I'm sure many would but that doesn't make them correct. In fact, them having a propensity to form incorrect beliefs on this particular point might maybe be a hint as to why "PTSD" ends with a "D".
Are you saying that there are "incorrect" feelings? 🤨 I am definitely not seeking an argument, by the way. Just trying to understand your perspective.
Of course there are.
It was about a year ago that Ralph Yarl was shot in the head twice for getting the wrong address. The homeowner felt scared of this 16 year old stranger who was just a little lost. His feeling of fear was incorrect and led him to do something awful.
Well, this feels like a pretty extreme example, but I'll room with it.
I'm not comfortable judging another person's feelings but that doesn't mean their reaction or behavior based on those feelings is appropriate. Clearly this is an example of somebody who had the wrong response to an emotion.
No, it was straight up the wrong emotion.
He was not a threat. It was incorrect.
And even if no action was taken, the fear is still a negative. As someone who feels a lot of things, I hate to say it but sometimes you just have to go "these feelings are not based in reality" and ditch them.
I don’t see where they said people with PTSD have incorrect feelings. They said people with PTSD often have incorrect beliefs on this point of feeling unsafe meaning they actually are or are not currently unsafe.
I'd argue that all feelings are valid. It's the underlying belief that's false. Feelings are based on beliefs. Feeling scared because you believe you're in danger is perfectly valid, regardless of fact. It's the belief that's incorrect, not the reaction. When the belief changes, so does the feeling.
I don't think it's that simple. Like, that's clearly how it ideally works but feelings are stickier than that. They can also be the result of subconscious processing that might not be reflected in conscious, explicit beliefs.
I said beliefs, not "conscious, explicit beliefs" though. 🙂 We can have buried beliefs, beliefs based on experience, beliefs based on teachings from society. And they can be true or not. Change your beliefs, change your feelings. Simple, but not easy. Esp when it feels like that belief protects us!
Okay. I concede that it's a possible usage of the word but I don't think it's helpful in this context because it transforms what seemed like a specific causal explanation - one that I would even argue is correct to a first approximation - into a quasi-tautology.
Buried belief: People X are criminals. Feeling: Fear the strange X person. Oh, but X proved herself Not a criminal. So now I can either drop the first belief and not have that fear, or I can change it to "most x..." and still be racist and afraid. Even if I explicitly believe I'm not racist.
I still think it's causal. The belief underlies the feeling. Regardless of the nature of the belief. I think it's why we sometimes have feelings we can't explain too. Because we don't understand our own beliefs well enough. And often we won't change them, even in the face of new info.
Interesting that you'd get that from that. Maybe you're being confused by the way "safe" is a rare (the only?) example of a polysemous word with one meaning that's a feeling & one meaning that's a state of the world.
Now if you think that pointing out the existence of feelings that don't match the state of the world they're normally a response to (or cue for) means saying they're incorrect that's your word choice but the phenomenon clearly exists.
I mean, yeah, it wouldn’t be a disorder if there weren’t, but I think you might be conflating morally incorrect (which no feelings are) with factually incorrect (which some feelings are).
All feelings are factually incorrect. That’s why we differentiate between feeling & thinking, opinion & fact.
Oh I just understood the confusion! Sorry it took so long! The "them" that weren't "correct" in my tweet was "people with PTSD who don't agree with OP", not "feelings".
