By Malek Mneime, Ph.D.

The field of psychology has long debated over the distinction between emotions and moods. Many psychologists posit that emotions are intense and short-lived responses, comprised of thoughts, physiological changes, and behaviors, to a tangible stimulus, whereas moods are chronic or long-lasting responses to potential stimuli (often with no identifiable stimulus). From another perspective, moods can be considered emotions that have persisted for a disproportionate amount of time and no longer serve an adaptive function. This distinction has important implications for etiological theories of psychopathology and the treatment of psychopathology.

At least since Darwin’s time, we’ve known that several basic emotions (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) appear innately programmed. For example, people born blind still smile even though they have never seen others smile. These basic and innate emotions also exist across cultures. It is believed by many that emotions serve adaptive functions. For example, fear allows us to escape dangerous situations, whereas joy or happiness allows us to approach potentially rewarding situations. Without these basic, adaptive qualities of emotions, the human race may have gone extinct long ago.

Moods can also be adaptive. Anxiety, which has been defined as a mood in which people fear a potentially dangerous situation in the future, has both positive and negative qualities. On the one hand, anxiety can motivate people to do things to resolve a potentially dangerous situation. For example, if one is anxious for days about an upcoming exam, the anxiety may motivate the person to study more. Depression, also a mood, allows organisms to reserve energy and resources in situations in which activity is fruitless (e.g., famine). If these moods persist when the potentially dangerous situation has been resolved, however, they have the potential to impair life functioning and decrease quality of life.

Maladaptive moods, or “emotional distress/disturbance,” often persist when people repeatedly think of and believe the same negative scenarios will occur. “I am going to fail this test, it will be awful and terrible. I will be a loser….I will always fail….I will never be good enough…I can’t stand this….I should not fail this test, but I am going to fail this test, it will be awful….I will fail this test…I will never succeed….I am not good enough….I am going to fail this test.” From a learning perspective, this negative, inner dialogue becomes associated with a subjective feeling (e.g., anxiety) and set of behaviors (e.g., avoidance) such that when a similar stressful situation arises in the future (which it almost always does), these thoughts are re-elicited and re-processed. This is what some psychologists refer to as “mood dependent memory.”

In assessing irrational beliefs, I sometimes ask people what they were thinking when they experienced a disturbed mood. Some people will say “my mind was blank,” or “I wasn’t thinking anything,” which is consistent with the aforementioned (though debated) definition of a mood. From a learning perspective, this makes sense. Over time, beliefs may become so strongly associated with specific triggers that they are elicited automatically and relatively unconsciously by the brain. Even though the beliefs may be inaccessible to consciousness, they affect us nonetheless (much like subliminal presentations) because of older pathways in the brain that have evolved to prepare us immediately for action.

The fields of psychophysiology and neuroscience can also shed some light on the “mind-blankness” phenomenon. Modern research has revealed intriguing findings pertaining to the differential roles of the cerebral hemispheres. For example, the right hemisphere (RH) appears to be predominantly involved in the perception, experience, and expression of negative emotion (e.g., disgust, fear, sadness), whereas the left hemisphere (LH) appears to be predominantly involved in the perception, experience, and expression of positive emotion (e.g., happiness). If the majority of our negative emotions arise initially and predominantly from the RH, which has no or little capability for language (expression or comprehension), then those negative feelings cannot be put into words until they cross over to the LH. Indeed, it has been hypothesized that a condition known as alexithymia, in which individuals have difficulty identifying and describing emotions, is due primarily to deficiencies in the ability of emotion to cross over to the LH (i.e., deficiencies in the corpus callosum, which connects the hemispheres).

Such findings and hypotheses suggest a potential biological reason for statements such as “my mind was blank” when experiencing a disturbed mood. Such responses suggest a strong attentional focus on the feeling itself, to the exclusion of conscious, language-based thoughts, while experiencing the mood. Although imperfect retrospective memory and conditioning may be reasons for such statements, it is also plausible that a RH attentional focus provides a potential biological reason for such statements; that is, the individual’s mind actually contained no language-based thoughts at the time because their attention was predominantly focused on the negative mood. Consistent with this hypothesis, numerous studies have found increased right-relative-to-left hemisphere activity or activation in people with anxiety and/or depressive disorders.

Because over-attention to negative feelings, most of which are derived preferentially from the RH, may maintain the greater right vs. left hemisphere activity (and therefore, the negative feeling), putting those feelings into words and involving one’s LH may shift the hemispheric balance and reduce the negative mood. Nowadays, I may still ask people what they were thinking as they felt disturbed emotionally, if only to confirm my hypothesis; however, I will often also ask which of the four types of irrational beliefs identified by Dr. Ellis would “fit/go with” or “apply to” the feeling or mood. Therefore, if you find yourself feeling emotionally disturbed, but have difficulty putting those feelings into words, it might help to ask yourself, “Am I catastrophizing, demanding, rating, or intolerant of frustration?” From there, rational statements can be devised to further counteract maladaptive moods or emotional disturbance.