4/27/2024 0 Comments Book automatic negative thoughts![]() So your brain decides to throw a thought parade in honor of your deepest fears and insecurities. Your brain is now like a movie director who can only make sequels to disaster movies. All these actions might seem innocuous or even productive but they all have the effect of supergluing that annoying idea onto your consciousness.īy obsessing over them, analyzing them, and giving them the starring role in our mental drama, we turn these fleeting blips into blockbuster franchises. You try to figure out what the thought “means.” You ask why the thought is popping up. You try to push the thought out of your mind. It happens in many forms: You try to answer a question the thought poses. But when you’re not willing to have a thought, the mental wrestling match begins. “An obsession is simply a thought that you’re not willing to have.” If you’re not struggling with something, your short attention span kicks in and soon you’re considering something else. I’ll think about it a lot.” The more you try to suppress a thought, the more it comes back, like a boomerang with a vendetta. This must be important.” You tell yourself, “Don’t think about it,” and your brain responds, “Don’t think about what? This thing? Got it. You wrestle with it to make it go away but the message your brain gets is “Hmm, lots of activity. “What you resist tends to persist.” A thought annoys you. At times, we treat every bizarre, random, and utterly ludicrous thought as if it’s a dire message from the depths of our soul. But just because your brain is serving up a buffet of existential dread and cringe-worthy memories doesn’t mean you have to eat it. Basically, you become so buddy-buddy with your thoughts that you can’t tell where they end and you begin. “Cognitive fusion” is when you take random thoughts too seriously. It’s not really the content of the thought that matters it’s your relationship to the thought and your response to it that makes all the difference. Often, they’re the mental equivalent of butt dials. Thoughts don’t necessarily mean anything. A thought is not necessarily a fact or even a statement about your character. Our brains are like seedy dive bars at 2 a.m.-anything can wander in, no ID required. You have all kinds of odd thoughts that you immediately dismiss. The first thing to remember is just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s like getting mad at your heart for beating. But then one gets under your skin, and suddenly you’re berating yourself for thinking “bad” things, as if you had any say in the matter. We all live under the grand illusion that we’re the CEOs of our brains. We’re going to get solid insight from three books: “ Pure O”, “ The Unwanted Thoughts and Intense Emotions Workbook”, and “ Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts.” If your head is a bad neighborhood you can’t move out of, mindfulness can help. Okay, time to end the self-induced torture and do a U-turn on this roundabout of ruminations. That’s like telling someone on fire to stop being so flammable. The advice we get for dealing with the issue is priceless. Why the heck can’t your brain be this creative, persistent and resourceful when it comes to other projects? And the worst part is these thoughts can lead to impulsive, bad decisions and regrettable behavior. Your gray matter acts like an annoying younger sibling, poking you with a stick to see how much it can get away with before you snap. We’ve all had intrusive thoughts at one time or another: impostor syndrome, embarrassing memories, fears, anxieties, guilt, regret or the kind of existential questions that would make Sartre say, “Whoa, that’s a bit much.” Except instead of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” it’s “What if everyone’s secretly laughing at you?” Your brain, that squishy blob sitting in its dark skull-room is like those old jukeboxes in dive bars that play the same three songs on a loop. In the theater of the mind, unwanted thoughts are the hecklers in the back row, throwing popcorn at the screen of your consciousness.
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