Feelings

This unit on feelings was the most beneficial to me out of many of the other things we did in "Insight". Each day we started the class by logging what we were feeling at that exact time. I never really had much to write because I didnt have feelings that were that overt. I realized about my self however that my feelings are on sort of auto pilot throughout the day, as a defense mechaism if you will, for getting through the day at school.
One interesting thing we did was think "introspectivley" when I was in a bad mood one day. I noticed my bad feelings were held in upper body, which I have heard is where alot of your stress and emotional baggage is held.
We also discussed the meanings of the words feelings, mood, and emotional orientation. We defined feelings as some sort of emotional state that you are aware of (sometimes) that tends to last between 0:01 seconds and 0:29 seconds. Moods last between 0:31 seconds to 3:00 hours. A mood is longer and more intense than a feeling, your are often not aware of your mood. Lastly there is your emotional orientation which is your general outlook on life, this can last between six months and a lifetime.

Thought unit

Thought Unit

During my favorite part of the unit on thought and our thinking process we were given moral dilemmas and puzzles and instructed not to think about the answer but to think about the way our minds come up with the answer. Essentially we were “thinking about our thinking.
The dilemmas were all based on the similar idea of having to choose between your life and others or saving some people but letting some die. The thought process in retrospect was extremely interesting. One important thing I noticed was that for these types of dilemmas, my brain broke the solution down into these categories and in this order:

1. What is best for me?
2. What is best for other people?
3. Some sort of merging of the two ideas

This process gives a lot of insight into my brains inner workings. Clearly I value myself over complete strangers, although I still want to help as many people as possible (as long as my best interests are still preserved). It is horrible to say but I think you would be heart pressed to find a person who felt otherwise, I think it is simply in our nature to think this way.
One particular insight that these thought problems gave me is that for the most part we are “automatic thinkers”. What I mean by this is that when we are faced with a problem it is hard to stop yourself from automatically trying to figure out the answer. I got better at this metacognation (thinking about my thinking) the more I practiced it. I agree with RD Lang that one can learn how to think again, and like everything it gets easier with practice.