Do your thoughts and feelings seem to lead a life of their own and hinder you? Do they constantly revolve around the same stressful problem? Do you experience your feelings as overpowering; do they overwhelm you or control you? Do you believe you have no influence on your feelings? If so, you’re no different to many other students.

The good thing is that you can influence your thoughts and feelings. In this section you’ll discover how feelings arise, what your thoughts have to do with them, and how you can deal with unpleasant feelings.

Your (automatic) thoughts influence your feelings and your actions.

Your brain is a thought machine. You are constantly thinking about something and evaluating the world and what’s happening around you. You’re just not aware of this at all times; it happens more or less automatically. This can give you the impression that you have no control over your thoughts. And perhaps you also think that your (negative) feelings are determined by external circumstances, such as the stupid situation you’re in or the someone who has annoyed you.

However, your thoughts and your evaluations in a given situation are critical to how you feel and behave. This can be explained in very simple terms. Positive thoughts/evaluations trigger positive feelings, negative thoughts, in contrast, trigger negative feelings, and if you have neutral thoughts about a certain situation, you’ll feel neutral/indifferent. How you evaluate situations is subjective and depends on the experiences you’ve had so far in your life.

In the context of cognitive behavioral therapy, this process is referred to as the ABC model:

• A stands for “activating event” – this is the situation you are currently in
• B stands for “beliefs” – your thoughts, evaluations and convictions or assumptions in this situation, and
• C stands for “consequences” – the feelings, behavior and physical reactions that arise from them.

The good news is that you yourself are responsible for your thoughts and feelings, so you can influence and change them.

Your inner monologue, the way you talk to yourself, decides how you feel and behave. This also explains why two people in the same situation can feel completely different.

Consider the following situation:
Mia had an appointment with a friend for coffee, who cancelled at short notice (A). Mia thinks: “My friend doesn’t like me, or she wouldn’t have cancelled.” (B). Mia is sad, depressed and spends the afternoon alone at home” (C).

Now imagine that Nele is in the same situation, but instead she thinks: “Oh well, what a pity, I was so looking forward to seeing her again. Then I’ll ask Jan if he spontaneously has time to go jogging with me. (B). Nele is a bit sad about the cancelled appointment but simply reschedules her afternoon (C).

In these examples, it’s apparent that Mia has a very negative point of view and presumes her friend’s cancellation is due to her. Nele is more optimistic and reschedules her day.

Core beliefs influence your (automatic) thoughts.

In childhood you learn, among other things, what’s “good”, “bad”, “naughty” and “dangerous”. Your parents, educators, teachers, friends, and other prominent persons in your life shape your view of the world.

Throughout your life, you develop many beliefs and attitudes based on your experiences and encounters with similar situations. These are sometimes referred to as basic assumptions/rules for life. They represent attitudes towards yourself, other people, and the world. These can be functional and helpful – for example the following assertions: “If I make an effort, I can do it”, “I find it easy to make friends”, and “I can expect to be treated fairly.” But they can also hinder you: “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not lovable”, and “Life is unfair.” These rules influence your actions. Negative experiences of examinations at school, for example, can lead to the expectation that you won’t do well in university exams either and won’t get good grades.

Automatic thoughts and evaluations in a particular situation arise from these core beliefs.

As a child you adopted these set ways of thinking without questioning them. Only later, perhaps as a teenager or young adult, did you begin to think about how you yourself view the world and how you want to view it. If you then discover that some of the thought or behavior patterns don’t make you happy or don’t help you to achieve your goals, then you may want to consider whether and how you could change them.

Core beliefs are not per se good or bad. What matters is what you make of them. If you are motivated to do well in university or at work, this will help you to be successful. What matters, though, is finding the correct balance and determining whether or not you’re satisfied with your life.

Each of us has gone through different formative experiences in our lives. Hence everyone reacts differently to different situations. Your life has resulted in the development of your own personal triggers. Triggers are situations or actions that evoke certain thoughts and memories in you. It will help you if you become aware of them.

How to recognize automatic, unhelpful thoughts and learn how to redirect them.

Do you have the impression that your thoughts and specific thought patterns often trigger unpleasant feelings in you? Do you occasionally experience them as very powerful? If so, it makes sense to take a closer look at these feelings and the thoughts that trigger them.

If you arrive at the conclusion that occasionally, or in specific situations, your thoughts aren’t good for you and your life, you can change them. It is up to you to decide what you think and what you believe.

In cognitive behavioral therapy, thoughts that are obstructive are processed in three stages:

1. Become aware of your thoughts
2. Evaluate them and
3. Modify them.

1. Become aware of your thoughts

Since thoughts usually arise automatically and unconsciously, the first stage on the path to change is to become aware of your thoughts.

2. Evaluate the effects your thoughts have.

The next step is to take a closer look at the consequences of your thoughts. Do they make you feel good? Do they help you to live the type of life you want? Do they help you to get closer to your goals? Some thoughts are the result of faulty reasoning and some are catastrophizing and unrealistic.

Thoughts as self-fulfilling prophecies

Your brain makes no difference between your imagination and an actual experience.
A vicious circle of thoughts, emotions, and behavior can rapidly develop. For example, if you expect to perform very poorly in the upcoming exam phase, you’re likely to be tense and anxious and less able to concentrate on the course material. You’re more likely to notice what you can’t do so far, rather than what you already know. As a result, your thoughts will become even more negative and anxious. And that can lead you to genuinely getting bad exam results, because you weren’t able to prepare yourself properly. This phenomenon is called a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

You can read more about this vicious circle in the section “A question of attention” in the chapter “Coping with exam stress”.

Our brains preferentially focus on negative information

In addition to what you think, how you think is also of considerable influence. For instance, you might unconsciously be unable to react to the word “not.” You are probably familiar with the following thought experiment: Somebody says: “Please do not start thinking about a pink elephant”… And what do you start thinking about? Very probably a pink elephant.

Moreover, you use more brain power to process negative information than positive information. That’s an important thing to know when you want to formulate appropriate, alternative thoughts; they need to be concrete and positive. An example will serve to illustrate this. “Next semester, I intend to revise the material of this lecture.” instead of “I don’t want to keep on putting it off.”

3. Modify your thoughts

Redirect your thoughts using a special and simple method, the five column technique. In the following download we’ll show you how to employ it.

Modifying your thoughts is not the same thing as seeing things in an “overly positive” light. Rather, it’s closer to defusing your thoughts or taking a realistic view. The motivating factor in the new perspective is that you’re no longer the “victim” of the situation. It is not just external factors that make you suffer emotionally. Often, situations are predetermined so that you have no control over them. But you can influence your thoughts, change them, and thus decide for yourself how to deal with situations.

Lasting change: reducing negative thoughts, increasing positive thoughts

You are now aware of how emotions arise, why you think the way you do, how you think, and how you can distinguish helpful thoughts from unhelpful ones. The next step is to reduce negative thoughts in the long term and promote positive thoughts.

Modifying thought patterns is a long and sometimes tough process. It is therefore helpful to regularly read through your written column records and, in particular, the alternative thoughts (see the exercise sheets “ABC model – part 1”, “Typical thinking errors” and “ABC model – part 2”). Be patient – learning something new takes time. Modifying thoughts is similar to learning a new language and requires training, practice, and many repetitions.

Neuroscience has revealed that practicing new thought and behavioral patterns results in the development of new neural connections. The more you practice, the stronger the new connections become. Not only that, you can continue learning into very old age (neuroplasticity).

Dealing with brooding and (excessive) worry

It’s quite normal to occasionally brood and worry. You’re bound to do so at times in your life, sometimes more and sometimes less. Obviously, some people will be more inclined to do so than others.

Brooding

Brooding is when you have continually repeated negative thoughts about yourself, your behavior, or your decisions regarding the past or the present. In contrast to thinking, brooding won’t help you find a resolution. If it takes up a lot of your time, your thoughts simply circle around and around and cannot be controlled and are accompanied by a negative mood, you should change something. It is particularly important to break through circular brooding patterns to prevent lasting adverse effects on your mood that can cause a long-term incapacity to act.

Worry

Worry is when you constantly have recurring (negative) thoughts about future events. To a certain extent, worry protects you from potential dangers. Here too, however, you need to do something about your worries if they cause you severe anxiety and make you unable to act.

You can find two ways to change processes leading to brooding and worry here.

Why do we have emotions – and how do they differ?

The function of your emotions

Your emotions arise from your thoughts and evaluations of specific situations (see section 5.1).

Emotions make your life colorful and help you to make decisions. How you feel shows you what you like, what you don’t like, what is important to you, what you fear, and what you are missing. Emotions help you to learn a great deal about your needs and wishes. There are pleasant (happiness) and unpleasant (fear) emotions. They’re neither good nor bad. Both are part of life and have a meaning. They warn you of dangers (fear) or release energy and motivate you (anger). In other words, they provide you with important information.

Emotions also have a communicative function. Facial expressions and gestures show other people how you feel and what you need. If you are sad and cry, others will offer you solace.

What is problematic, however, is when unpleasant and painful emotions get out of hand, such as in prolonged depression, and when the emotions are caused by inappropriate thoughts, for instance a feeling of hopelessness due to thoughts like “I blew an exam, I’ll never pass.”

When emotional regulation is useful and important

Depending on the situation and the person, emotions differ in intensity and in terms of the triggering thoughts, the physical responses and the associated impulses. If you have an emotion that hinders you from achieving your goals, you should try to mitigate or change it. Let’s take a look at the various ways of achieving this.

Emotions trigger specific impulses. Fear, for example, makes you want to escape the situation as quickly as possible. If you meet a dangerous animal, this is a useful way to ensure your survival. However, in the modern world, in which we are seldom threatened by dangerous animals, it’s not always sensible to give way to this impulse.

There are three questions you can ask yourself to decide whether you should act on an impulse triggered by an emotion or not.

1. Is the emotion appropriate?
2. Is it suitable to live out the emotion?
3. Can you control the emotion?

If you answer all three questions with “yes”, then you should act on your impulse. If you answer “no” to any of the three questions, it doesn’t make sense to act on the impulse, and you should try to control the associated emotion. There are various ways to deal with emotions that are not appropriate or cannot be lived out right away. One of them involves adopting an opposed behavior (see section “Understanding your emotions”).

Understanding your emotions

The following is a list of frequently occurring emotions and instructions on how to deal with them.

There are certain emotions, such as happiness and fear, that are innate. Throughout your life you develop other such emotions known as “social feelings”, such as shame and guilt.

Allow unpleasant emotions

If you experience unpleasant and intense emotions that are appropriate, you should recognize them and allow them to play out. They are part of you and part of your life. Suppressing emotions may lead to uncontrollable emotional outbursts or even psychological problems in the long run.

Emotional vulnerability

Stress, hunger, thirst, and tiredness; if such fundamental needs remain unsatisfied you become vulnerable and your capacity to deal with stressful situations, people and your own emotion is reduced. You’re probably already familiar with the situation that when you are tired or hungry, you tend to be more easily irritated. It may sound banal, but making sure that your basic needs are met is the easiest way to reduce your overall emotional vulnerability.

When emotions “rub off”

The mood of others can also “rub off” on/ infect you without you being aware of it. That’s great when the emotions are happiness and enthusiasm. It’s not so good, however, when someone close by is continually complaining or angry.

One final tip

If you want to change your thinking and behavior patterns, allow yourself time. Changing habits takes time, patience, and regular practice. There is a risk that you might ask too much of yourself and expect to achieve success too quickly. That will tend to lead to frustration and prevent you from persevering. Take it one step at a time. Accept small setbacks. You’ll achieve your goals faster.

And if these tips are still not enough?

Read the information and done the exercises, but your emotions, thoughts, and behavior don’t seem to have changed at all?
You can book an individual counseling session with the JGU Mental Health Services for Students. You can also take courses there every semester on “Controlling your feelings and emotions” and “Preventing depression” (currently only available in German) or you can sign up for the blended couseling module “Change your thoughts”.

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