The Mental Emotional Health Blog

Thoughts and feelings influence each other, meaning one can precede and affect the other one. The context I am using here is meta-cognition (thinking about how you are thinking). When you are mindful of how you are thinking, your emotions follow. On the other hand, if you are just thinking without giving much thought to what you are thinking about, your feelings may have a greater effect on your thinking without you being aware of it.

In general, however, I consider thoughts to be more proactive and feelings more reactive. Sometimes feelings just come up, seemingly on their own. By paying closer attention to your thoughts, and how positive or negative they are, you can provide more influence over how you feel.

For more on this subject, which is related to cognitive-behavioral therapy, check out these websites:

http://www.nacbt.org/whatiscbt.htm

http://www.sleepeducation.com/Treatment.aspx?id=5

There are several different strategies and interventions that are considered part of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. But to really simplify things, this is the basic goal of the Cognitive-Behavioral approach: 

Identify your negative thoughts and behaviors, and replace them with healthy/positive thoughts and behaviors.