Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

You feel before you think! #cognitivebehavioraltherapy #mentalhealth #podcast

9 Oct 2023 · 1 min

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A short YouTube/podcast segment (Josh Trent, Oct 9, 2023) explaining a CBT-aligned idea: emotions often arise before conscious thought. The speaker describes an unconscious thought triggering a bodily response (e.g., fear), then the conscious mind ‘catches up’; defensive behaviors (e.g., an aggressive dog) are framed as learned defenses. The speaker recommends trusting the gut as an "emotional compass"—using brief meditation to sense the first, intuitive answer for major decisions, while noting the conscious brain may later try to rationalize or talk one out of that first response.

Chapters

In cognitive behavioral therapy, the thing that they always say is that you'll feel something before you think it. Our body is programmed based off of everything that's happened to us in the past. Normally, what happens is you feel something first, and then your brain tries to catch up. And so the best question to ask yourself if you feel, like, a massive amount of fear, you usually feel fear before you notice the thought. And what they say is there's an unconscious thought that comes first, and then the body responds to it, and then the conscious mind notices it. And so it's like subconscious thought. Body gets on board, Conscious mind follows a little bit behind. When you look at an aggressive dog, it wasn't born aggressive. What it did is that it became a defense mechanism. That aggressiveness is their defense mechanism against something that looks like the thing that caused them harm in the past. There's two sides of it. Because I think there's your gut feeling, which I think everybody should follow. I would say your gut is your emotional compass. Like, you should try to connect to that thing. When I have a big life decision, I'll meditate for a good few minutes, and then I'll just say, what's the right path? And I'll feel into it. Usually the first answer that comes through is the right answer. And then my brain tries to talk me out of it, right.