I’m someone who lives in their head. 

This characteristic can be a bad thing if it interferes with my ability to be present and in the moment. But I also see it as a strength; allowing me to process the diverse topics that I read about and critically consider problems. 

If I go out for a walk on my own, I spend the entire time thinking. Debating ideas, trying to find edge cases that break my assumptions or biases, and generally trying to make sense of my beliefs. 

And while I’m talking here about ideas, it is much deeper than this. What goes on in our mind is possibly the biggest determiner of how we experience the world. 

Thoughts Lead To Feelings

How our thoughts and feelings impact our mind and physiology is bidirectional (which is something I talk about in more detail here). 

You can have a thought cross your mind, which starts you down the path of telling yourself a story. These thoughts then lead to emotions that match up to the kind of story you are telling yourself. 

For example, you remember what you ate for lunch. You start telling yourself that it was too much, that you didn’t need that dessert, that this is why you don’t have the body you wish you did. 

With this kind of an internal monologue, it’s no wonder that certain emotions show up: guilt, shame, anger. You start to feel overwhelmed and like a failure. 

Thoughts –> feelings

Feelings Lead To Thoughts

The same process can also happen in the opposite direction.

You’re sitting at your desk, and suddenly you start feeling anxious. Seemingly out of nowhere, panic is upon you. 

You try to figure out why this is occurring and start making your way through your mind’s Filofax of recent events. Suddenly, you remember lunch. You start telling yourself you ate too much and that you shouldn’t have had dessert. 

You now “know” why you’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed; it’s because of what you did at lunch. 

Feelings –> thoughts

Regardless of what set off this chain of events, our perception is creating an augmented reality. At best, our mind is dealing with half-truths and, at worst, it’s feeding us the manipulative lies of a grifter. 

Just because a thought occurs to you doesn’t necessarily make it true. Our feelings are also messier than we may think. We are terrible at being able to accurately label what feelings are occurring, often because our thoughts and our environment easily hijack them.

How Do You Change These Patterns? 

I was recently listening to a conversation between organisational professor Adam Grant and writer, philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris (you can listen to the full episode here). 

Part of the conversation centred on how to change your thoughts and feelings in certain situations. Harris suggested three ideas. These are ideas I regularly talk about with clients but thought it would be helpful to cover all in one place here. 

Taking Action Repeatedly

When I was 18 studying a business degree at University, I remember having to give a presentation in my first year. The presentation was only 5-7 minutes long, but I remember being so nervous. At the time, I was incredibly self-conscious and unsure of myself. 

Up until that point, I wouldn’t have said I had a fear of public speaking, but I experienced it that morning. I fumbled my way through the talk, shaking as I held the piece of paper containing my notes and barely able to look up. I remember when it was over, there was no sense of relief. Just the thought of “oh crap, when am I ‘m going to need to do this again?”

This fear of public speaking stuck with me for another decade, mostly because I did it so infrequently. 

But in 2010, after graduating as a nutritionist the year before, I started hosting a monthly supper club at my home. The events were for 18-20 people. A friend who was a chef cooked a five-course meal. And for each course, I would stand at the head of the table and talk through the foods we used and the health benefits they offered. 

When I agreed to host the supper club, I was still deathly afraid of talking in public. But I also realised that this was something I wanted to get over and that regular practice was one of the best ways of achieving that goal. 

Over the next 18 months, I hosted many supper clubs. Each time I became increasingly more comfortable talking in front of a group of people until I got to a point where it just wasn’t scary anymore.

And this isn’t something that only works with public speaking, it’s an approach I regularly use with clients. 

If they’re afraid of eating a particular food, wearing a bathing suit, or skipping a day of exercise, we’ll challenge this belief. 

The first time is understandably challenging, and so we’ll find ways to make it as easy as possible. 

For example, if they want to wear a bathing suit, could they do this with a friend to make it easier? Could they go to the pool during off-hours? Could they find an aqua aerobics class where the participants are older than them, and they’ll feel less judged? Whatever way is going to make this attempt easier, let’s do it.  

And what invariably happens, with repetition, is that this action becomes more comfortable. Until the point is reached where what once felt scary is now normalised. 

One thing to note is that at no point will you ever feel completely ready to get started. When making the first attempt, you are going to feel unsure and probably out of your depth. This feeling is entirely ok and normal. 

The idea that you can get yourself to a place, in advance, where you feel ready is a myth. Because it’s by taking action that your thoughts and feelings change. Trying to do things “in theory” before you start will only ever get you so far. 

Reframing

The events of our lives are significant, and there is no doubt that they shape who we are. But a big part of what we think of as an “event,” is actually just the meaning we give that experience. And this meaning directly impacts how we perceive the world. 

The word “counterfact” is an important word to know. A counterfact is an alternate scenario that our brains create to help us evaluate and make sense of an actual event.

For example, you eat a piece of chocolate cake. One counterfact or alternative scenario is that you never ate a piece of chocolate cake and instead had a celery stick. If celery is seen as “better” and cake is seen as “worse” then using this counterfact is likely to result in negative feelings. 

A different counterfact could be that instead of eating one piece of cake, you ate the whole thing. If eating one piece of cake is “better” and eating a whole cake is seen as “worse” then this counterfact is likely to result in positive feelings.  

How we feel about an event isn’t because of that event in a vacuum, it’s based on expectations about what could have been. And these expectations rely on counterfacts or alternative imagined scenarios. 

So, despite the same actual event of eating a piece of cake, depending on which of the counterfacts you choose to focus on, will lead to very different feelings about what just happened. 

Or imagine you start feeling a body-wide tingly sensation, you instantly feel a little warmer, and have a fluttering in the stomach. 

In one scenario, this occurs before doing something you enjoy. Therefore, we interpret this sensation as excitement. In another situation, these same physical sensations arise before doing something you’re dreading. This time, we label this sensation as anxiety or fear. 

This is where reframing comes in. Reframing is the conscious and intentional act of taking past and current events and seeing them through a more productive lens. It’s about asking what counterfactuals or interpretation could you use that change how you feel about this event.

While this may sound trite, you already do this unconsciously all the time. There are many “positive” parts of your life or personality that we could quickly turn into a “negative” without much effort. The areas that you think of as your greatest strengths could be switched in a short matter of time if we wanted to find some counterfactuals to make this so. 

But unconsciously you don’t do this, and for whatever reason, you think of this trait as a positive. So as part of reframing, all we’re doing is applying this same approach to areas that you haven’t been so naturally positive about at first pass.

Meditation and Mindfulness 

I talked earlier about how thoughts can lead to feelings and feelings can lead to thoughts. Well, this is a process that is mostly automatic and unconscious. 

Meditation is a powerful way of seeing just how true this is. 

By sitting quietly and trying to empty one’s mind, it quickly becomes apparent how difficult (read: impossible) this is as a task. And while it may feel like your conscious mind is generating these thoughts, it’s actually just that your conscious mind is becoming aware of the thoughts. 

Our thoughts and feelings come out of nowhere. Our mind generates them, and at some point, they reach our consciousness. You are a witness, rather than the originator. As the saying goes, “thoughts think themselves.” 

This is important is because you are not your thoughts. Just because a thought arises doesn’t mean that it is true or that you believe it, it’s merely a thought. 

Same thing with feelings. Yes, a feeling can arise, but this also says nothing about you as a person. 

What mindfulness and meditation teach us is the ability to be an observer. To see thoughts and feelings naturally appear and then dissipate on their own. If you attach to a thought or feeling and continue to feed it, then it will be sustained. But without this, they quickly dissolve back into the ether from which they came. 

Now I don’t want to give the impression that this is easy or straight forward because it’s not. But this is the benefit of a mindfulness practice; being more calm and equanimous rather than at the whim of whatever appears in your mind. 

(I’ve written more on the topic of mindfulness here.)

Horses For Courses

Each of these different methods for changing thoughts and feelings has strengths and weaknesses. And depending on the circumstances, one option will be better than another. But they are all useful to have at your disposal and to be utilised regularly. 

Our identity is a construct. It’s a composite of life events, the meaning we give to these events, the content of our mind’s constant chatter, amongst many other variables. And while our identity and how we feel about ourselves and the world can feel relatively static and unchanging, it turns out to be rather malleable.

Need Help Changing Your Thoughts and Feelings?

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I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

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