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I'm not sure anyone is making that point. So strawman.

Feelings are actions? Really? I thought feelings are feelings and actions are actions.

There I agree with you! Although there are times when the "responsiblity" of not acting on feelings would tax any but the wisest people on the planet. I am not one of them, and I sincerely doubt you are either. So I think this idea of "owning the responsiblity of ALL actions at ALL times" is an ideal. A worthy ideal, but still an ideal.

Simplistic. We all have buttons. There are people who are so good at sensing them that they get great joy out of discovering them and pushing them.

Now, if TimR is wise enough and reflective enough and mature enough to know where every one of his buttons is, before someone pushes one, then TimR truly has the choice at all times about choosing not to react.

And if you are in this rare place - which frankly I did not even know existed in humanity - I envy you, because I would very much like to be there.

But I would suggest that at least 99.9% of the rest of us are not there.

I also notice that you enjoy pushing buttons, Tim. You enjoy making blanket statements then sitting back to watch the reaction. And then if people take the bait, which I may well be doing here, I think it is entertainment for you.

Diversity is not the same thing as pathology.

We are all different and we all have different strengths and weaknesses.

The compulsion towards creating homogenous, cookie-cutter conformist consumers that bend to authority and do as they are told is the problem rather than your working in spurts instead of as a diesel locomotive kind of a guy.

Feelings can be regarded as actions - getting angry and punching the wall are both actions you perform, with various degrees of control.

I realize this is a novel idea to you. But I wish you would consider it for a moment with an open mind while I explain a bit further. You've rejected it out of hand, then looked for arguments to defeat it, including personal insults. But there might be something useful in it, and I didn't come up with this idea myself. It's fairly standard in cognitive psychology. And even if it's wrong, it seems to work.

Keystring formulated a 3 step sequence.

Stimulus ==> anger ==> acting
example: child breaks favorite glass ==> anger ==> spanking

(yes I know spanking can be done without anger. or with.)

She suggested you could become aware of your anger and prevent step 3. This leaves steps 1 and 2 beyond your control, step 3 within your control. And that is what the pop psychology articles always teach, and the Gestalt therapist (the here and now the I and thou people).

I'm suggesting you think of it as a 4 step sequence:
Stimulus ==> (cognitive mediation through internal software) ==> anger ==> acting

The stimulus is insufficient to produce a specified emotional outcome. This is fairly obvious if you think about it. Look out the window and see rain. You've been planning your wife's surprise anniversary picnic for six months, and now it's ruined. You're devastated. Or, you're a farmer about to lose your farm due to drought, and your future is saved. Same stimulus, but far different outcome, because it was processed through your software, your set of beliefs, attitudes, and internal self talk.

Now, if you accept the 4 step sequence, where do you draw the control line?

I think keystring would have said steps 1, 2, and 3 are beyond control, that 4 is within control, and by working to become more aware of 3 you can exert more control over 4.

I'm saying you can back that up one more step. By becoming aware of step 2, your internal software, you can exert control over steps 2, 3, and 4. Further, this is far more effective in the long run. As you learn to avoid the anger, you run less risk of an action you'll regret, and your overall stress level is reduced. You can reprogram some of the irrational beliefs that make up step 2. Emotional overreaction is usually produced by irrational beliefs.

Do you become a robot, able to perfectly control your emotions under all circumstances? Unlikely. A few people are probably successful, most of us not. But we can learn to tone road rage down into irritation, etc. We can learn to recognize what pushes our buttons and why, and gain more control.

Weight loss is a good analogy. Losing weight is a trivial problem, really. Just reduce caloric intake below caloric output, and you'll lose as much weight as you want, and be as skinny as you want. We all believe that, and yet...few of us are at our goal weight. But the principle is sound, and there are techniques that can be used: avoid sweets, don't eat after 7 pm, eat breakfast, exercise, count calories or food exchanges etc.

There is a similar collection of techniques to work on step 2, if you want. Most people can't become James Bond or a robot, just as most people won't become skinny. Yet most people can lose a little weight and feel much healthier, and most people can gain some control over negative emotions.

Great post TimR!

No. To me it is faulty thinking. Getting angry is not an action. Punching a wall is one possible result of getting angry. Another is holding it in and getting a headache, elevated blood pressure or an ulcer.

You might as well say, “I didn't come up with the 'imagine holding a ball in your hand' idea of how to shape the hand for piano, but there might be something useful in it, and I didn't come up with this idea myself.”

I can't find anything remotely like that in any of Keystring's posts. And many times the third step is NOT acting, which is the whole point. In other words, child breaks favorite glass, adult feels anger and considers why – how important was the glass, and was the act deliberate – then adult decides how to handle his/her anger, and reflects on why the anger happened in the first place.

To me the whole point is to identify what caused the anger in the first place. In other words, once anger takes place, it is too late to put the genie back in the bottle, at that moment. That doesn't mean that the same set of events of the “stimulus” has to create the same outcome in the future.

I believe we all have buttons. I believe that when we identify what they are, we can do something about them. Later. But I see this as an ongoing process. It is rather difficult if not impossible to know that we have a button until it has been pushed, Tim, and when unrecognized buttons get pushed, I think that anger or some kind of negative feelings are inevitable.

Now, what we do with those feelings is another matter. I agree that feelings lead to action only if we accept that taking no action whatsoever is a kind of action. And in a way it might be, because not acting requires a decision. If we consider that a decision not to act is an act, well...

I formulated no such thing. I responded to whatever you wrote in the very beginning, where you equated emotion with action. I stated that emotion is not action. But one might choose an action as a response to an emotion. My main point is that emotion is not action. The actual point that *I* was making is that people should be aware of what they are feeling (again - not an action).

Seeing it as three steps does not mean you agree step 2 is an action. It just means there are 3 steps.

I accept that you do not see the emotional reaction as an action.

I do not accept that I must believe it simply because you stated it.

The evidence is that those who see the emotion as an action are able to exert more control over it, rather than just being able to control the end behavior. That doesn't prove it IS an action, but it proves the concept is useful.

The evidence is that the 4 step formulation I've described works, as a useful selfhelp technique or therapy method.

You won't find 4 steps in the literature, of course, that's just the way I described it here. Basically I'm repeating the theories of Albert Ellis, and he had 3 steps here. His 3 steps stop with the emotion; I added step 4 to match yours. (Well, he has 5 steps, but they include disputing the irrational beliefs)

Here's a useful site:
http://psychology.about.com/od/typesofpsychotherapy/a/rational-emotive-behavior-therapy.htm

There are probably not REALLY 4 steps, whatever really means in this context. There are probably several hundred.

The point is that the idea that the feeling just happens and is beyond your control is a myth. Becoming more aware of your feelings is a good thing, I agree with you. All I'm saying is that becoming aware of the irrational belief structures that produce your feelings is also a good thing. I'm not sure why you reject that so strongly.

The point is that you said that I formulated such a thing and quoted me on it. I did not formulate this. This has to do with a concept that you put forth. It began in response to something Malkin said about Timeout.

For you maybe.

The point is that I've suggested some techniques that really work.

I'm not 100% sold on why they work. I think the science behind it is way more complicated than the way I and Albert Ellis have stated it here.

I taught this stuff when I worked for Tellurian Community North, one of the early innovators in drug treatment programs in the 70s, and the follow-on Gemini Program, which treated drug abusers with psychiatric diagnoses. Now there's a difficult clientele!

I've mentioned that periodically over the almost 10 years I've been on this forum.

Not once has anyone been interested in what techniques might be involved.

Not once.

You'd rather have the satisfaction of proving me wrong.

Most of us would rather be skinny than happy!

Uh, are any of us skinny?

Tim, the point is not whether or not I agree with you. The point is that what you attributed to me earlier is not something that I stated. I want to clear up only that thing.

I noticed this too. I just chose not to react to my feelings about it.

Me three.

I believe there is a somewhat dated term for this: " defense mechanism ". For example, people tend to self-identify with their feelings, so the knowledge that feelings are largely chosen based on our reaction to our emotions and that our feelings can be changed by becoming more aware and awake can be quite threatening to the ego. Better to deny.

Once you understand and accept that your feelings are nothing more than your interpretation of your emotions, then it is a short step to take to start to realize that your emotions are often just a deeper layer of the onion of your unconscious and bodily reaction to your interpretation of external and internal stimuli. We also can choose not to have (dysfunctional) emotions or choose how we express them effectively rather than express them ineffectively or repress them.

There are all kinds of techniques ranging from psychological to meditation practice to spiritual to organized religion to music related (Alexander Technique) that have to do with becoming less low-animal-like (automatic reflex machines of unthinking stimulus-response) and become more " holy " (autonomous, seemingly free-willed responsible & wise creatures). This is almost always done by creating more space and time in between stimulus and response and using this space to exercise our freedom in choosing our response in line with our long term objectives.

You are very, very wrong.

There are many times when I have a radically different slant on something, and sometimes it's an idea that is so commonly accepted that any other opinion is suspect.

I can't help it. My brain works differently. I see different possibilities. (It's why I was unsuccessful at organic chemistry in college!)

I propose these because I see merit in them. There has never been a time when I did so for the purpose of pushing buttons.

So then attributing keystring with saying something she did not say and constantly evading her attempts to tell you otherwise and ask where you got that from is not pushing buttons/trolling? What about in the FCAT thread where you blame religion *out of the blue* for students in public schools not being taught how to think critically? Not trolling? Great. Thanks for clearing that up.

If you wish to actually engage people in discussion and be taken seriously, then I recommend do away with the ad hominem and strawman arguments. This has nothing to do with you saying something "different" it has to do with how you are presenting yourself and disrespecting others.

TimR, I also think outside the box, so I have no problem with that. The part that I had a problem with was you stating I had said something, and then building on that, because I am very careful about what I present. I don't think it was a strawman. I think you made a leap to somewhere else. So let's back up.

When discussing a concept to which terminology is attached for you, especially when you have a very particular take on that concept, always define what you mean by the term. Also accept that others will understand different concepts to your term, and be accepting of that. Otherwise there will massive confusion, as everyone will literally be talking about something different, but use the same word. This is what happened here.

You seem to be thinking about the things you studied in that course and the work of Ellis. It's in the context of work with patients with serious problems requiring psychiatric care. I'm assuming their behaviour may be unhealthy, and that there are underlying issues that have to solved.

I'm thinking more along the lines of this example. On a given day a teacher has had a heavy day, and at the end of the day it's a real struggle to teach whatever to this last student who has learning problems, is hyperactive or whatever. The teacher also was forced to stay up late at night and didn't get as much sleep as he needed. Tiredness is setting in, and along with it irritability. He's aware that it is the end of the day for both himself and for his student, and that they are both getting tired. So he proposes they break off from what they were struggling with, do something else to refresh themselves, and then go back to it. The alternative is this teacher not realizing he is getting tired and grumpy, pushing through, and grumpy-vibes sneaking in.

The scenario I have painted here has no underlying deep seated problems and associations. There is nothing unhealthy here. It is normal to get irritable when you are tired. If you are aware that you are tired, and you get irritable when you are tired, then you can make intelligent choices. I was not thinking of pathologies when I talked about self-awareness.

I didn't blame religion. I stated that if critical thinking were ever taught, it might become a threat to religion. In hindight I could have worded it so it would not be so easily misunderstood.



No. I never troll. Trolling is an attempt to get a rise out of somebody. I only bring up viewpoints that mean something to me, and for that purpose only.



Disrespect? I have yet to personally attack anyone on this forum. In almost ten years.

The reverse is NOT true. People have been banned from this forum for fewer attacks than have been directed towards me in this thread.

I would argue that it is a combination of the knowledge of the special education department coupled with the adept innovation of the regular education or inclusion teacher. But you're right, it's off topic.

With regard to piano, innovate to reach diverse learners...

I agree working with special needs might not be a good fit for the poster.