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franknfurter
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07 Mar 2013, 1:47 pm

:D for some reason i feel a great need to find a reason for everything, especially with how i feel, i always feel the need to know why i am upset, why im angry or why i feel ill. its become a bit of an obsession. even posting this is part of needing a reason , its got so bad i now need a reason for needing a reason for everything haha. i feel happy with reasons, if there is no reason i get upset in general or anxious.

i find myself always asking the same question, why why why.

anyway im wondering if this indicative of anything or am i just strange. :lol:



goldfish21
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07 Mar 2013, 1:52 pm

Probably just the inquisitive analyst/scientist in ya.

And the reason for everything is that everything happens for a reason.. including you, including me.. we just need to figure out what our reason is.

The reason you feel anything, upset, angry, happy, whatever is because of what you're thinking, as thoughts dictate emotions & emotions dictate actions. Control your thoughts and you control your emotions. True story. There are many books on this from positive thinking self help books to psychologist/psychiatrist's books, but they all boil down to the same thing. Each will teach you different methods of analyzing and controlling your thoughts, which then improve how you feel & act.



theWanderer
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07 Mar 2013, 2:54 pm

I've always had a drive to understand. Not just some things, everything. That's another way of saying I need a reason. :) I think perhaps we grow up in a world so alien to us, we instinctively know we've got to try to figure it all out, so that inspires this fierce need to understand everything. At least, that's the best answer I've been able to come up with. On the other hand, I sense it could possibly be linked to some of our deeper traits, our tendency to cling to truth even when it would be "better" for us to lie, our inclination to be 'pedantic', or to strive for accuracy - all those are things that also imply a need to have the world make sense and not just be a jumble of factoids and falsehoods.


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seaturtleisland
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07 Mar 2013, 3:01 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
Probably just the inquisitive analyst/scientist in ya.

And the reason for everything is that everything happens for a reason.. including you, including me.. we just need to figure out what our reason is.

The reason you feel anything, upset, angry, happy, whatever is because of what you're thinking, as thoughts dictate emotions & emotions dictate actions. Control your thoughts and you control your emotions. True story. There are many books on this from positive thinking self help books to psychologist/psychiatrist's books, but they all boil down to the same thing. Each will teach you different methods of analyzing and controlling your thoughts, which then improve how you feel & act.


I think in the case of the OP it can be more circular than that sometimes. The thought may lead to an emotion but once she feels the emotion she starts thinking about what the reason for it is. That second thought about the emotion could lead to a second emotion in some situations.

Another example from my personal experience is when I have heard people say they have schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia. My natural thought is "I wish I had it". My natural feeling in response to that is envy. My natural thought in response to the feeling is that I am being selfish, arrogant, and insensitive. I should be glad I don't have it and sympathyze with them. My response to the thought that I am being arrogant and insensitive is to feel guilty.



seaturtleisland
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07 Mar 2013, 3:11 pm

I've given up on trying to come up with a rational explanation for my feelings all the time. Sometimes my feelings are just backwards. I would expect myself or anybody else to react a certain way that makes sense and then I go and react in a way that doesn't make sense. I just accept that the way I feel is the way I feel. Does it matter where it comes from? Sometimes it does but not always. Sometimes it doesn't make a difference. I feel the way I feel and I can do what I want about that.



franknfurter
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07 Mar 2013, 3:12 pm

seaturtleisland wrote:
goldfish21 wrote:
Probably just the inquisitive analyst/scientist in ya.

And the reason for everything is that everything happens for a reason.. including you, including me.. we just need to figure out what our reason is.

The reason you feel anything, upset, angry, happy, whatever is because of what you're thinking, as thoughts dictate emotions & emotions dictate actions. Control your thoughts and you control your emotions. True story. There are many books on this from positive thinking self help books to psychologist/psychiatrist's books, but they all boil down to the same thing. Each will teach you different methods of analyzing and controlling your thoughts, which then improve how you feel & act.


I think in the case of the OP it can be more circular than that sometimes. The thought may lead to an emotion but once she feels the emotion she starts thinking about what the reason for it is. That second thought about the emotion could lead to a second emotion in some situations.

Another example from my personal experience is when I have heard people say they have schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia. My natural thought is "I wish I had it". My natural feeling in response to that is envy. My natural thought in response to the feeling is that I am being selfish, arrogant, and insensitive. I should be glad I don't have it and sympathyze with them. My response to the thought that I am being arrogant and insensitive is to feel guilty.


yes i do agree, that can happen sometimes, for example when i think of people that have aspergers i feel the same way that you naturally feel about scizophrenia, i dont want to feel that way though because like you i know that its unfair and an bad thing to think, but i imagine that i may feel that way becasue people with aspergers know that they have it and i am not diagnosed but actually feel i have it, so maybe im more thinking that im jealous that they know themselves that they have aspergers if that make sense. but the emotions i feel often i cant find a connection for them and i cant seem to be settled without an answer for all my feelings in general.



goldfish21
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07 Mar 2013, 3:36 pm

While I get the whole repeating cycle thing, it literally is that black and white and logical: Thoughts dictate emotions. Even though you've described a thought, then emotion, then thought about an emotion leading to another emotion etc - it's always a thought that dictates your next emotion. Period. Always.

As for the thought/emotion/thought/emotion cycle & asking why? why? why? You guys remind me of the mental equivalent of an Ishikawa (aka Fishbone) Diagram used in business (by NT's who can't mentally process these things rapidly like we can. I find these diagrams ultra simplistic and often a waste of time since I can come up with the answers faster than I could write them down in this configuration, so I only over used them in class for the benefit of NT peers and teachers.) to get to the root of a problem - and I think it's just an automatic AS trait to just rapidly keeping asking "why?" to things in order to figure them out, be it thoughts and emotions or the solution to a complex engineering problem. I think it's just how we're wired and hard coded to operate. I know that for myself I've come up with solutions to things very very quickly by cycling through the why's in rapid succession in my head, getting to the core of the issue at hand and coming up with a solution to the true and first "why?" if that makes any sense to you at all. NT's will often look at me in awe and wonder how I just came up with what I had as quickly as I had, and I just stare back blankly wondering why they think it should take longer to get to that conclusion. :lol:

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franknfurter
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07 Mar 2013, 3:43 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
While I get the whole repeating cycle thing, it literally is that black and white and logical: Thoughts dictate emotions. Even though you've described a thought, then emotion, then thought about an emotion leading to another emotion etc - it's always a thought that dictates your next emotion. Period. Always.

As for the thought/emotion/thought/emotion cycle & asking why? why? why? You guys remind me of the mental equivalent of an Ishikawa (aka Fishbone) Diagram used in business (by NT's who can't mentally process these things rapidly like we can. I find these diagrams ultra simplistic and often a waste of time since I can come up with the answers faster than I could write them down in this configuration, so I only over used them in class for the benefit of NT peers and teachers.) to get to the root of a problem - and I think it's just an automatic AS trait to just rapidly keeping asking "why?" to things in order to figure them out, be it thoughts and emotions or the solution to a complex engineering problem. I think it's just how we're wired and hard coded to operate. I know that for myself I've come up with solutions to things very very quickly by cycling through the why's in rapid succession in my head, getting to the core of the issue at hand and coming up with a solution to the true and first "why?" if that makes any sense to you at all. NT's will often look at me in awe and wonder how I just came up with what I had as quickly as I had, and I just stare back blankly wondering why they think it should take longer to get to that conclusion. :lol:

Image


hmm, that diagram is very confusing, but i get what you mean, i have looked at this in CBT, i believe the basis of CBT is changing the way you think, but sometimes its quite difficult to pinpoint what thought triggered what emotion especially when your brain is foggy which i find happens quite often when i have emotions that i cant find the reason for. :)



goldfish21
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07 Mar 2013, 4:08 pm

Diagram: the problem or UDE (undesirable effect) goes at the head of the fish, the body bones are possible reasons for it when first asking "why?" then each smaller arrow, or smaller fishbone branching off, is the answer to asking "why?" to that bone's topic. The diagram may look a little confusing, but it's really super super simple.

CBT: Have you read "Feeling Good," by Dr. David Burns? If not, and you're interested in CBT at all, I found it very interesting and helpful when I read it last Summer and put myself through written CBT for 2-3 months. It was also very useful to quantify and score depression on the Burns' Depression Score system in order to compare it week by week, as once you can quantify and measure something you can begin to control and manage it - or figure out why it's going the wrong way if the numbers get worse vs. improve, as was my case for a while.



IdahoRose
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10 Mar 2013, 6:21 am

I find myself asking "why" a lot and needing a reason for everything too, especially in regards to my own thoughts and feelings, which are an enigma even to myself...! :!:



jk1
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10 Mar 2013, 7:05 am

I think I do the same, too. I'm obsessed with it. A doctor told me it's OCD. It can get very stressful because I sometimes can't stop it and end up neglecting everything else. It sometimes interfered with my study etc.