I am thankful for so much on this Thanksgiving Day.
I am thankful to be alive and in love with life and with so many living creatures.
I am thankful for my eyes and for what they see.
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I am thankful for my ears. I’m thankful for what they hear.
What are you thankful for, in six words, less, or more?
On Thanksgiving and every other day, I am thankful for YOU!
Emotional Reasoning is one of the cognitive distortions in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Emotional Reasoning is defined here as follows:
Emotional Reasoning.
We take our emotions as evidence for the truth. Examples: “I feel inadequate, so there must be something wrong with me.” “I feel overwhelmed and hopeless, therefore the situation must be impossible to change or improve.” (Note that the latter can contribute to procrastination.) While suppressing or judging feelings can be unhelpful, it’s important to recognize the difference between feelings and facts.
My definition of “Emotional Reasoning” does NOT include examples of the negative aspect of that, as in “I do NOT feel that way, therefore it’s not true.” I’m reasoning that I could have written that definition with this example: “I do not feel adequate, so there must be something wrong with me.”
All this came to my emotional mind this morning when I read this news headline:
President Trump: “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached”
To me, it doesn’t really feel like
That is all emotional reasoning. I know that two of those statements are true, no matter what I’m feeling. And I have many emotions about the third statement, so who knows if it’s true?
Do you see emotional reasoning in any of my photos from yesterday?
Yesterday at work, somebody said that this photo of Harley (taken by my soon-to-be-husband Michael) …
… felt like a photo that Ellen DeGeneres might want to include on her show. That seemed like emotional reasoning to me, but I submitted it anyway.
“Do You Hear What I Hear” feels like a Christmas song, but that’s not how it was written.
Here’s a portion of the story I heard on the radio yesterday:
While artfully couched in the iconography of the Christian nativity, the songwriters were making a political statement: a plea for peace, and a reminder of the ravages of war.
The song opens with the night wind speaking to a lamb, long a literary symbol of peace. Soon we hear the line, “A star, a star, dancing in the sky//With a tail as big as a kite.”
“The star was meant to be a bomb,” said Gabrielle Regney.
Later we hear the lyrics “A child, a child, shivers in the cold,” which Regney said is a reference to the “real children” who inspired the song.
And the line, “Let us bring him silver and gold” was a reference to “poor children,” said Regney — a reminder of the human cost of war.
But no matter how you interpret the song, Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne left no mistake about the central message at the climax of the song.
“The biggest part for them was the ‘pray for peace’ line,” said Regney. “That line, ‘pray for peace,’ was very big for both of them.”
Do you hear what I hear in this emotional rendition of that song?
Feel free to share emotional reasoning in a comment, below.
There are reasons why I end every post with the emotion of gratitude.
Look what I made!
I made a life filled with
Look what my future in-laws’ cats are doing — making out the smell of our cats on my boots (which I didn’t make).
Here‘s “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” by Panic! At the Disco.
Look what I made! Another blog post!
Thanks to all who help me make it through every day, including YOU.
Today, I give thanks for you.
I am also giving thanks for everyone and everything else, including whatever I photographed yesterday.
I give thanks for Jimi Hendrix and messages to love.
I’ll end this Thanksgiving 2019 post by repeating this message to love: I give thanks for you.
Yesterday, I spent many hours with my boyfriend Michael’s family celebrating Thanksgiving.
Here’s the family of photos I took at his sister’s home and his brother’s home. Which ones say “family” to you?
Kayla, the daughter of Michael’s brother John (a/k/a Moe) IS awesome and yesterday she and I had a conversation, surrounded by her family, about the pros and cons of marriage. If I did marry into that family, I’d certainly have lots of blogging material.
What family music would you include here?
Fantastic thanks to Michael’s family including his siblings Lydia, Steve, Martin, and John; to his niece Kayla and the rest of his extended family; to friends of the Malone family; to Sister Sledge; to everyone else who helped me create this family-valued post; and to you — of course! — for being a member of my blogging family, here and now.
On Thanksgiving Day 2016, you can find fantastic thanks here for …
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 