Emotions, Thoughts, Cognitive Biases

Emotions are something we all have and experience, thoughts happen and create emotions; 

Most of us have heard the word Nervous System so much we've learned to take it for granted. 

However, without the Endocrine system the nervous system would be essentially useless, because the endocrine system produces emotions for the electrically charged nervous system to feel. 

The survival brain, is at the top of the nervous system, resembling what I see as the head of a jelly fish with nervous system being the tenticles of the jellyfish wired throughout the body. 

Emotions remain mostly unaddressed because so many of us were taught to reject the notion that we are experiencing anything other than anger, some occasional sadness, and those in the love/connection category. 

The reality is, our survival system runs on emotions. It produces emotions to interact with our electrically charged nervous system. Without one there is not the other. 

The survival brain is part of the nervous system and it defaults to survival based sortcuts in thinking called heuristics, an example of a heuristic is if I touch a hot stove, my survival brain notes stoves can be hot. If I developed a cognitive bias from that, my survival brain would note all stoves are hot. 

*Tip* (I am not personally good at identifying specific emotions I experience, so I have learned to categorize them by their polarity, either negative, neutral, or positive)

Thought happen as a byproduct of emotions running through our system. Thoughts are also something we create. 

We experience something like 60-70k thoughts per day, both survival based automatic thinking called, Implicit Thoughts, as well as conscious thoughts that we use in an attempt to make sense of the implicit thoughts, know as Explicit Thoughts. Both are always interacting.

An important realization is we are not our thoughts, and we can see this when there's us observing our thoughts as the impartial stand alone entity to them being produced by the brain, just as blood being pumped through our bodies by our heart. 

*ANALOGY: 

-Implicit thought is like:

The autopilot system reacting in real time.

Whereas 

-Explicit thought is like:

The pilot consciously analyzing the map and making decisions.

Implicit thought is:

• Automatic
• Fast
• Usually unconscious
• Emotionally and physically driven
• Learned through repetition, conditioning, and experience
• You often feel implicit thought before you consciously “hear” it.

Examples:

• Instantly feeling unsafe around someone without knowing why
• Automatically slamming the brakes while driving
• Reading body language unconsciously
• Feeling anxious before realizing what triggered it
• Habits, instincts, biases, emotional associations

• Implicit thought is heavily tied to:
• Pattern recognition
• Survival processing
• Conditioning
• Procedural memory
• Emotional learning

Neurologically, it is often associated more with:

• Limbic system activity
• Basal ganglia
• Autonomic nervous system processing
• Fast predictive processing networks

Explicit thought is:

• Conscious
• Intentional
• Slower
• Reflective
• Language-based
• This is the “inner narrator” most people identify as thinking.

Examples:

• Solving a math problem
• Planning tomorrow
• Analyzing your emotions
• Deciding between two options
• Explaining your reasoning out loud

• Explicit thought is tied more to:
• Working memory
• Deliberate attention
• Logical reasoning
• Verbal processing
• Cognitive control

• Neurologically, it relies heavily on:
• Prefrontal cortex
• Executive functioning networks
• Conscious attention systems
• Simple Analogy

We also have ego dystonic and ego syntoic thoughts. 

Ego dystonic thoughts are 1 off conscious shocking rogue thoughts the mind takes exception to; an example being, I wouldn't randomly slash someone's car tires on my way into the grocery store, or run across the street and beat up my neighbor for sweeping cobwebs off of his garage, but I've had those thoughts. When I did I thought what the hell is wrong with me? 

Turns out, if I didn't notice the thoughts and they were in line with who I am there would be something wrong with me, and the thoughts would be ego syntonic. Ego syntonic thoughts are the bulk of the thoughts we experience that go unnoticed because they are in line with who we are at our core. 

I notice I experience an overabundance of ego dystonic thoughts during flashback. I'm learning to catch it and let it go. I even talk to myself saying, "Nice try mind, that's ego dystonic" and let it go. 

Cognitive Bias is the name for the results of faulty survival brain shortcuts. 

These survival brain shortcuts are known as Heuristics. 

Every human being experiences cognitive biases, so there's nothing personal or unique about any of us experiencing them.

There are an estimated 150-200 different cognitive biases we have the capacity of experiencing.