Not that kind of psychologist

But I still know a couple things

When I tell people I’m studying organizational psychology, I usually get a lot of, “Oh, how cool!”

…..

“What’s that?”

The most common assumption is that I’m studying to become a business therapist––like if your office had a school counselor down the hall. Oh, wouldn’t that be nice?

Especially if it was Lisa Kudrow.

Maybe there wouldn’t be as much of a need for the career I’m working toward, which is using psychological theory and behavioral science research to create better, happier, more satisfied employees, leaders, and organizations. I’m more interested in understanding how someone’s well-being can be attributed to work, rather than their overall mental health, specifically. Make sense?

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have experience with mental health education! As a content writer and strategist, I’ve worked with multiple mental health care startups to build robust libraries of mental health education. And, while I’m far from a degree in clinical psychology, I did learn a few simple things I thought I’d share that I still think about every day.

Last year, in particular, I worked for a pediatric mental and behavioral healthcare startup––which meant I spent a whole year working with clinicians, researching, learning, and writing A LOT of educational content for kids and teens, explaining complex psychological and physiological experiences, disorders, and symptoms at a sixth-grade reading level.

I was tasked with starting complex (one-way) conversations with these kids I’d never met. I usually started each of these lessons by first explaining the differences and relationships between thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behavior. I found that this was not only a paid job, but also an exercise for myself in defining and truly understanding deceptively simple concepts and their relationship with one another.

Now, I often think about this breakdown of thoughts versus feelings versus emotions (and their subsequent behaviors), especially as a parent. Since this helped me (and hundreds of kids!), I thought I’d share a revised version for the over-6th-grade reading level crowd.

Thoughts, Feelings & Emotions

In the learning modules, I described feelings as what we think about emotions, which are just big feelings that can last a short time. Thoughts are the words you say to yourself inside your mind. We always talk to ourselves, especially at 2 a.m. when we’re trying to sleep. That’s always a good time for your mind to run it’s little mouth, right? Let me swap in an adult example for the one I used with the kiddos.

Let’s say your best friend at work went to a happy hour without you. Your emotion is probably sad. But you might think, “That’s bullshit! They’re leaving me out! Jen is a bitch, and I will not be covering for her damn Botox appointments anymore.” So, that makes you feel mad.

Your first emotion was sadness, but after thinking about it, you felt mad. But in the moment, we may not always be aware that our feelings aren’t always accurate. You were really sad, not mad!

Being sad is kind of different from being angry, right? Those emotions would cause you to act differently. Anyone reading this newsletter probably isn’t a sixth grader and understands that thoughts can change our feelings about a situation. You felt sad, but your thoughts (like making assumptions) turned that sadness into a different emotion. As an adult, you’d likely reconcile those emotions differently. Acting on being sad would probably produce less turmoil than reacting to anger–– torturing Jen by forcing her to look at her forhead wrinkles on Zoom every day (Oh, what, like you’ve never done that??). Instead, you might recognize the sadness and tell your friend that it bummed you out that she didn’t invite you to happy hour, and solicit an earnest explanation and apology. Listen, I enjoy having a worthy work nemesis as much as the next Gemini but even I can agree it’s not healthy.

That’s how our thoughts can turn our feelings against us in our behavior.

It’s not usually like this. Feelings and thoughts can be a great team! Most of the time, they help us understand the world without you knowing it. You have a feeling. You think about that feeling. And then you act on it.

Here’s a totally fictitious, absolutely didn’t happen to me scenario to illustrate how this process can work well:

Maybe you agree to eat part of a random pot brownie at a big music festival, and you get way too high. Perhaps you’re scared to go to the porta-potties alone because you have no idea if you’ll make it back, but you really have to pee, so you decide to be brave and go to the bathroom alone. When you’re done, you realize your fears have come true. You don’t know where your friends are, and you might never make it home. You start to panic. You feel scared. But then you think, they probably are still listening to Jenny Lewis’s set in the same spot because they are also extremely high from the pot brownie and can’t move their heavy legs. So then you act on this thought very slowly, putting one foot in front of the other in the direction from which you think you came.

I’m sure the beer didn’t wouldn’t help the situation.

Behaviors

Sometimes, thoughts and feelings get mixed up! Remember when you thought you’d have to live the rest of your life at this music festival in this totally hypothetical, never actually happened scenario?? This can cause problems when it affects how we act. We aren’t always able to use our thoughts to help resolve negative emotions and, by the grace of all that is holy, find our friends exactly where we left them––essentially glued to a fence at the back of the crowd––also high out of their minds, trying to muster the courage to go pee.

Your brain deals with feelings of fear and worry in many ways, like freezing, fleeing, or fighting. Sometimes, these responses are helpful! Let’s say a a guy with dead man breath won’t stop getting up in your face at a bar. It would be beneficial to run! But running isn’t always conducive when solving problems––especially at work. What if you didn’t know how to answer the boss’s critical question about your presentation and ran out of the conference room? Probably not a cute look. Even bitchy texts, cold shoulders, and gossiping can be the result of thoughts negatively influencing feelings.

So, this is all to say––we all feel a lot during the day. We also think a lot. And then… we act, perhaps in misguided ways that end up biting us in the ass. We let those thoughts impact our feelings and actions all day, at work, and home. Being mindful, slowing down to notice the feelings and our thoughts about them might help us behave better, and ultimately improve our relationships.

As a writer, I spent a long time trying to distill a complex clinical pyschology concept into easy to understand language for kids because an important relationship to grasp, even when you’re only nine. Actually, it’s especially important when you’re nine. Wrapping your brain around it in childhood might mean you’ll have to do less work with your ACTUAL (non-organizational) psychologist when you’re 39.