Thoughts vs Emotions & Positive Affirmations!

This past week was quite an emotionally charged one for our YESS scholars at Shaw Heights. Many were reeling from the news of the election, and so we spent the week unpacking these emotions by trying to better understand the connection (and disconnect) between thoughts and emotions. We talked at length about the fact that emotion and logic are regulated by different parts of the brain, and studied different images of the brain in our efforts to understand the complexity of thoughts and emotions.

The more we talked, the more our scholars were able to touch on the demarcation point between logical thought and emotions. Several shared out experiences from when someone had crossed his or her "personal boundary" and the fight that ensued as a result of feeling very emotional and reactionary in that moment. We discussed, as a class, how thoughts and feelings are different, and took the Thoughts vs. Feelings quiz to gauge our understanding of why, "I feel anxious," is a feeling, and, "I feel as though I am being torn apart," is a thought. This was a tricky topic for many, and it took two days before our scholars had a solid understanding of thoughts and emotions. Each day we began by rereading the quote on the board:

"When dealing with people, remember-- you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion." --Daniel Carnegie



One scholar's list of "10 Positive Affirmations"

Our scholars agreed that we are all certainly creatures of emotion, and we further discussed how some thoughts can begin to ruminate in the brain, becoming dangerous to our health. Everyone seemed to agree that ruminations are unhealthy and are unwelcome, yet we all seem to fall prey to these emotionally-charged thoughts. We touched on the fact that positive thoughts, or affirmations, can actually help break this negative cycle.

In order to better understand how logic and emotions affect one another, we watched a short film called "The Quiet," in which a young, half-deaf girl gets bullied while riding home on the school bus. The young lady becomes emotionally overwhelmed and storms off the bus, leaving her cell phone behind. Her mother had texted her to let her know that a man named John, driving a blue van, would be picking her up that day, but the young lady never saw the message. Instead, she saw the blue van waiting on the road and panicked, taking off into the woods in fear. John tried to catch her, which then turned into a wild chase through the woods, as the young lady grew increasingly frightened. In the end, she falls and gets hurt, and is later found by a search party. The movie plays off the fear of the viewer, and afterwards we discussed how fear, in particular, can be a very strong emotion which often overrides our ability to think logically.

To wrap up the week on a more positive note, we each spent the last day of the week drafting a list of 10 positive affirmations. Once each scholar has a completed this list, they were then asked to pick their favorite affirmation to illustrate for our classroom. We all enjoyed this activity as we talked about how positive thoughts can help break the negative ruminations and thought patterns that can occur in our minds.