Hi there, my name is Piper Harris, and welcome to the Untingled Mind podcast, where I help you untingle your mind to untangle your life's challenges. I'm a data-driven therapist in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, and an expert in third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy for individuals with anxiety, trauma, and grief. On today's episode, I'm diving into a topic that may challenge the way you think about emotions and mental health. Feelings aren't facts. This episode is part of my catching flack series where I discuss some of the hidden harms in the counseling industry. Feelings. We all have them, but how often do we stop and question them? Today we'll explore why it's dangerous to treat feelings as facts. We'll be drawing insights from my clinical experience as well as from other researchers like Dr. Mark Brackett, the CBT expert Dr. David Burns, and trauma expert Dr. Dan Siegel. Let's dive in. Hey there, welcome, welcome, welcome. So today we're gonna jump right in and talk about why feelings aren't facts. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I am an expert in CBT here in Atlanta, just like the intro says, and I love CBT, but I also really like talking about some of the things that I don't necessarily agree with in the counseling industry and how things are done. Um I am pretty much a buck the system. And today we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna really talk about why feelings aren't facts, why I think it's a detriment to focus on only emotions as therapists for our clients, and uh, we're gonna talk about some experts. So let's talk about it. First, let's start by asking a simple question. What happens when we put too much stock in our emotions? So on my blog on untangledmind.net, I do discuss how the mental health industry often emphasizes sitting with our feelings without teaching people how to evaluate or challenge them. And unfortunately, that focus can sometimes really cause more harm than good. I hear this all the time when clients come to me for consultations, that they sit there and they say, you know, I go to this therapist and I talk about my feelings, but there's no actionable tools. I'm not learning on how to manage these emotions. So this is something that's very prevalent in the counseling industry. And again, like I said, I see this a lot in my practice, especially with clients suffering from anxiety and trauma. They feel this very intense feeling and they assume that this feeling is accurate reflection of reality. But let's get one thing clear: feelings are absolutely not facts. They signal that something is wrong, but they aren't always telling us the truth. This idea of this is not new. Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, it's the field that's led by experts like Dr. David Burns. It's grounded in this principle. So CBT teaches us that emotions can distort reality. So, for example, someone might be feeling worthless after failing a task, and that feeling of worthlessness is real and valid, possibly not real. I want to say that it's valid. The feeling is there, the feeling of the worthlessness is real in that moment. But it isn't a fact. The fact is, is that this individual has succeeded, excuse me, in many other things before. So this emotion of worthlessness is absolutely hijacking perception of truth. Does that make sense? So this is why I'm always saying to my clients, hold on a second, um, just because you're feeling highly anxious about something doesn't mean that this is factual. So this is where something called emotional literacy comes in. It's a concept that was researched by Dr. Mark Brackett. And Dr. Brackett is the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In fact, um I listened to a podcast he did with Andrew Huberman and found it really interesting. I think what I would have preferred from that particular podcast is actually some more actionable tools on how to manage emotions. I believe Dr. Brackett has part of this correct. Obviously, he's the expert. So this is just my my opinion. You know, he's the director of emotional intelligence at Yale. But I I think it's wonderful, and I'll teach you what Dr. Brackett teaches us. Um I think it's great, but I think there's extra steps that we have to take because again, if we are hyper-focused just on the feelings and the emotions, and in only doing like one or two steps with it, again, I think that it's really going to cause uh more uh issues down the line. So what um he talks about is emotional illiteracy, and it's it emphasizes the importance of understanding and labeling our emotions accurately. So why? Well, because when we can name what we're feeling, we're less likely to be overwhelmed by these emotions. And so I do this a lot with my clients. I have the big feeling wheel. If you've never seen these, do a quick Google search. They're absolutely so helpful. What you'll see in a feeling wheel is in the middle of the wheel are are pretty basic feelings like mad, sad, angry, happy. And most of us label our emotions pretty basically, but the whole premise is that that's not really accurately defining how you're feeling. So if we can really kind of extrapolate out on this feeling wheel, where there's dozens and dozens of different feelings, we are more accurately labeling those emotions. And when we do that, it's as if we are stepping, uh, we're we're on the train, say that we're on the train of emotions. It's running away with us, right? But by stepping out of that one I'm angry emotion and saying, okay, what's actually going on, and really accurately defining that emotion, we step off the train and we're observing the train rather than being a rider of the train, if that makes sense. So Dr. Brackett also developed something called the ruler framework. It's really great, it's super helpful. There's a lot of different frameworks, but I think this one is pretty great. It's called the ruler framework, it's R-U-L-E-R. So R is for recognizing, U is for understanding, L is for labeling, E is for expressing, and R is for regulating emotions. So emotional literacy isn't about ignoring feelings, it's about acknowledging them, but then stepping back and asking, is this feeling telling me the whole truth? So again, by precisely labeling emotions, we're more likely to respond appropriately rather than being swept away by them. So when we think about a ruler framework, I used this with a client the other day that was really struggling. He comes from a traumatic background, really struggling with how to articulate what he was feeling. Um, I could see he was visibly um really struggling with the articulation of this emotion. And so we walked through this. And so oftentimes when I'm in this situation with clients, I actually ask them to tell me first, where are you feeling it in your body? I think this is key, especially for those that have so often not um acknowledged any sort of emotionality in their lives, they've been highly avoidant, say, and it's very important for us to identify in our body because it's really waking up that part of our brain that needs to start uh stepping into this a little bit more. So you need to recognize the emotion. What's the emotion going on? Then we need to understand the context. What's happening for this emotion to take place? So, for example, this guy that we're talking about about his issues in therapy session, he recognized, okay, I'm having this emotion, I feel um just really anger and rage. And I said, Okay, so now we're gonna go to you understanding the context. What are we talking about? So contextually, we walked through why is this emotion coming up? Then we said, okay, it's not just anger, let's look at an accurate description or accurate label of what this actually is. And so we went through the feeling wheel, and ultimately what he found is that he felt abandonment. So it wasn't necessarily anger and rage, he felt abandoned. So then we stepped into the E of how do we express this? Because for him, the way he expressed this emotion most of the times came out in rage and scared people. So we discussed how can we express this in a different way? And then we go to regulating emotions, which is a key facet of my work with clients. We go through our box breathing, our vagal activation. So we walked through that. We walked through that. And again, when we walked through that whole process, the ruler process, I said to him, now if you think about the original feeling that you had, the anger and the rage, was it telling you the whole truth? And what happens when you believe that that feeling right off the bat, you're just off to the races and you're responding with a behavior that's the problem in the first place, right? So in the CBT world, what we say is most people come to us and say, Oh my gosh, I have this emotion and it's making me do X, Y, and Z. Oh my gosh, I am having high anxiety, so it's making me drink two bottles of wine. Okay, you see that? The the this is it's making me do this. And what we say in our world is like, hold on a second, it's not the emotion, it's the thought that's driving the emotion. So we talk about their thinking, we think about their thinking, that metacognition. We go deeper in it. So again, I love the ruler method, but I really do think it needs an added layer of let's talk about what is the faulty thought or distorted thought that's leading to emotions, that's leading you know us down to those behaviors that we don't want to be stuck in. So now let's talk about how the brain processes emotions. So, especially in the context of trauma, another area that I work with a lot of clients on. Here's where Dr. Dan Siegel's work comes in. Absolutely love him. One of my favorite books he's written is Mindsight. I use a lot of his tech techniques, like the river of integration. My clients are very familiar with the river and integration. We have a saying in the office, jump in the river, jump in the river. So if you're a client listening, you have heard this. Um but Dr. Dan Siegel's work, um, it's on how the brain uh emotionally regulates. And it's his work is so very helpful because we need to learn how to regulate our brain and emotional regulation. Does that make sense? I'm kind of saying it gobbled up. So his work is on the brain's emotional regulation system. Okay, so he's a pioneer in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. Woo! That's a lot. Interpersonal neurobiology basically describes how different parts of the brain, particularly the amygdala and the hippocampus, are involved in emotional responses and memory processing. So a little bit here, amygdala is our emotion center, it's at the base of our brain, it's our primal brain, we can call it, and the hippocampus is like our filing room. Okay? So, for example, when you experience something that's traumatic, like for example, I work with a lot of police officers, maybe they've been shot at during a high stress situation. The amygdala, this is our brain's alarm system, sends this intense emotional signal. These signals can then overwhelm the hippocampus, which is responsible for storing memories. This overload, okay, um, this overload of this intense emotion causes the hippocampus to misfile the memory. So in this case, the brain stores the sound of gunfire with a strong fear response. But the problem is, for example, later when an officer hears a car backfire or a trash can lid slammed shut, which sounds similar, not exactly similar, to gunfire, the brain triggers the same intense fear, even though there's no danger, no danger at all. And so this misfiling leads to hypervigilance, anxiety, and often PTSD. So the amygdala reacts so fast, its job is to protect us, right? That the prefrontal cortex, this is our rational thinking brain, it totally gets sidelined. It's out. It can't be rational, it can't be logical. And this is where trauma can feel like it's hijacking someone's ability to respond calmly. So, for example, um I had a woman that I worked with, and she had an event that took place on the freeway. And it she was almost hit by a truck on the freeway while at the same time getting a very distressing phone call about a family member. But what happened was she wasn't almost all uh totally hit. In fact, the more we talked about it through exposure therapy and recognized it really wasn't that close to the call, but it was what happened was that phone call came in at the same time. So the amygdala gave her this intense fear response of not only I'm on the freeway, what's happening with my family member, I've got to get there. That then it misfiled it and said, you can never drive on a freeway ever again. So we had to do um exposure therapy just so she could get in the car and take her kids to sporting events. So again, her feeling of when she got on the freeway after this event, this feeling of intense fear, something bad's gonna happen, that some it's gonna happen, I'm gonna die, somebody's gonna die. This intense fear, her feelings telling her that, but it's completely inaccurate. Yes, there was a very distressing event that happened before, but that doesn't happen every single time that you get on the freeway. So, this again is why feelings aren't facts. So CBT steps in here to help us refile these emotions and memories properly. So, in this situation, the first technique I use in therapy is cognitive restructuring. So this allows clients to challenge those distorted thoughts and replace them with more realistic, evidence-based ones. So, for example, when the police officer hears a car backfire or the garbage can lid slam or whatever it may be, instead of automatically assuming danger, cognitive restructuring helps them assess the situation more rationally. So the brain eventually learns this isn't gunfire, I'm safe. So this process rewires the brain's response. And Dr. David Burns, who I adore and I love, so kind of a fun side note about um I think five or so years ago, I was doing some executive coaching. It was pre-2020, so yeah, about five years ago. And I, you know, was I have always used CBT in my work since learning CBT in 1998, and just kind of you know, looking around, and I ran into Dr. David Burns and his podcast and fell in love with him. And I thought to myself, you know what? What the heck? I'm gonna email him, what's he gonna do? Not respond to me. I'm already not talking to him, so no big deal. Wouldn't you know the man is uh amazing? He responded, he he responded, and we've kept in contact all these years. And it's not all the time, but it's just so neat that he's a great um uh mind in CBT field. He's taught me so much. I have a level one team CBT certification with him. Um, and he's just the most kind and generous human being I've ever met. So that's just my side note that hey, you know what? Put yourself out there, what are they gonna do? Not answer, whatever. It's no different than it is now. And hey, you never you never know you might get a real gem like Dr. David Burns, and he responds and talks to you for years on end. But anyway, I dive, I I dive, uh, diverge from what we're talking about. So back to what I was saying. So this process rewires the brain's response, and Dr. David Burns talks about the power of this process in his work with anxiety and depression. Um, if you've never read Feeling Great, um, gotta get it, wonderful, listen to his podcasts. So, by repeatedly challenging distorted thoughts, the brain actually forms new neural pathways, making calm, rational responses more automatic over time. So, and it's it's constantly re-practicing these new thoughts over and over and over again. And there's some pretty awesome techniques that he teaches that I use with my clients as well. So the second key process is exposure therapy, which I briefly talked about, which helps refile misfiled memories by allowing the brain to face the trigger in a safe environment. So for trauma survivors or even my grief clients, exposure therapy gradually introduces them to the feared stimulus, like loud sounds. Um, when it comes to my complicated grief clients, what it does is it's it helps them face the death of their loved one. And so, and it's in a very controlled way. And so we can continue to expose to the feared stimulus so that over time the brain can desensitize the trigger or that feared stimulus, and the hippocampus then clicks in and says, Oh, I need to properly store a memory without the fear, the grief response, if that makes sense. So if you think about exposure therapy for parents out there, this is one that helps me when I talk to parents. Exposure therapy is essentially like when we're teaching them how to ride a bike. And eventually they're gonna fall, they're gonna skin their knees, skin up their hands, they're a mess. They're like, I'm never getting on that bike ever again. And so what we do as parents, we say, Okay, we're gonna, you know, clean up your knee, little Timmy, and how about I hold the bike for you? We just sit there. I'm gonna hold you on it, and we're just gonna stand there. And then pretty soon you'll say, Okay, little Timmy, why don't you pedal a little bit? But I'm still gonna hold on to the bike in you. You're totally safe. Okay, all right, little Timmy, let's pedal a little bit faster, and I'm gonna be super close, but I lift my hand just a little bit. So we do slowly um get the kiddo exposed to the feared stimulus, right? The bike. And eventually what happens? They're like, Mom, leave me alone. I want to ride the bike. This is ridiculous. I'm fine. So we expose them to the feared stimulus, and over time, over time, it desensitizes the kid to the trigger, the bike, and the hippocampus says, Oh, never mind, the bike isn't so bad after all. I just had a fall. Okay. So this works because of the brain's neuroplasticity and its ability to change and form new connections, which I just love. I had a wonderful consultation um this morning, and I was telling the woman on the phone, um, she's a Christian as well, and I said, you know, this is the beauty of what I do as a counselor and also a believer, is that neuroplasticity in the psychological terms is also in spiritual terms the renewing of the mind. And that one of my favorite scriptures is take captive every thought in obedience to Christ. And that's CBT. We're taking thought captive and we're saying, hold on a second, this is a distorted thought, or hold on a second, I'm gonna take captive this emotion, I'm gonna renew my mind to this process. So that's why I just love my work and um neuroplasticity. It might just be a psychological term, but it's also very spiritual and very important to me. So um, as Dr. Dan Siegel explains, um, he explains that the more we practice these techniques, the more we strengthen new neural, so those are brain pathways that override the old fear-based ones, and the trauma trauma no longer has the same hold on the person. So, a related process is memory reconsolidation. I did a podcast on that, so scroll through and listen to that, and it's also at work here. So when we recall a traumatic event, a memory during therapy, the brain has a chance to update that memory with new, less emotionally charged information. So it's kind of like um opening a file on a computer and making edits before saving it again. Does that make sense? So CBT helps clients do this by discussing traumatic memories in a safe setting where they can reprocess the emotions attached to the memories. And this reprocessing helps the brain to refile that memory without the intense emotional reaction, and it allows the clients to respond again more appropriately to similar situations in the future. So, bringing it on back to why feelings aren't facts, part of what we're saying is that sometimes our brains are working with faulty emotional information. But thanks to CBT and emotional literacy, we can really teach the brain to refile these emotions and process feelings and memories in a more healthy way. And that's why it's so important again, why we don't look at that you know, feelings, they're absolutely Absolutely facts. This is how it is. This is how it's always going to be. Because it's just not true. And so, again, when we talk about exposure therapy, we caught talk about cognitive restructuring, we talk about reconsolidation. All of these are so, so helpful in stepping out of the emotionality of things and really saying, okay, hold on a second. This might not be telling me the whole truth. This is not the whole truth. So I really want to go back to a little bit and talking about why it's dangerous if we don't question our emotions. And what happens with that is it's something called emotional reasoning, which is one of the most common cognitive distortions we see in therapy. So cognitive distortion is a term from CBT. So emotional reasoning is this idea that because I feel something, it must be true. So, like we talked about before, I feel anxious about this meeting, so it must mean the meeting will go poorly. But again, that's a distortion. The fact is you don't have evidence yet that the meeting will go poorly, you only feel like it. So this kind of thinking leads a lot of people to some pretty dangerous places, especially people already dealing with severe anxiety or depression. And in fact, emotional reasoning is strongly linked to higher levels of mental health issues. And studies have found that the more we believe our emotions as facts, the more likely we are to become stuck in cycles of negativity. So we have to break free of this pattern. And again, using those techniques that I've just mentioned. Now I do want to take a moment to connect this back to the broader conversation about therapy in this catching flack series. Really, what had me start thinking about I really need to write about this. I have a blog series and I really need a podcast about this, is that I read Abigail Schreier's book, Bad Therapy. She argues that the mental health industry encourages clients, especially young people, to focus way too much on emotions, which can increase their distress. And she warns that too much introspection without guidance can make things worse, especially when therapy fails to help them separate feelings from facts. Now, listen, while I don't love everything that Schreier said in her book, she really does make some very valid points. So, in relation to feelings and facts, focusing too much on feelings without helping people to critically evaluate them can lead to rumination. And that's that process where we just keep replaying negative thoughts without getting any closer to the truth. And that's again why emotional literacy and CBT are so, so important. So, so important. So again, if you're dealing with you know trauma, overwhelming emotions, anxiety, grief, you're really not stuck. Your brain can rewire itself, and that's when you have neuroplasticity on your side. And so by working with CBT tools, cognitive restructuring, exposure therapy, re reconsolidation, you can regain control over emotional responses. By utilizing the ruler tool by Dr. Mark Breckett, that allows us to step out of the emotionality that's just you know having us run on that train, you know, going off to the races, and allows us to step out of it and to accurately label what's going on. It's so, so important. This is why I tell my clients all the time feelings are not facts. They are not, they are causing you immense pain, and I've got to teach you to step out of them. And listen, this takes a lot of work, a lot of repetition. This is not that I have to do this. I've been doing this since 1998, practicing CBT techniques, and I still to this day I'll get overrun with emotion, and I have to stop and go, oof, okay. And it happens even in session. There's particular um sessions that are are really um intense for me, and I can feel the physical response to uh oh, I'm I'm having an intense emotional experience right now, and if I don't get control of this, then I'm off to the races, right? And so I have to practice these same things. And first of all, the first thing is Piper, feelings aren't facts. You know, feelings aren't facts, or something like this is not your story, this is yours their story, anything like that to help me jump off that emotional train and say, okay, I'm gonna observe what's happening with me right now, I'm not going to take part in what's happening right now. So, to wrap up, remember that your emotions are valid and they're real in that moment and they give you important information, but they don't always tell you the full story. So, by combining emotional literacy, cognitive behavioral techniques, and a deeper understanding of how the brain works, you really can navigate the emotional landscape more effectively. So, thanks for listening today. If you want to learn more, head on over to my website and check out my blog series on catching flack. As always, stay untangled. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks for joining me. I hope you learned some tools that can equip you to untangle your mind and untangle your life. If you're curious about working with me for anxiety, trauma, or grief, head on over to my website at untangledmind.net to connect with me. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review me on your podcast listening platform and share it with your friends and family. As always, thank you so much for listening to me, Piper Harris with Untangled Mind Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.