What changes first: your feelings or your behaviour? The answer is: it can be either. When your feelings about something change, your behaviour often changes naturally. For example, if you watch footage of animals being slaughtered, there's a good chance you'll feel upset. Suddenly, eating a vegan meal might sound a lot more appealing.
But what if your feelings form a serious problem? What if they are making your life harder instead of better? Let's explore that. Many of the people I work with struggle with Pure OCD. This means they experience intrusive thoughts, while most of the compulsions happen mentally rather than physically. People with Retroactive Jealousy, one form of Pure OCD, can spend hours analysing their partner's past. Some even experience vivid mental movies that replay over and over in their minds.
If you struggle with retroactive jealousy, you probably try to get rid of your feelings by analysing them. You look for evidence that your jealousy is justified, or evidence that you shouldn't feel this way at all. Ironically, this search for evidence is exactly what keeps the jealousy alive. The more attention you give to those feelings, the more important your brain assumes they must be.
You can wait for your feelings to change. You can check them every day. "Am I still jealous?" "Does thinking about my partner's ex still bother me?" "Maybe I should ask my partner one more question." The chances of simply waking up one day and suddenly feeling different are quite small, especially when these emotions have become so deeply ingrained.
In situations like this, your behaviour has to change first. Start making different choices, even if your feelings haven't caught up yet. With time, your feelings usually begin to follow.
Of course, that is a scary thing to do. I'm not pretending it's easy. The rumination, searching for solutions to your anxiety, or asking your partner the same questions over and, all feel as if you're doing something useful. They create the illusion of control, as though you're taking action to make yourself feel better.
But these behaviours are often the very thing keeping the anxiety alive. To break the cycle, you'll eventually have to stop doing them. At first, that can feel like sitting in a roller coaster while the safety bar refuses to lock into place. But if you stay with the discomfort, you'll discover something surprising. The roller coaster doesn't suddenly do terrifying loops or fly off the rails. Whatever comes next, you can handle it.
It will feel uncomfortable for a while. You'll have to do something that feels very frightening: not try to fix your feelings. But if you keep practising, your feelings will gradually change as well.
So don't wait for your feelings to change before you start behaving differently. Set realistic goals. Trust your own strength. And start practising new habits.
Marloes Spaander is a therapist with a background in social work and many years of experience teaching Critical Thinking. She now uses that experience to help people recognize and break free from unhelpful thinking patterns, create more space for calmness, trust and mental freedom. Marloes makes complex psychological processes easy to understand through stories, metaphors and personal experiences.
She offers online therapy for:
