Conerning emotions and feelings.

Does everyone who has emotions have to always assign meaning to them, like belief? If we took every thought into critical thinking we would go insane. A thought without meaning is just a thought until one gives it meaning. Thoughts please. plj

Eastern thought, such as Buddhism, practices the concept of non-attachment. The thinking is that attachment to anything, be it desire, things, or even thought can trap us and diminish us. I can't say that I am a Buddhist, but I can understand this. The concept is to allow thoughts, emotions to arise and then dissipate without 'self' attachment.

You are no more your thoughts than the clouds are the sky.

thx1137,
Excellent answer. But every time I get a thought, it is a word I understand. It has no value until I give it value or meaning. Every word has it's own meaning and place in the sentence and value.

I place value in all core/original words. pljames

We all have this thing in us known as the black box. Noam Chomsky and others have theorized that every human has it. The faculty of language is our unique ability to communicate emotions that have evolved into more complex thoughts. Put the right string of words together you get an emotion charged by a memory or an experience.

In this same way complex thoughts connected with trauma or troubling memories, even memories that are pleasurable like a first kiss or your daughter being born, these are lodged in the subconscious and become emotion in the same way that subconscious fears like the fear of the dark are lodged in our reptilian brains. The emotion pops up and there it is.

The problem is that we are never really taught at a young age how to process these emotions. The Buddhist meditation and idea of mindfulness has been adapted to DBT therapy that allows you to, like thx said view the emotions and thoughts from affair and detach yourself from them.

Each emotion has a core idea behind it that you can figure out if you first allow yourself to just feel a feeling without judging practicing a state of mindfulness and then think about why you thought that particular emotion.

I think that the variety of emotions that someone can feel supersedes our ability to describe them. That being sad any thought you have is something you create and you are what you think about just like you are what you do, that doesn't mean you can't change if you don't like yourself which is why I think a lot of people like the idea that you aren't what you think, but your not every thought that you think you are your conclusions that then become actions.

That all being said, I think we don't think that we consciously assign meaning to every feeling but we do to each thought that creates our feelings, this is what makes you, you really. See The Thing that's holding you back and the god gene for additional reading on this subject.

Pickup,
Excellent answer. Made my year. Paul

Thanks Paul that really means a lot to me