Posted by Ines on March 18, 2007, at 5:40:01
A while ago Meri posted a thread about overwhelming sadness; I only just read it and completely relate to it- like walking along and everything is more or less fine and suddenly you're filled with this overwhelming sadness that actually seems to hurt. So it got me thinking. I've been reading a couple of CBT books lately, and they work on the premise that you cannot have an emotion without a cognition, or a thought, and I'm not sure I beieve it. I often have feelings of sadness or angst overtake me for no apparent reason. I suppose one explanation could be that you have seen something that you associate with feeling sad, process it at a subconscious level, and it triggers that feeling. (which still makes the basic premise of CBT problematic...). More interesting, I've recently been reading a book on the brain and emotions by Antonio Damasio, and he describes a couple of situations where a woman was undergoing ECT, and the 'wrong' bit of the brain was stimulated by mistake. The woman burst out crying and saying she felt like her life was pointless and there was no hope, and she wanted to die. As soon as they stopped the electric current she was back to normal- she said that this feeling of despair had taken over out of the blue and she had no control over it. They repeated the process, hitting the same point, and the same thing happened again. She had no history of depression. Another case was that of a man undergoing ECT as well, who burst out laughing uncontrolably when they hit a certain area of the brain. Whatever he was looking at at that moment he decribed as hilarious. I seem to remember he said 'you guys, just standing around looking at me, you're so funny'.. I thought these case studies were really interesting- clearly there was no preceding thought in this case (although of course it's not a natural situation). I haven't finished reading the book, but so far Damasio's argument seems to be that the process of an emotion is an automatic respoonse to many stimuli, that it can and does often does start without a conscious thought, and that an emotion can then trigger particular thoughts, after which it becomes a feeling, i.e. you are aware of it and can think it through.
Long post and doesn't go anywhere.... but anyway, I thought it was interesting, so maybe some of you will find it intereting too!
Ines
poster:Ines
thread:741926
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070314/msgs/741926.html