto rationalisation of the emotion. An essential part of our survival strategy.

As the original post was made in November 2007 I suspect your advice is somewhat after the event.

With respect, even 'ex post facto' reactions, as you put it, are the result of thought.

Obviously emotions and thoughts interact in a circular fashion, and sometimes we aren't aware of the thought that gives rise to the emotion. Often, emotions give the illusion that they operate independent of mental influence.

It's an illusion.

Most thoughts are unconscious, and due to their prevalence, most emotions have their thought roots hidden.

The stimulus, whatever it is, is received by the brain (as all sensory input is registered by the brain) and then the brain creates the chemical emotional reaction. This happens without our awareness, and the first we know of this sensory input is through emotion, and most senses are immeasurable, so it appears as if no mental involvement was present at all.

I thought that was obvious, and I also can't see how there are any exceptions and how any profit could be gained from believing that emotions are at all separate from thought. It seems to be a damaging and incorrect philosophy.

The problem is probably our differing definitions of the word 'thought', but regardless, this is interesting to think about.

dreamvine,

You are using a very different definition of 'thought' from that which is normal.

In all normal definitions of 'thought' it is the content of cognition, therefore it is by definition in consciousness.

The processing by the central nervous system of an external stimulus, to create an emotional reaction is an unconscious function,as you rightly say it is out of our awareness, and therefore thought is not a part of that process, but subsequent to and a consequence of it.

The emotion precedes the thought. The APET model explains this well and The Matrix modelis more complete.

Some definitions of 'thought':

From http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=thought
idea: the content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking about; "it was not a good idea"; "the thought never entered my mind"
thinking: the process of using your mind to consider something carefully; "thinking always made him frown"; "she paused for thought"

From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thought
1. the product of mental activity; that which one thinks: a body of thought.
2. a single act or product of thinking; idea or notion: to collect one's thoughts.
3. the act or process of thinking; mental activity: Thought as well as action wearies us.
4. the capacity or faculty of thinking, reasoning, imagining, etc.: All her thought went into her work.
5. a consideration or reflection: Thought of death terrified her.
6. meditation, contemplation, or recollection: deep in thought.
7. intention, design, or purpose, esp. a half-formed or imperfect intention: We had some thought of going.

hey mike, i'm a friend of dreamvines and he asked me to put in my objective two cents.

i agree that ex post facto rationalisations occur. but, that being true wouldn't preclude another, different thought causing the emotion.
aka i rationalise an emotion... but maybe it was caused by a different thought beforehand?

also, if emotions don't come from thoughts, where do they come from?
if they were acausal to thoughts, then everyone would have the same emotional reactions, which people don't.

that leads me to believe that old thoughts (that have already been 'thought') are responsible for emotions... or indeed any other unconscious behaviour.

it just occured to me too that this is the principle of AI, i think, how people learn by metaphor. They start out with only a handful of thoughts. And then they have to generalise and differentiate (like kid pointing at the moon, 'plate!', 'no, moon'), until they have many different thoughts, which all interrelate.

surely each thought's etymology is responsible for emotion. The history (aka scant dendritic connections) of the thought that fires, would, i imagine, have the weakest action potential. In my opinion, that's what unconscious is.

And that's probably where emotions come from - old thoughts: old and often stealthy cogitations that have found pathways to concepts of fear, disgust, happiness, etc.

Hi alexitalics,

Dreamvine started by saying 'Every emotion, no matter what the emotion is, is somehow created by thoughts'.

If someone who has a phobia of spiders 'sees' a spider, even though they are thinking about something else, they will have a phobic reaction. They do not even need to be consciously aware that they have seen the spider, they will have that phobic reaction. The 'oh my god it's a spider' reaction is subsequent to the emotional response.

The awareness of the feeling and the thought are the first things that we are consciously aware of, so it is understandable that we could be misled into thinking that they are the first things that occurred and and were the driver for the emotion.

It also fits in with a nice illusion that are conscious mind is in control.

Animals, which we do not normally associate with cognitive thinking, experience emotional responses, you know when a dog is frightened, aggressive, happy, calm etc. This alone shows that cognition is not required for an emotional response.

If you read the article in my post above it explains the APET model of how emotions happen. When there is an external stimulus the brain unconsciously, and much faster than thought, processes it pattern matching whether it is similar or different to previous stimuli, and generates the corresponding emotional response, for example releasing adrenaline in response to fear, shortly afterwards the person becomes aware of the physiological changes and experiences 'fear'.

This will happen to a spiderphobe, even if consciously, rationally, they think that spiders are harmful, friendly and useful for getting rid of insect pests in their garden.

The cognitive part of the brain, a relatively late newcomer in our development, is relatively slow in its processing and if we had to rely on it in survival situations we might not still exist as a species.

It is not logical to say that if emotions do not come from thoughts everyone would have the same reactions. It is akin to saying we do not know why the sun goes down at night, therefore it must be little green men.

I was out walking with a friend recently and we saw a grass snake, which I pointed out. Her initial, instinctive reaction was shock and to step back, once she realised it was a grass snake (safe) she became curious.

Imagine if thought controlled this process and it was a dangerous snake. The person would be working out 'is that an adder or a grass snake, mmm, better check out the markings, oh not quite sure, must get closer' etc, not a great survival strategy!

When we experience high levels of emotional response the rational thinking part of the brain shuts down; try rationalising with someone who is very angry, or very depressed or madly in love. In each case we get a very black and white way of thinking as the cognitive function is reduced. It is the emotion that is controlling the thought not the other way round. Again very useful for our survival strategy, it keeps slow thoughts out of the way in an emergency and also unhelpful thoughts (from the perspective of our survival) such as 'is it morally acceptable to kill someone who is trying to kill me'.

Our emotional responses are in part genetic, and in part learnt responses. A baby, out of the womb will have a range of instinctive emotional responses, that have been genetically 'programmed' whilst in the womb. As the baby grows it will have experiences, unique to that baby, from which it will learn new emotional responses. The new patterns of behaviour and emotional responses are 'programmed' in via the REM state, not cognitive thinking. (This is why in the womb and as a new born is the time that people spend most time in the REM state).

How does a dog learn not to urinate indoors? Because it fears being punished for doing so, and gets rewarded for going outdoors to do so. As far as we know there is no cognitive process of dogs thinking 'it is not socially acceptable to urinate inside, besides which I do not like the smell..'. On the contrary it is a dog's instinctive response to mark its territory by urinating.

We could say that a thought can generate an emotion (which is very different from saying all emotions come from thoughts), if we ask a person with a fear of public speaking to think about doing a presentation and they do so in a certain way they will re-experience the fear to some degree. However some people are adept at thinking about future presentations without the fear, but experience it only when they are in the situation they are fearful, until asked to fully re-experience a previous situation when they felt the fear and then they feel it again.

So, it is not thinking about it that generates the emotion, but the way that the think about it, or more accurately, how they re-experience that determines the emotional response (how associated they are into the experience).


> The history (aka scant dendritic connections) of the thought that fires, would, i imagine, have the weakest action potential. In my opinion, that's what unconscious is.

Please could you clarify this, I'm unclear what you are saying here.

One school of thought is that thought and language are inextricably linked. Our range of thoughts limited by our language. Yet babies with no language, grown adults with no language, and other animals without language still experience emotional responses.

In my experience, thoughts can induce emotions and emotions can induce thoughts. There are two distinct processes. Once either loop is active it is not easy to tell the chicken or the egg. Let me give an example, the scientist goes into the cave looking for artifacts. As he examines the cave he notices a fracture in the ceiling. He deduces danger and starts to feel fear so he leave the cave. This is thinking leading to emotion. On the other hand, his assistant has a phobia about caves. The fear was there even without any experience. But based on the fear the imagination begins to generate cave-in scenarios. This is the feeling coming first leading to thoughts. After they both run out of the cave, they are both scared and both talking about escaping the possible cave-in. At that point it becomes ambiguous.

A good combined affect is connected to global warming. There is good science that creates a sense of fear or concern. This is thought leading to emotion. But once the seed of fear is planted, the fear starts to exaggerate the thoughts. The result can be an overreaction leading to all the worse case scenarios appearing, many of which don't have the science to support it. The conclusions of fear can then be researched to cherry the data that reinforces the fear. That is not emotional intelligence since it didn't lead to intelligent conclusions but often irrational conclusions.

I always thought emotional intelligence had to do with using emotions to create an emotional version of logic. The mother may sense something is wrong with her child, but the child won't say. She has to try to deduce the unknown by analyzing the emotions that are generated. It is almost a pre-language type ability that can sense and deduce without words. It could be based on body language, facial expressions, behavior, etc. The language is more connected to sensory cues that are sort of universal with respect to humans. Nancy Reagan, the wife of the President Reagan, could sort of know intent of visitors using emotional logic. It may almost look like ESP but it may be due to extreme command of body language.

Emotions leading thoughts is a two-side coin. One side is rational and the other side is irrational. Phobia type scenario's are not very rational. Marketing uses a different irrational emotional induction more based on inducing our desire for the further extrapolation of our thoughts. This is not very intelligent either, except in terms of the marketers. Even political rhetoric is fuzzy feeling to bias the mind and lead our thoughts down a one-sided path. It is intelligent, but only in terms of the inducer.

There is another side of this coin connected to intuitions. Intuitions are felt like feelings and maybe even body sensations. These often don't quickly activate the mind but often take more time to materialize. One may not be able to put their finger on it, but their gut says it is there. Slowly it starts to take shape. But with enough practice it can happen faster.