A thought is just a thing
I hear this used in coaching a lot – and use it myself a lot too to be fair!
When I did my NLP (neuro-linguistic programming, or put more simply, the way our thinking drives our behaviours) training many years ago, one of the real A-Ha moments for me was understanding, possibly for the first time in a conscious way, the feedback loop that occurs in our brains. A given situation will trigger a thought, which in turn will create our feeling towards the situation. Whatever we feel about the situation will drive our behaviour or response to it, which will then determine the outcome. And so it goes on. That outcome/result will drive a further thought and so on.
If we keep repeating this loop in any given situation, then we can develop a belief about that situation. This is when it can become dangerous to the way we operate. A belief is like a thought set in concrete, and an unhelpful belief can have all sorts of ramifications. OCD is an extreme case of unhelpful “concreted” thoughts leading to ingrained behaviours from which a sufferer finds it difficult to break free.
But thoughts are not facts. They are just that – thoughts. If we are being unconsciously driven by unhelpful thoughts and treating them as facts, then we can end up reacting to situations in an unhelpful way.
CBT uses thought records to help you to unpick some of the mind messes that your unhelpful thoughts can create.
For example, suppose Laura desperately wants to leave a successful career in the corporate world to set up a yoga business. Laura’s thoughts might trend along the belief that she will fail, she won’t be good enough to have her own successful business, that she will look stupid and so on. As these negative and unhelpful thoughts repeat in her mind, she will believe them and the fight/flight response will kick in. So not only is she now mentally not well prepared for the challenges ahead, but she is also being challenged physically, with adrenaline and cortisol running riot in her body.
If she can overturn these negative thoughts with more helpful ones: “This will be an exciting challenge”;“ I know lots of people who I know would love to learn yoga with me”; “, Well, let’s just give it a go – at least I’ll know I’ve tried and won’t have any regrets later…”, then her body can get on with its normal job of repairing and restoring and her mind is as focused and as well set up for success as it can be.
In her excellent podcast, Ask the Therapist, Sarah Rees explains how this can be done in Episode 33 “Exploring Thought Records”. By examining our thoughts, by “taking the thought to court”, we can weigh up the evidence that supports the thought, and the evidence that does not support it. By repeatedly doing this, we can begin to consciously regain control over our default thinking.
