What other animal does this? Us humans can be victims of our own success sometimes. In CBT we recognise that our thoughts have a big impact on how we feel, on what we do, and on our overall wellbeing. There are loads of different helpful things that can be done with thoughts, depending on the situation. What is always helpful, is to firstly identify thoughts as thoughts rather than facts. We can write them down, challenge them, reframe them – disentangle and decentre from them a little. Bring in compassion with questions for ourselves such as ‘what would I say to a friend?’
Beck, the grandfather of CBT- was a psychoanalyst who founded CBT. He was interested in the level of thought that patients didn’t report to him. They reported dreams, well formulated opinions, beliefs, but he came to notice a whirring continuous stream of what he called ‘automatic thoughts’. People typically have over 6,000 per day. Behind every action you take there’s a little thought in there. You might feel it more than think it, or notice it as an urge, compulsion, or urge to avoid something. Beck studied what happened if he made his patients aware of this level of thinking. The whirring often continuous stream of thinking. ‘What will I have for lunch? When did I last speak to my sister? When will I go to a beach again. I’m hungry’. He found, and I’ve found since in using his prescribed techniques, that this is really helpful. If we can practice noticing our thoughts as thoughts, not facts– we have a choice point. We can disentangle, let them pass, and protect ourselves from being dragged around by them emotionally. It’s easier to practice on more neutral thoughts initially than the big emotionally laden headliners.
In meditation, we notice thoughts as mental events. If we’re able to catch ourselves in time, we don’t get into the content. Instead of charging in we notice with curiosity the thought, from an observer’s perspective, maybe labelling it- worrying, remembering, doubting, and then letting it go gently and deliberately coming back to the practice. Maybe steadying yourself with a few breaths and dropping the attention down into your body.
Our thoughts are different if we’re hungry, tired, angry, in pain. Therefore, how can they be facts? They’re flavoured by past experiences and do not hold up in a court of law. Free yourself from the tyranny of believing all your thoughts. We know that when we’re feeling low, anxious or tired our thoughts can become more catastrophic, rigid, black and white, that we can take things more personally, think we know what others are thinking and that we tend to predict the future, rarely positively. It is good for us to challenge our thoughts, or disentangle from them.
In a moment of overwhelm or emotional distress, putting pen to paper can be helpful. Scrawling all your thoughts down. Which is the ‘hottest’? In CBT we call emotionally laden thoughts ‘hot thoughts’. You might have a hundred thoughts that sort of bob on by – will I ever see a donkey again, what’s my favourite crisp flavour, does everyone think I’m an idiot? – argh! This one Is clearly associated with the strongest emotion. Consider doing something to soothe or distract yourself and come back to it calmly. Think about the evidence for and against, and what might be a more balanced view? Or maybe the pros and cons of continuing to think that way. It’s a life’s work to notice our thoughts and when we’ve gone off in them. Be kind to yourself, it might sound simple but I’m painfully aware it’s not easy.
Noone is suggesting that you stop thinking all together. I don’t think fleeting automatic thoughts do our innate wisdom justice. There are more meaningful levels at which we experience things. I had a wonderful meditation teacher who taught me that we’re often 90% in our heads and 10% in our bodies, and we’d benefit from reversing that. If we’re lost in worry or spiralling thoughts, or ruminating, this is unlikely to help an emotional difficulty. It’s more like pouring kerosine on it. We have a really understandable but unhelpful instinct to bring our problem solving skills to emotional difficulties. You can’t think your way out of a thinking problem – rumination is like revving your tyres when you’re stuck in the mud. Almost irresistible, but you know it’s only making things worse. Dropping the attention down into the body can be helpful, in ways that I don’t expect you to believe until you’ve tried. I really didn’t believe in this stuff. But you can imagine breathing in and out of the soles of your feet for a few breaths and see what that does to your composure.
If you use any popular search engine you might find there are a few top, sponsored results. We can bring this concept to our thoughts. What are your top five, frequent plays? Are there patterns of rumination about what other people think or you, your essential good enough-ness, that nothing ever works out for you? If we can bring awareness to these loops they loose their sting. Much like rewatching The Titanic 50 times, it’s unlikely to keep moving you to the same extent. Decentring from our thoughts, identifying them as such, reduces our sensitivity to them and helps us retain balance under pressure.