“It begins with a radical departure from everything we’ve been taught. Many of us have heard of the popular psychological model of stimulus-response. The dog barks, I get scared. My friend compliments me, I feel happy. This model has helped spawn a culture where we see our emotions and experiences as being caused by people and events around us. As a result, we often try to change our circumstances and the people around us so that we can feel good or, at least, not feel bad.”
“This approach leaves most of us feeling like victims. We believe that, if we could just get our loved ones to treat us right, or our finances to increase, or the roads to be traffic-free, we would feel better. But there’s always something else. Even without major life events such as divorce, bankruptcy, illness or loss of a loved one, many of us experience deep distress and discomfort.
[There is a third component to emotions: BELIEFS]. Every stimulus that elicits a response from us is first filtered and processed by one or more beliefs. As our beliefs change, so do our responses and experiences. This simple shift changes everything in our lives, moving us from the passenger’s seat into the driver’s seat.”
“For instance, two parents watching their daughter getting married can have different experiences — one is happy and the other is distressed. How do we explain 2 people witnessing the same event (the same stimulus) having diametrically opposed responses? Simple — each one holds different beliefs that filter their experience of the wedding. One sees it as wonderful — believing that their daughter will be happy and the family will grow. The other sees it as terrible — believing they are losing their daughter and that they will be lonely without her. This simple illustration is a microcosm of the myriad ways our beliefs determine every response, from joy to anger, from kissing to shouting.”
Takeaway
At some point in our lives, we picked up the idea from people who may not have known better that we should feel bad about certain things in life.
Bruce Di Marsico, the founder of a 30-year-old method for eliminating negative emotions explains:
Note: Unhappiness is used here (and throughout the Clarity site) as a term or model word for all kinds of feelings that people describe variously as “bad” feelings. Feelings ranging from mild annoyance to murderous rage; from disappointment to suicidal depression. Disliking something is not the same as being unhappy about something.
Sometime before 1970 that people were unhappy because they “wanted” to be. They believed they “should” be. I knew that they believed it was good and necessary to be unhappy about whatever they believed that applied to, generally them not getting what they wanted. This was the way people chose unhappiness as a feeling.
The belief that people are supposed to be unhappy instead of happy or neutral about certain things (people would see being happy as some form of being crazy), or the belief that not being unhappy in certain situations would violate a personally held value, is the dynamic of all unhappiness.
The belief goes like this:
“If I wasn’t unhappy about it, it would mean that I wanted it to happen.” “If I wasn’t sad (or angry, etc.), it would mean I didn’t care.”
People are afraid unhappiness will “happen” to them under certain circumstances.
People feel now what they believe they are going to feel in the future. They feel whatever feelings they believe will “happen” to them. They feel now whatever they believe it will be “natural” to feel in the future, even if it is as a result of something happening now. The current event correlates to current emotions only insofar as it relates to imagined future feelings.
The good news is: this way of thinking, which is based on beliefs, is changeable. Our experience with people from across the globe including ourselves has shown us that, when people use the [solutions and tools on Clarity], they are able to uncover the beliefs fueling their responses and the underlying reasons for their beliefs. Moreover, they are able to change the beliefs that may be generating unhappiness, dysfunctional relationships or ineffective behaviors.
Real-life 1-on-1 client sessions
View our 1-on-1 client session transcripts and audios to see the insight described in this post for yourself.
The discovery that beliefs are the root cause of negative emotions (feeling bad) is also backed by CBT research, Stoic philosophy, and Biblical doctrine. Additionally, this understanding of emotion helps explain the root cause of anxiety.
Why do humans believe they should feel bad about things?
That gets into the topic of shame and whether humans are meant to feel about certain things. A comprehensive answer is in the we aren’t designed to feel bad about anything post.
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The majority of the quotes above are from a man named Barry Neil Kaufman and a CBT revolutionary named Bruce Di Marsico. Barry was a student of Bruce.
Most of the quoted text is taken from here.
