Which comes first, the thought or the feeling and why does it matter?

John Walter 📣Therapy and creativity Published in ILLUMINATION Oct 1, 2024

I found myself in a client session scribbling down pictures of chickens and eggs, drawing stars and arrows as we discussed the difference between my holistic approach to psychotherapy and my client’s previous experience with purely cognitive approaches. At the heart of this is a question I return to often in my work as an integrative counsellor: what is the real relationship between thoughts and emotions in therapy.

In modern therapy, particularly within more structured approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), there is often an emphasis on the idea that thoughts drive emotions, suggesting that by changing one’s thoughts, emotions will follow.

While this can be effective in certain contexts, it’s not the full story. Many clients come to me after trying such approaches, unsure why they didn’t quite ‘work’ for them, even though they helped them reframe some of their thinking.

How Instincts, Emotions and Rational Thinking Shape Our Mental Health

Most clients arrive with the expectation that they can think themselves out of the box they have trapped themselves in. I try many ways of exploring with them how survival instincts and emotional responses are also part of the equation. The quote below is often attributed to Albert Einstein.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Unfortunately, our major institutions of medicine, mental health, and education have all fallen foul of the “thought first” mentality. Is society uncritically embracing this mindset without considering its implications?

To understand why this disconnection between thoughts and feelings persists, we must consider how the brain has evolved to handle both.

The Evolution of the Brain: How Thought and Feeling Developed Together

Our human brains still incorporate parts inherited from creatures who preceded us in the evolutionary cycle. Traditionally, it has been seen as three distinct parts, which I will lay out below.

Recent neuroscience research, particularly PolyVagal theory, has shown clearly how the brain is highly integrated. The Triune brain model helps us see this in an evolutionary context but does not clearly explain how the modern human brain functions.

Reptilian

The part of the brain operating our survival instincts is often called the reptilian brain.

The reptilian brain governs our most basic survival functions, including instinctual behaviours like the fight-or-flight response and essential drives for eating, sleeping, and reproduction.

Limbic System

Next in the evolutionary cycle is the limbic system, a region we share with all mammals. This part of the brain regulates our emotional responses, bonding, and social behaviour, playing a key role in feelings like fear, pleasure, and affection. It also helps to form memories and influences how we experience the world emotionally, guiding our interactions and shaping our ability to connect with others.

Neocortex

Building on this, humans developed the neocortex, the most advanced part of the brain. The neocortex is responsible for higher-order cognitive functions such as reasoning, abstract thinking, language, problem-solving, and decision-making.

It enables us to plan for the future, reflect on the past, and engage in complex social interactions. It is also where creativity and logic reside. It allows us to develop culture, technology, and intricate societal structures, distinguishing us from other species in the evolutionary chain.

In a modern context, have we let rational thought dominate to the exclusion of emotional and instinctual intelligence?

Polyvagal Theory

To truly understand the human experience, we must consider how our physiological states influence our emotions and thoughts. Dr. Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory sheds light on this intricate connection.

It explains how our autonomic nervous system regulates responses to stress and safety, affecting our ability to engage socially, process emotions, and think clearly. By recognizing and working with these bodily states, therapists and educators can foster environments that support holistic well-being, integrating the mind and body rather than treating them as separate entities.

Why Cognitive Approaches Can Miss the Emotional Picture

Attitudes that prioritize cognitive thought over feelings and instincts have become deeply ingrained in our society. Just as our brains evolved to balance thought and feeling, our institutions should, too.

As someone involved in education since 1985, I’ve witnessed a fundamental shift in schools. Once vibrant, child-centred environments filled with creativity, passion, and collaborative problem-solving, they have gradually transformed into efficient yet dull and joyless production lines. The focus on true learning has been replaced by a factory-like approach, prioritising academic performance at the expense of emotional well-being, which correlates with the rising rates of mental health issues.

Given these shifts, it’s perhaps unsurprising that mental health issues among children and young people have increased significantly over the past 40 years. In 1983, it was estimated that about 1 in 10 children had a mental health problem, but by 2020, that figure had risen to 1 in 6 for children aged 5 to 16

Complete statistics can be found on the NHS Digital website

Mind, Body, Soul, and Emotions: Finding Harmony in the Pieces of Yourself

These statistics reveal a growing mental health crisis linked to academic and cognitive pressures, often at the expense of emotional well-being. The heightened focus on academic achievement, standardized testing, and intellectual performance seems to correlate with this trend, as emotional health often takes a backseat in both educational and societal systems.

Backward steps in education are being mirrored in Therapy training

While training as a counsellor, I realized the same thing was happening in psychology. Over this same period, cognitive approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) became dominant in mainstream therapy. These approaches emphasize changing thoughts to influence emotions and behaviour, often sidelining deeper emotional or instinctual processes.

While effective in certain contexts, the over-reliance on cognitive methods has mirrored the societal focus on rational thinking, potentially neglecting the role of emotions, the body, and the spiritual aspects of healing.

You can read more about this in the YoungMinds report on children’s mental health

It’s important to ask whether this cognitive-heavy approach is fully serving the emotional complexity of adults and children, especially at a time when mental health struggles are on the rise.

Holistic and Integrative Therapy: Bringing Thought and Emotion Together

To live fully as a human being, we must harmonize emotions, thoughts, the body’s physical needs, and the soul’s purpose, ensuring balance in all aspects of our being. Holistic and humanistic approaches to psychology embrace this truth, recognizing the essential connection between all aspects of our being.

The messages we receive from our bodies, emotions, and instincts are vital signals guiding our decisions and shaping our thoughts. Yet, today, we are increasingly taught to dismiss these messages in favour of rational thought alone.

As we face a future dominated by artificial intelligence, many are rightly concerned that machines lack access to the emotional and instinctual systems that define human experience. And yet, paradoxically, our own institutions, particularly the education and medical systems, seem to be systematically severing us from these very human sensitivities.

We are being trained to operate more like machines, disconnected from the emotional and instinctual wisdom that has guided humanity for millennia. In doing so, we risk losing touch with what makes us uniquely human: our capacity to feel deeply, intuitively, understand, and engage with the world in a meaningful, embodied way.

If we continue on this path, we may end up not only building machines but becoming more like them ourselves.

Thoughts vs Emotions: Which Comes First, and Why It Matters

Like with the question of the chicken and the egg, the answer is neither. The two have evolved together. Chickens cannot exist without eggs; thoughts cannot exist without feelings, and vice versa. In both cases, it is cyclical.

There is a constant feedback loop between thoughts and feelings, and this is the human experience. Our body cannot exist without our mind, and our mind cannot exist without our body. It’s important for educators and psychologists to explore how integrating emotions and somatic experiences can enrich the human experience.

Reclaiming Instinct and Emotion: A Case for Balance in Therapy

True education should involve creating connections. It is not just about learning a body of knowledge but also about learning how to survive in a world where that body of knowledge exists.

Schools must restore creative subjects to the curriculum and focus again on building a school community suitable for and in line with the interests of 100% of the students.

Therapy should not just be about changing your thoughts; it should be about understanding connections. It is not just about bullying yourself into more positive thought patterns. It is about learning to accept and understand all of your senses and feelings to create a grounded and balanced life.

What might it mean for you to recreate those connections? Is it spending more time in nature, fitting in a yoga class, writing a journal, or painting pictures that no one else may ever see? Could you join a choir or a drama group or anything else that could be seen as a waste of time to some but helps you make connections with yourself and with others?

Why It Matters to Balance Thought and Feeling

Most of my long-term clients acknowledge that they have made significant changes in their lives through the therapeutic process. They also acknowledge that some of those changes have happened without them being able to rationally explain why.

At that point, the chicken and egg diagram drawn on the back of an envelope can help them relax and let go, knowing that change is happening and will continue to happen and their rational mind does not have to track the changes every step of the way.

Part of our work involves rational discussion of their life issues, but the major work involves reconnecting them with their feelings as they manifest physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

They are living a more authentic life that fundamentally alters their life experience.

In my experience, I’ve seen the profound change that comes from integrating thoughts and feelings, and I believe we all deserve to live with that deeper connection.

Reconnecting with these different aspects of ourselves can, with or without therapy, help us experience greater well-being, expand our emotional intelligence, and strengthen our connections with ourselves and others.

You could start by prioritizing these connections, whether through time in nature, creative expression, or simply tuning into your emotions daily. Reclaim what makes us human.