Beliefs Are Maintained By Believing (lol)

[sakoz]

Giving the appearance of permanent 'hard-wired' structures/patterns. We stop believing false beliefs when we see they are incongruous with facts.

What do we learn from the placebo effect ? If you believe something works, it works. 

We're all prone to be fooled; even Lincoln said; "You can fool all the people some of the time......etc."
It's excusable to be fooled, but to believe2 your belief1 indiscriminately, 'makes you a smuck' of complicity. (replace the word 'smuck' with 'vulnerable')

"We stop believing false thoughts when we see they are incongruous with facts." Just seeing beliefs as thoughts is a 'leap' to another perspective.
The ability to observe thoughts as thoughts instead of as perceptions, puts you in the 'drivers seat'. 'Believing' thoughts are real "is" the problem.
Believing thoughts are real is the common denominator of virtually all 'psychological problems'.

Herein points to the 'key' to your happiness,  mental health, well being; did you find it? It's already in you.

[rethinkPERFECT]

I like your opinions sakoz, but you sound so certain to me.

I much more prefer more adjustable language such as
"I think...." or "to me..." etc

 

[sakoz]

rethinkPERFECT; thank you for feed-back. I've been thinking about not posting (for awhile) and only reply to others.   
The structure of language is such that we speak more opinions, assumptions, etc. than facts.  How do we speak 'facts'? Descriptively, for example, phone books, recipe books, numbers.
Opinions/assumptions are supposedly 'about' facts, and not until tested/verified can we say they are correct, and do indeed match/fit facts. (Too often we believe untested thoughts).
Your right, virtually every statement we make, would well be prefaced by ; " I think" or "To me" or "I believe". ( Korzybski had the right idea/methodology).
When I write 'I' know the difference between opinions and factual statements, but your right, I should let the readers know that I know. OK , I will make it a point to point out my opinions from factual statements; and it's up to the readers to test/verify for themselves, then they will see if my 'certainty' is justified.

[rethinkPERFECT]

Yeah sorry for being so picky but part of my framewok that I live by or try to live by.

Truely, I find it very hard to report a "fact" or something of certainty.
Even a phone book recited is going through a human conduit that is far from perfect.

Something interesting I have learned only recently is what a "conversation" is for.
I think it is for "converting" using "converse" ideas to get a "convergence" of ideas or to get a
"conversion" or what we commonly call an agreement.

But here is the clincher, instead of trying to convert the other I thnk it is to convert our own concepts
through other feedback and this is why I shy away from certitude or non-adjustable language
as to me I get the feeling that someone is trying to convert me rather than their own concepts through my feedback.

[pljames]

What is belief? What is truth? Facts vs experiences We have no knowledge when we are born, only as we grow and gain experience do we learn and understand. What is faith? Things hoped for yet things not seen (KJV) What is hope, when things are out of our hands then we hope. Does the law of attraction relate to faith belief or truth plus circumstances? If these things are in us how come we cannot find them? Ignorance delusion stubborness human nature? The older I get I am leaning toward experience and a certain order in this world, I yet do not understand. Thoughts please? pljames

Giving the appearance of permanent 'hard-wired' structures/patterns. We stop believing false beliefs when we see they are incongruous with facts.

What do we learn from the placebo effect ? If you believe something works, it works. 

We're all prone to be fooled; even Lincoln said; "You can fool all the people some of the time......etc."
It's excusable to be fooled, but to believe2 your belief1 indiscriminately, 'makes you a smuck' of complicity. (replace the word 'smuck' with 'vulnerable')

"We stop believing false thoughts when we see they are incongruous with facts." Just seeing beliefs as thoughts is a 'leap' to another perspective.
The ability to observe thoughts as thoughts instead of as perceptions, puts you in the 'drivers seat'. 'Believing' thoughts are real "is" the problem.
Believing thoughts are real is the common denominator of virtually all 'psychological problems'.

Herein points to the 'key' to your happiness,  mental health, well being; did you find it? It's already in you.

[FinalLee]

I'm not a psychologist, but this whole "thoughts creates belief" approach doesn't work for me.  At least not in a one-to-one correspondence.

You can give me all the scientific "facts" you want to, but it still doesn't work for me.  And, believe me, there are times that I wish it would!  As someone who works in healthcare, I even think that there is utility in folk who "have a strong intuition" that there is something wrong to continue to insist on further exploration even when the doctors say that there is no evidence that there is anything wrong.  Too often people like this are informally written off as hypochondriacs.

In personality-theory language, this whole "thoughts create beliefs approach" seems to me like the "thinking sensing" types deciding that the rest of us are "actually" just like them and therefore "should behave" exactly like them.  Yes, there is often utility in the mind being told the hard facts, and sometimes it's a helpful way to adjust our beliefs, but not always.  Sometimes, also, we are lacking knowledge about certain "facts".  Like the young woman in another post who thought that just because the guy who gave her lift down the block and a beer in the car "didn't do anything creepy" that his motives were not sexual. It's an undisputed fact that he didn't make a pass at her;  but that certainly doesn't mean his motives were good ones.

[SWM]

@FinalLee

change "thoughts create beliefs" to "thoughts affect emotions, emotions influence behaviour"
does that work for you?

[sakoz]

FinalLee: " thoughts create belief".  Correction: thoughts come first then are believed (when 'believing' is a habit). Thoughts are the 'content' of belief. There is no 'believing' per se just as there is no 'running' without legs (2 or 4 or centipede).
Hypochondriacs experience involuntary reactions to what they believe, exactly like placebo-effect subjects. Only the beliefs differ.
Hypochondriacs are "written off" because their reacting to a belief instead of a physical ailment or virus, etc. Just as there is no medicinal value in a fake pill used in placebo experiments.
Lets me stress, the 'beliefs' are real to the 'believer', that's why their involuntary reacts to them. Most doctors 'write off' hypochonriacs because those doctors don't deal with "belief induced symptoms', even though the symptoms are just as real in both patients.

"thinking sensing".  Want to sense a thought? Think of tasting lemon juice, right now, keep thinking till you have to swallow,( that's the sensory part (lol)

SWM; excuse me, I only want to make a point of clarification: "thoughts affect emotions,...". To me that's like saying scarecrows affect fear in crows; the effigy is neutral/harmless, the crows react to their perception of the effigy, correct?

[Alexandre]

Believing in thought is the source of all mental problems... but, isn't it also the source of all our delightful delusions as well?

[sakoz]

Alexandre: "Believing in thought"? Not 'in', just 'believing thought'.
When the thoughts are false, we experience 'mental problems', ( emotional suffering, dysfunctional behavior, mistakes, stress, etc.)
When the thoughts are true, that is congruent/fit/match facts we adapt and react to 'reality' instead of to beliefs, that are often false.
It's important to be clear because what we think is what our involuntary reacts to. It's not a 'spell checker', or 'meaning corrector'. lol
The biggest 'mistake' we learned while learning language is the misuse of the word "is". As children we ask for names of things.
Suppose you had a 'round thing filled with air' and asked for it's name; if you were told; "This IS a ball". Do you see the mistake? Mistake of equation. As if the,word 'ball' and the' thing' are the same/equal. Our involuntary takes that literally. If your told you "are a bad boy", you can't fix that'defect' you must have been born 'bad'. Not so, if you had been told, "Don't do that", then you have option of pleasing the parent by not behaving that way. See the big difference? Some things you can change, some you can't. Semantics DOES make a difference.

[FinalLee]

@FinalLee

change "thoughts create beliefs" to "thoughts affect emotions, emotions influence behaviour"
does that work for you?

What works for me is they all influence each other.  “Getting your thoughts right” isn’t a magic bullet but it’s often unhelpful to have inaccurate thoughts.

thoughts come first

I don't know that.  That's what I'm not convinced about.  Or rather, I’m not convinced that thoughts always come first in every instance.  I could turn it around and argue that if it weren’t for the concrete fact of the human brain and its synapses and chemicals and hormones, there would be no thought.

Not everyone whose symptoms cannot be scientifically proven – or whose symptoms cannot YET be proven – is a hypochondriac.

(disclaimer:  I work in an “auxiliary profession” in a healthcare setting, I’m not a healthcare professional.)

[SWM]

SWM; excuse me, I only want to make a point of clarification: "thoughts affect emotions,...". To me that's like saying scarecrows affect fear in crows; the effigy is neutral/harmless, the crows react to their perception of the effigy, correct?

thoughts are internal to the crow. scarecrow is external to the crow. the thought is the interpretation (internal) of the external stimuli (scarecrow). fear is the result of the interpretation (thought) of the perception of the scarecrow.

[Alexandre]

Okey, beliefs are maintained by believing? Now what is the point I am to address?

Yes beliefs are no longer beliefs if you do not believe.

[SWM]

beliefs are thoughts too.

[FinalLee]

Okey, beliefs are maintained by believing? Now what is the point I am to address?

Yes beliefs are no longer beliefs if you do not believe.

Is this addressed to me?

I once saw a guy with a tumor in his brain who had terrible intermittent hallucinations.  The hallucinations were so frightening that he wasn't sure he wanted to live any more.  He gave up hope that the doctors were going to be able to do anything about the hallucinations.

He understood perfectly well that he was hallucinating.  When he had the hallucinations, he could not contain his fright even though he understood and believed that the horrible things he was seeing weren't actually happening.

If you want to tell me that if he just believed more that the "monsters" weren't there that they would go away, I'm absolutely not going to agree with you.

So if women just believed we weren't going to have hormonal changes at menopause, all the concomitant mood issues cause by hormones would just go away? 

If a person has the daylights frightened out of them, the cortisol and other hormones that arise from the experience will take at least 20 minutes to clear out of their body.  Granted, if they have the knowledge and emotional experience to know how to calm themself (which takes both thinking and believing) the chemicals will go away within that 20 minutes.  If they continue to think and believe that they must be frightened, they can keep the hormones pumping for far longer.

In an extremely pedantic way, I might agree that thoughts cause beliefs but I don't see how that's useful in real life.  I think it can do someone more harm than good to tell them that they shouldn't have been frightened when the 6'5" 250 lb linebacker came rushing at them on the street and that their fear was all in their head.  This stuff is a lot more complicated that "trying to control your thoughts."

[SWM]

I once saw a guy with a tumor in his brain who had terrible intermittent hallucinations.  The hallucinations were so frightening that he wasn't sure he wanted to live any more.  He gave up hope that the doctors were going to be able to do anything about the hallucinations.

He understood perfectly well that he was hallucinating.  When he had the hallucinations, he could not contain his fright even though he understood and believed that the horrible things he was seeing weren't actually happening.

If you want to tell me that if he just believed more that the "monsters" weren't there that they would go away, I'm absolutely not going to agree with you.

this example is not a practical starting point for understanding these concepts. the problems you are describing is an organic neurological problem. i could explain the concepts to you as they relate to organic and functional neurological problems but it would be easier if you could understand them in basic practical ways first.

In an extremely pedantic way, I might agree that thoughts cause beliefs but I don't see how that's useful in real life.

this is like saying thoughts cause thoughts, this is missing the practically useful part altogether.

I think it can do someone more harm than good

it can if you do not understand it. Did you ever hear of Cognitive Behavior Therapy? that does more good than harm.

to tell them that they shouldn't have been frightened when the 6'5" 250 lb linebacker came rushing at them on the street and that their fear was all in their head.  This stuff is a lot more complicated that "trying to control your thoughts."

fear is a natural response to the perception of threat. if someone has a perception of threat where no actual threat exists then there fear is all in their head. if there is a 6.5 250lb linebaker about to assault you that might be an actual threat rather than an imagined one.

[Alexandre]

I've said nothing about the placebo effect. I'm simply confused. Can you break it down and pose one or more basic questions?

[sakoz]

SWM; your #11, yes, that's your clarification? excellant, that's what I should have added to my clarification, I'm glad you did it instead.
When we believe a thought, it appears 'external' to our involuntary, and that's why it reacts 'as if' it were so. The scarecrow anaolgy is correct as an analogy. Thoughts per se are harmless, it's the BELIEVED one's that are reacted to.

An aside note to all: I've been saying; "Shift Perspective", as if it was a volitional, linear move; but it's like electrons jumping orbit, there's NO BRIDGE, one to the other' (my bad).

[sakoz]

FinalLee; (about your #10). Your inquiry about "prior" to thought; most people do not yet perceive their thinking as being a factor in their experiencing. Your a 'new breed', in the sense of caterpillar to butterfly. a cursory look would indicate two separate varieties of insect/creatures to anyone who does not know about metamorphosis.
You intuit "body wisdom", which is analogous to "body healing". We are born with both intact; they are not learned after birth like language/thinking. Most persons are IN their 'caterpillar' stage, and can't fathom 'shifting/morphing' to 'butterfly stage.' It's as if they want to fly while still 'catapillars; that can be frustrating 
We can't see/observe the healing ability of our body, we can only see/observe the effects, after the fact. The same with 'body-wisdom', we expereince the effects/affects. Your inquiry into chemicals, hormones, synapses, dendrites, brain cells, etc. indicates you want to "see" what is not observable, that is the cause of the effects. Effects are, for example, moods, we have good and bad and in,between, depending on "subliminal" beliefs.

I've been censured/criticized here for 'pointing'  people to THEIR wisdom as if that were subversive/taboo to the status quo. FinalLee, your  "a breath of fresh air" in that regard.

[FinalLee]

I'm getting really confused by the entire conversation!

SWM, yes, I know what CBT is. I've seen it be really effective in a depressed friend who is highly rational and very much a "thinking sensing" (in the Meyers-Briggs sense) personality.

It's also like lighting a match in a powder-keg for my BPD parent - another message that says "I'm an alien and my experiences and emotions are totally invalid and I don't deserve to be alive."

So I think that different tools work for different people.  And I'm personally not so sure where the physical dynamics begin and end. A number of people think that there is a physiological link with BPD that makes sufferers hyper-sensitive.  I observe that my BPD parent is also hyper-sensitive to noise and we also joke about the "super sniffer".  I believe there is a biological cause here;  that doesn't absolve the person from the PD and give them carte blanche not to work to behaving within socially-accepted boundaries, but I don't believe that wrong thoughts caused a personality disorder which then caused hypersensitivity to noise and to smells.

(Edited to better express my meaning.)

[sakoz]

FinalLee: Your getting confused by the entire conversation.
Do you know how many 'Schools of Psychology" there are? " So I think that different tools work for different people." Many people think the same way about that.
Phyicists work with the "building blocks" of matter. Is there a common denominator for people? We all TALK and THINK, so they are fundamental.
We use those very 'tools' in our inquiry to understand and correct. If the 'tools' themselves have flaws, can we see them and correct them with flawed 'tools'?
All tools have limits. So what recourse do we have? Wisdom/Intuition; unconscious; Jung postulated 'collective unconscious', Sheldrake the "morphogenic field'  Who said "Gia" (misspelled )
Can the unconscious be traced back to first cause? Is evolutionary drive manifesting through us? Are we misdirecting it?
To most people, their wisdom seems as far as heaven to them, so abiding there is out of the question; that too is a belief. if you believe you can or if you believe you can't; your right.

[FinalLee]

FinalLee: Your getting confused by the entire conversation.
Do you know how many 'Schools of Psychology" there are? " So I think that different tools work for different people." Many people think the same way about that.
Phyicists work with the "building blocks" of matter. Is there a common denominator for people? We all TALK and THINK, so they are fundamental.
We use those very 'tools' in our inquiry to understand and correct. If the 'tools' themselves have flaws, can we see them and correct them with flawed 'tools'?
All tools have limits. So what recourse do we have? Wisdom/Intuition; unconscious; Jung postulated 'collective unconscious', Sheldrake the "morphogenic field'  Who said "Gia" (misspelled )
Can the unconscious be traced back to first cause? Is evolutionary drive manifesting through us? Are we misdirecting it?

sakoz, I confess that I have absolutely no idea what you're driving at.

[sakoz]

FinalLee, welcome to the club, no one else does , here either. lol   I'm trying to point you to your own wisdom.  See what a difficult time I'm having?

Try this question , as a change of pace;  "Does consciousness have "observer effect" on thoughts?"
Consciousness acts like light; to illuminate 'mental images'.

[FinalLee]

FinalLee, welcome to the club, no one else does , here either. lol

What's that saying?  "Pack up my tent and move on?"

Well, that makes me feel better! ;-)

[sakoz]

Information, in the form of thought makes you feel better?  ' Behold the power of thought'

[FinalLee]

There is a difference between entirely denying the power of thought and saying that it is the origin of all our problems.

[sakoz]

FinalLee, I agree. There's a scale/spectrum/continuum, or the bell curve if you pefer.
Case by case?

[FinalLee]

Sounds good to me!

[SWM]

I'm getting really confused by the entire conversation!

SWM, yes, I know what CBT is.

this confusing conversation is a crazy ramble around the principles of CBT, but it is disguised as a manifesto of curing an insane world with the placebo effect.

I've seen it be really effective in a depressed friend who is highly rational and very much a "thinking sensing" (in the Meyers-Briggs sense) personality.

It's also like lighting a match in a powder-keg for my BPD parent - another message that says "I'm an alien and my experiences and emotions are totally invalid and I don't deserve to be alive."

So I think that different tools work for different people.

it is effective and your right different tools work for different people. also the same tools delivered in a different way will work with different people. I think the reason many tools do not work is that the therapist are not able to adapt to the differences in their patients. Abraham Maslow said "if the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail".

  And I'm personally not so sure where the physical dynamics begin and end. A number of people think that there is a physiological link with BPD that makes sufferers hyper-sensitive.  I observe that my BPD parent is also hyper-sensitive to noise and we also joke about the "super sniffer".  I believe there is a biological cause here;  that doesn't absolve the person from the PD and give them carte blanche not to work to behaving within socially-accepted boundaries, but I don't believe that wrong thoughts caused a personality disorder which then caused hypersensitivity to noise and to smells.

(Edited to better express my meaning.)

if your interested the evidence for BPD is with variants of CBT Schema Therapy, DBT (Dialectic Behavior Therapy) and CAT (Cognitive Analytic Therapy)

[FinalLee]

if your interested the evidence for BPD is with variants of CBT Schema Therapy, DBT (Dialectic Behavior Therapy) and CAT (Cognitive Analytic Therapy)

I don't know CAT. I'm familiar with DBT because it - ironically - outlines for close family and friends skills that can be used to validate the BPD when they are - what I call - throwing a temper tantrum.

I have understood "validation" to mean "Wow! I'd feel really angry too if I thought that my best friend decided to go on vacation on my birthday just to snub me." rather than "You're absolutely right. They specifically decided to go on vacation on your birthday because they don't like you."  (Hence my question in the other thread.)

I'll check out CAT.

(Modified to repair code.)