Earlier, I listened to The 17th Cipher’s song “Dr. Loomis,” featuring Doza the Drum Dealer, Beedie, Crise P., and TrueCipher. Regarding the namesake of the track, Dr. Samuel Loomis is fictional character and the main protagonist of the Halloween franchise.
Aside from context related to the namesake of the song, the current post has nothing to do with the horror flick character. Rather, I’ll use a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) lens to focus on a statement expressed on the track and which I quite often hear from other people.
On the song, Beedie states, “No matter how many Michelin star meals, son, I’m still hungry. Unlimited pasta and all the veal couldn’t reverse all the times I felt worthless. ‘Cause thinkin’ like that, what’s to learn about? The world gon’ hurt your higher purpose.”
The lyricist addresses a common misconception about feelings. When using psychoeducation to teach individuals about the practice of REBT, I invite people to understand that the words we use matter. Thus, I tend to be somewhat of a stickler in regard to language about feelings.
From the perspective of my approach to care for mental, emotional, and behavioral health, feelings relate to either one of two categories: emotions or sensations. However, contrary to popular opinion, emotions aren’t akin to cognitions. Allow me to explain.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), emotion is defined as:
[A] complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements, by which an individual attempts to deal with a personally significant matter or event. The specific quality of the emotion (e.g., fear, shame) is determined by the specific significance of the event.
For example, if the significance involves threat, fear is likely to be generated; if the significance involves disapproval from another, shame is likely to be generated. Emotion typically involves feeling but differs from feeling in having an overt or implicit engagement with the world.
Interpretively, a “specific significance of the event” one encounters is processed within the mind (psychological function of the physiological brain). Such interpretation is subject to, or facilitated by, cognition. Per the APA, cognition is defined as:
1. all forms of knowing and awareness, such as perceiving, conceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, imagining, and problem solving. Along with affect and conation, it is one of the three traditionally identified components of mind.
2. an individual percept, idea, memory, or the like.
To recapitulate, an emotion is a complex reaction that is determined (brought about as a result) by cognition (thought). As an example, fear results from a thought. Notably, in the definition of emotion, the APA differentiates between emotion and feeling.
Therefore, it may be useful to parse these terms. Per the APA, feeling is defined as:
1. a self-contained phenomenal experience. Feelings are subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them. They are inevitably evaluated as pleasant or unpleasant, but they can have more specific intrapsychic qualities, so that, for example, the affective tone of fear is experienced as different from that of anger.
The core characteristic that differentiates feelings from cognitive, sensory, or perceptual intrapsychic experiences is the link of affect to appraisal. Feelings differ from emotions in being purely mental, whereas emotions are designed to engage with the world.
2. any experienced sensation, particularly a tactile or temperature sensation (e.g., pain, coldness).
Before expanding upon the matter of feelings, it may be worth addressing what the APA maintains in regard to “experienced sensation.” According to the APA, sensation is defined as:
1. the process or experience of perceiving through the senses.
2. an irreducible unit of experience produced by stimulation of a sensory receptor and the resultant activation of a specific brain center, producing basic awareness of a sound, odor, color, shape, or taste or of temperature, pressure, pain, muscular tension, position of the body, or change in the internal organs associated with such processes as hunger, thirst, nausea, and sexual excitement.
3. in the structuralism of Edward Bradford Titchener, one of the three structural elements of mental experience, the other two being images and feelings.
4. in general usage, a thrilling or exciting experience.
To paraphrase, a sensation is processed within the mind (function of the brain), brain itself (material organ), and within the body. As an example, one may feel hot during summertime, cold during wintertime, pain when struck by an outside force, or pleasure during sexual intercourse.
Having appropriately elaborated on sensation, I’ll expand upon the APA distinctions in regard to feelings. Feelings are said to be independent of the sensations and cognitions which evoke them. Nevertheless, they are interpreted and evaluated by the cognitive process (cognitions).
Noteworthy, the APA highlights a difference between feeling and “affect to appraisal” (mood and emotion produced by cognition). Moreover, the APA differentiates feelings from emotions, as the former is said to be strictly “mental,” whereas the latter is created by the mental process.
All the same, in its second defining standard of feeling, the APA recognizes that feeling and sensation are used synonymously. Now, are you properly confused? If so, it’s understandable how you would be. Allow me to summarize the APA knowledge through my own interpretation.
Simply put, per the ABC model of REBT, when an unexpected Action occurs and a person uses an irrational Belief about the event, it’s one’s unhelpful cognition and not the undesirable circumstance that causes unpleasant emotional, sensational, and behavioral Consequences.
From this perspective, cognitions – which are merely thoughts, perceptions, interpretations, beliefs, hunches, etc. – produce feelings. As outlined herein, feelings are essentially emotions (e.g., fear) and bodily sensations (e.g., tightness in one’s jaw).
However, feeling isn’t cognition – even though the latter produces the former. Ergo, saying something like what Beedie proposed, “I felt worthless,” is an inaccurate representation of how thoughts and feelings function.
For instance, suppose that in summertime you were outdoors eating ice cream. You may experience heat through the sensation of warmness on your skin (feeling). Thus, you would be correct in stating, “I feel hot.”
If when your ice cream quickly melted from the heat (Action) and you unproductively Believed, “This experience shouldn’t happen, because it’s awful that I’ve not gotten a change to eat my delicious ice cream before it melted,” then you may endure the emotion of anger (Consequence).
Along with this emotive experience, you endure the sensation of tightness in your chest, the clenching of your jaw, and tingling in your legs. This, too, is a reaction to what you believe. In other words, you feel discomfort which is caused by your unfavorable cognition.
Given this perspective, the ABC model serves as a causal explanation about how people self-disturb. Presuming that you understand this deterministic psychological and physiological interplay, I now turn toward a different example involving unhealthy negative emotion.
Imagine that when reflecting upon your life (Action) you unhealthily Believed, “I can’t stand that no matter how poor or well my economic status, I still feel worthless.” This is Beedie’s expressed conclusion in “Dr. Loomis.”
Given what we know about the misconception regarding feelings thus far, you likely understand that an expression of feeling worthless isn’t accurate. It’s more likely that a person assumes oneself to be whatever it is that’s being expressed as a feeling.
For instance, if you say, “I feel hot,” it would be equally appropriate to express, “I am hot.” This makes sense from a sensory outlook. Yet, as you’ve learned herein, feelings aren’t cognitions.
Thus, saying, “I feel worthless” isn’t correct. Rather, what an individual intends to convey is a belief in one’s worthlessness. As such, REBT addresses self-downing as an expression of a person unfavorably maintaining, “I am worthless.”
Ergo, when reflecting upon your life (Action) you unhealthily Believed, “I can’t stand that no matter how poor or well my economic status, I still am worthless.” With this unbalanced conclusion, you feel sorrow and heaviness throughout your body (Consequence).
Although sorrow isn’t an unhealthy negative emotion in and of itself, when one self-disturbs into a miserable condition that also impacts behavior, then the person is likely in subjectively-identified unhealthy territory. Bear in mind that behavior is a Consequential component.
When Believing that you are worthless, dismissing or negating any worthy traits to the contrary, you may endure self-induced misery which is accompanied by sorrow (emotion), heaviness in the body (sensation), and self-isolation (behavior) as a Consequence.
This Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection is arguably unhealthy. Further, as you may well know by this point in the blogpost, this unhelpful experience isn’t caused by feeling. Cognition (belief) is what produces feelings (emotions and sensations) and can impact behavior.
Rather than remaining self-disturbed, an individual is invited to try Disputation which may lead to an Effective new belief that’s used in place of an unproductive self-narrative. With the ABC model, a person learns to stop needless suffering which is caused by unhelpful assumptions.
Helpfully, REBT uses the technique of unconditional acceptance to relieve suffering. This is accomplished through use of unconditional self-acceptance, unconditional other-acceptance, and unconditional life-acceptance.
Herein, I’ve thoroughly described how cognition (i.e., thinking, believing, etc.) influences feeling (e.g., emotions and sensations) while also impacting behavior (actions). I took time to address the misconception regarding feelings, not for pedantic reasons.
Rather, I maintain that the words we use matter. By properly understanding how one arrives at the unhealthy conclusion, “I am worthless,” an individual is then able to un-disturb oneself by taking personal ownership for the unhelpful B-C process that causes self-disturbance.
If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help you understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As the world’s foremost hip hop-influenced REBT psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
References:
17th Cipher – Topic, The. (2024, November 2). Dr. Loomis (feat. Doza The Drum Dealer, Beedie, Crise P. & True Cipher) [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/3RO9owz7bSk?si=IeorTZkCtwi9ZDO6
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