You usually think . . . that your feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the event itself. It seldom occurs to you that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to your emotions, rather than the other way around... You are... literally hypnotized into believing that your feelings arise in response to events. Your feelings, however, cause the events you perceive. Secondarily, you do of course then react to those events.