What I feel is a result of how I think
Why it isn’t events themselves that get to you, but what you think about them — and where the freedom lies
- The chain from event to feeling
- Why familiar feelings keep coming back
- Rigid thinking and flexible thinking: two poles
- What you think about yourself
- What you think about others
- What you think about the world
- Where this model doesn’t work
- A journal that helps you notice your thoughts
- A closing thought
Five people get the same letter: they’ve been laid off. The words in the letter are the same, the circumstances are similar. And yet these five will feel different things. One will collapse, one will get angry, one will breathe out with relief, because they had long wanted to leave but never quite dared. If the emotion lived right inside the event, all five would feel the same. That doesn’t happen.
Most people live with an unspoken belief: feelings lie in the events themselves. Someone hurt me — so the hurt came from the other person’s action. Someone made me lose my temper — so someone outside pushed a button, and I merely responded. In this picture there is no gap between the world and you: whatever came flying at you is what you felt.
Between the event and the feeling there is, after all, a link that is easy to miss — the way you explain to yourself what is happening. A person lives not so much in the real world as in a world of their own ideas about it. One person will hear the same remark from their boss as “I’m a bad employee, now everything will fall apart,” and another as “there’s something to think about here, let’s see what can be fixed.” The words were the same. The feelings will differ.
If feelings live in events, then only one thing is left — to wait until the world becomes more convenient, kinder and more predictable. You can wait a long time. But if there is an interval between the event and the reaction, then in that interval there is a place where something depends on you. Not everything. Something. And that is usually enough to stop being merely the effect of what happens to you.
Let me state the limits right away. We will be talking about everyday adult life — relationships, money, work, conversations, expectations. Not about situations where there is a direct threat or danger: other mechanisms are at work there, and more on them separately, closer to the end. And one more thing: this is not a topic that fits into a single evening. The habit of thinking in a particular way took years to form, and it doesn’t change at the snap of your fingers.
Before reading on, you can pause for a moment on a few questions. Not to answer them “correctly,” but to understand how much this conversation is about you at all.
- Have you noticed that the same phrase from different people gets to you in different ways, and from some people doesn’t get to you at all?
- Does it happen that you know in advance how a conversation will end, before it has even begun?
- Does it happen that someone hasn’t answered your message for fifteen minutes — and in those fifteen minutes you’ve already made up a whole story about what has happened?
- Do you recognize in yourself an “I told you so” — and a quiet satisfaction when an unpleasant prediction comes true?
- Does it happen that when you’re tired or hungry, the people around you seem worse to you than they did the evening before?
The chain from event to feeling
It helps to keep a simple sequence in mind: event — thinking — emotion — reaction of the body and behavior — result. Something happens. You explain it to yourself in some way. A feeling is born from the explanation. The feeling echoes in the body — your voice trembles, your face flushes, your breath catches. And in behavior — what you do, what you say. Speech is behavior too: with words you affect other people, and “these are just words” is a bit disingenuous.
The main thing in this chain is the order. The feeling follows not directly from the event, but from how you have interpreted the event. “Thinking” here doesn’t mean reasoning in its pure form, but rather your set of beliefs: how you see yourself, how you see other people, how you see the world as a whole. Most often these beliefs aren’t spoken out loud. They simply run in the background, like settings through which you look.
Take paying the rent. There’s a date on the calendar by which the payment is due. In itself this is a neutral line in the schedule. But for one person it turns into the thought “I’m failing again, I’m worthless, I can’t earn money,” and then heaviness, shame and irritation come. For another, it becomes “right, I need to move some money around by Friday,” and what comes is a matter-of-fact focus. The figure in the lease is the same. The feelings differ because the thinking differs.
Perhaps a thought is flickering right now: “Well, that’s obvious.” For some people, yes. And yet a great many people live their whole lives without noticing this link — fully convinced that others “make” them feel what they feel. As soon as a person sees the interval between the event and the reaction, they gain something they didn’t have before: a choice, even if a small one.
Why familiar feelings keep coming back
There is an observation that feels uncomfortable at first. A person tends — not on purpose, without noticing it — to arrange around themselves the kinds of events and relationships that confirm their familiar beliefs. And that let them feel familiar, long-known emotions.
It sounds strange: why would anyone willingly return to resentment or anxiety? Because the familiar and predictable seems safer than the unknown. Even an unpleasant “tomorrow” that is clear in advance is calmer than a “tomorrow” in which nothing is clear. The psyche chooses certainty, even bitter certainty.
Hence the quiet joy of “I told you so.” A person convinced that everything always slips through their fingers is more likely to notice and remember exactly those times when something went wrong, and to walk past those when it worked out. A person sure that no one can be trusted will find confirmation — because that is exactly what they are looking for. A belief works like a filter: it lets through whatever strengthens it and doesn’t notice the rest.
This is not a verdict and not a reason to blame yourself. Rather, it explains why the same stories repeat for a person year after year, as if going in circles. Not because the world is set up against them. But because the habitual way of looking picks out confirmations to suit itself. Noticing this circle is already half the job: what has been seen stops controlling you blindly.
Rigid thinking and flexible thinking: two poles
If you look closely at how beliefs are built, you can see two poles. At one is rigid thinking: with unbending demands on yourself, on people and on the world, with ready-made labels, with the certainty that everything is known in advance. At the other is flexible thinking: it allows for different outcomes, doesn’t demand that reality adjust itself, leaves room for “maybe it’s otherwise.”
This isn’t a switch with “zero” and “one” positions. It’s a scale along which you move during the day. By evening, when you’re tired, it’s easier to slide into rigidity. On an empty stomach the world can easily seem more hostile than it is. Keep a person without sleep and food for a few days — and their thinking will quickly become rigid, however calmly they reasoned when fed and at rest. That is why taking care of the body — sleep, food, rest — is not a separate topic. The body largely sets what your thinking will be like.
The rigid pole has recognizable habits that are conveniently called thinking distortions — that is, recurring glitches in processing what is happening. Here are the ones that come up most often.
- Shoulds — a rigid demand instead of a preference. Not “I would like,” but “I must,” “others should,” “the world should be like this.” When reality doesn’t match that “should,” anger and resentment come almost inevitably.
- Mind reading — the certainty that you know exactly what is going on in someone else’s head. “He spelled my name ‘Alberti’ because he doesn’t like me.” Although in fact the reason could be anything.
- Predicting the future — “I know for sure what will happen.” No one knows the future. You can estimate probabilities, weigh options, but declaring “this is exactly what will happen” means passing off a guess as knowledge.
- Labeling — “this is brilliant,” “this is talentless,” “he’s smart,” “he’s stupid.” A judgment more often says something not about what is being judged, but about the one who judges. A person who opens their mouth exposes their filters — their ideas about themselves, people and the world.
- Catastrophizing — “this is the end, it’s a nightmare, I can’t take it, my life is over.” The event is blown up to the size of a catastrophe, and along with it comes the certainty that it is impossible to cope.
- Personalization — “everything that happens around me is somehow connected to me and depends on me.” As if other people’s behavior and the course of events were about you.
The difference between the poles is not cosmetic. In rigid thinking a person becomes a hostage to their feelings — their effect, the one being led. In flexible thinking they become someone who can influence those feelings a little. Not cancel them, not forbid them, but slightly change their strength through the way they see things. Next we will go through this using three pillars: beliefs about yourself, about others and about the world.
What you think about yourself
Rigid beliefs about yourself also have two extremes. At one is inflated importance: “everything in the world should be for me,” “everyone owes me,” “I know everything and understand everything better than others, and the people around me are dim.” A person with this setting is full of demands, and as soon as reality fails to match their expectation, irritation or resentment rises. Tell such a person that two times two is four, not five — and what comes flying back is not gratitude but anger: their picture of the world has come under attack.
At the other extreme is zeroing yourself out: “I’m worthless, I don’t deserve anything,” “I don’t even dare think about my own wishes,” “I’m good only when I please, help, rescue.” Here a person lives like a passenger: life rushes past, and they seem to have no right to take part in it. Someone who can’t say “no” and is convinced they must help everyone and ask for nothing in return sooner or later builds up a quiet resentment, unnoticed even by themselves — especially when, once again, their kindness has been taken for granted.
It is useful to see the common root, too. Much here rests on a belief in guarantees: I’m entitled, they owe me, things should be such-and-such for me. There are no guarantees. The world doesn’t sign IOUs. Belief in guarantees is something childish, and as long as a person holds on to it, they remain in the position of a child to whom everyone owes everything.
The flexible middle sounds different. “My needs matter to me — and at the same time I don’t cross out the needs of the people close to me. I look for a balance between what I need and what they need. I know that not everything I want will come true — and even if it doesn’t, life goes on.” This also includes a calm “there are things I’m strong at and things I know nothing about, and admitting the second is normal.”
A separate word about shame. Shame usually flares up where the “real self” hasn’t matched the “ideal self.” You had fun yesterday more loudly than you usually do — and in the morning you feel awkward, though you didn’t offend anyone and did nothing bad. The awkwardness comes not from the action but from the mismatch with the image of the “proper self.” And there is quiet work here that can be called mental behavior: revising your expectations of yourself. “Well, yes, I had fun. Did I harm anyone? No.” By revising the bar, a person lowers the strength of the unpleasant feeling — doesn’t cancel it, but makes it softer.
What you think about others
With other people, rigid thinking also splits into extremes. One is clinging: “nobody needs me, I can be abandoned at any moment, and to stop that from happening I’ll check, control, be jealous, take offense.” Often alongside it is the wish to hide one’s “not-enoughness” under armor made of things, status, a flawless appearance — anything so that no one can see that inside things are “not OK.” You sent a message, there’s been no answer for fifteen minutes — and a whole drama about betrayal is ready. The feelings are real, but they were born not of the phone’s silence but of a thought about that silence.
The other extreme is a blank wall of distance: “I don’t need people, I’ll cope with everything myself, relationships are for the weak, people bring nothing but trouble.” Sometimes this covers the same fear of closeness, only turned inside out: “come closer so I can tell you how little I need you.”
Two related traps belong here too. Idealization: seeing invented ideal traits in a person and not noticing the obvious. He borrows money — “that means people trust him, he has a lot of friends.” He loses at betting — “he just loves the thrill, he’s hot-blooded.” Idealization almost always flows smoothly into devaluation: yesterday’s ideal, over one small thing — a hair sticking out of his nose — suddenly becomes “a complete nobody whose whole life is a mess.” The swing from “the best in the world” to “a total zero” is the same rigid way of looking.
The flexible version begins with something simple: I am a good-enough person. Not an ideal and not a nobody. And others are good enough too. Everyone has both strengths and weaknesses, and that’s normal. There’s something handy to lean on here — let’s call it the family tax: not demanding that someone close to you be flawless, but accepting that a certain percentage of imperfection comes with the package. He started snoring in his sleep, turned out to be less than ideal — that’s no reason to tear everything down. Although, of course, if too much of this “tax” piles up, it makes sense to give it some thought rather than turn a blind eye.
From this grows a calm attitude to other people’s words. If someone has left, it doesn’t make you bad, and it doesn’t make the one who left bad either — people have their own reasons. If someone has slipped up, the slip doesn’t turn them into a bad person. Incidentally, many people deep down want to see their parents as ideal too — it’s a childlike longing for an all-powerful source of warmth. Growing up is, to a large extent, a quiet admission: they were people like everyone else; they knew some things and didn’t know others.
What you think about the world
The third pillar is ideas about the world, and here there are even more extremes. The first: “the world is a dangerous place.” Then a person seems to go out for bread in three jackets and four helmets: doesn’t do anything unnecessary, doesn’t approach anyone — what if someone looks at them sideways, what if someone writes a bad comment, and then that’s it, a nightmare.
The second extreme is turned the other way round: “everything is predetermined, nothing will happen to me.” Not buckling up just to spite everyone, crossing against a red light — because “for me, everything will be fine.” This usually doesn’t lead anywhere good.
The third, especially insidious: “I know in advance what will happen, and everything depends on me.” Here lives the conviction that a person is able to predict the future and control other people’s behavior. Faced with something that didn’t depend on them at all, they start punishing themselves: “so it’s my fault, I thought the wrong way, I didn’t set my mind right.” Next to it is its mirror twin: “the world is chaos, and I’m a wood chip in the current, nothing depends on me,” and then you just give up.
Something should be said in particular about the attractive-looking thought “the world is a mirror; it reflects only what I let in.” As a metaphor it sometimes sounds elegant. As a guide to life it is dangerous. From it, it’s easy to conclude that a person has “attracted” everything bad with the wrong thoughts. A wife lives with a husband who drinks and blames herself: “he drinks because I don’t take enough care of him.” This is not a mirror. This is self-blame, which makes you drag more and more of someone else’s load and suffer more and more. People caught in a disaster didn’t “order” it with their attitude to life — that’s not how it works.
A flexible view rests on an honest division. I am responsible for part of what happens in my life — and not for all of it. There are events I can influence, and there are those that don’t depend on me at all. The world has no intentions regarding me: it doesn’t care about me one way or the other; it lived before me and will live after me. Within this you can be reasonably careful, estimate probabilities, prepare — and at the same time not take on responsibility for what isn’t in your power.
Where this model doesn’t work
Everything said here has honest limits, and it’s better to be direct about them. We have been talking about the everyday life of an adult, capable person. When something threatens life and health — you smell something burning, you find yourself in danger — this is not about “how I think about it.” Here you need to act: get out of the dangerous place, call for help, take care of yourself and those close to you. Fright at a sudden crash or at an object flying at your face is an ancient protective reaction, and you can’t cancel it by rethinking.
The second limit is the body. Sometimes a loss of energy, apathy, constant anxiety are connected not with thoughts but with the state of the organism. Tiredness, lack of sleep, hunger, physiological cycles — all of this changes both mood and how you see people. If changes in how you feel are persistent, it makes sense to take care of the physical side first and to check whether there are health-related causes. Not everything in life is solved by working with thinking, and admitting this is not weakness but clear-headedness.
Third. There are topics that this text deliberately doesn’t go into in detail: severe addictions, violence, states in which a person is having a truly hard time. The idea that “feeling follows thought” isn’t cancelled there, but neither does it replace the support and the real steps that such situations require. Care matters more here than a neat scheme.
A journal that helps you notice your thoughts
Understanding remains theory until it meets a concrete day. One calm way to bring this into your life is a short journal, one or two events a day. Not to tick a box, but to gradually learn to see your own thoughts — those very settings that usually work unnoticed.
The entry can follow a few simple points:
- Event. What happened today? Briefly, the facts. “I read a comment: ‘writing nonsense again.’”
- Emotions. What did I feel? “Hurt, anger.”
- Thoughts in direct speech. What was I thinking at the time — about myself, about others, about the world? Write it down the way it sounded in your head: “they don’t even understand how hard I try,” “once again everything I do is for nothing.”
- Revision. Once you’re calm — how could these thoughts be seen differently? “Some people connect with what I do, some don’t. Someone else’s feedback doesn’t make me bad, just as good feedback doesn’t make me perfect.”
- What was good. What am I pleased with today, what am I glad about. This also includes some short, kind feedback to yourself.
- Conclusion. What do I choose to take from this day.
Revision itself is exactly that mental behavior. Behavior isn’t only physical; going over a thought, looking at it from another side, is also an action, just an inner one. When you do this again and again, a new skill takes shape. After a month of such short entries you have a noticeable revision of the habitual behind you, and your reactions gradually change by themselves.
It’s only honest to say: this doesn’t come quickly. Old habits of thinking are stronger than new ideas — almost always, at first. So it’s better to move in small steps, on calm, less charged situations, without trying to take apart something painful right away. You can start with what’s easier to bear and gradually work your way to the harder things.
A closing thought
Everything we’ve talked about is a model. Not a description of how life is really arranged, but a convenient way of looking at it. Any model is simpler than reality, and the world is more varied than any scheme. Some of what has been said will turn out to be about you, some will pass you by, and both are normal.
If only one thing remains from all of this, let it be the short gap between the event and the reaction — the place where before there was nothing but an automatic feeling, and where now there is a little choice. What to do with this gap is for you alone to decide.