The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

External and internal reality affect each other continually. We live in bothrealms of reality, and ignoring either will reduce our chances to manage reality in ahealthy manner. There are few things that are "all in our head." Most of the time,the worries or internal discomforts we experience are related to some aspect ofexternal reality. On the other hand, objective facts do not completely determinehow our lives will be experienced. It is the way that we react to these facts thatleads to joy or despair, to physical and emotional health, or to illness anddemoralization.Thoughts and memories appear to be entirely within the realm of internalreality (that is, cannot be observed as a thought or a memory by anyone other thanthe person having them). Physical actions are in the realm of external reality, thatis, they are potentially observable and measurable.Feelings, on the other hand, straddle the boundaries of the internal andexternal realms of reality. For example, emotional reactions can often beaccurately perceived by others. Their physiological aspects can certainly bemeasured. Yet, the core aspects of emotions are only experienced by theindividual. Only you know the depth of your sadness at hearing bad news, eventhough your face may betray that you are feeling sad. You are certainly the onlyone who knows the myriad of additional feelings that may be present during suchan event. Similarly, we can measure the electrical or biochemical activity thattakes place within our brain when we are engaged in the act of seeing, hearing,thinking, or remembering. We can represent this information in numbers, andtranslate these numbers into amazingly realistic "pictures" of the brain in action.However, the actual experience can only be described by the person having it.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 20