[THREAD] let’s talk about thoughts. I mentioned them a lot in threads but I think they are important enough to deserve their own thread. They are central to our mental health and are one of the main reasons why we feel bad. Why do thoughts play such a central role?
First of all, we get many thoughts a day. The average is 80,000. Even in healthy people, around 60% of them are negative. In terms of evolution, the more paranoid and negative we were, the more we were on guard for dangers and likely to survive, which then passed on.
Given that we get 80k a thought a day, what makes some of them stick and the other ones we forget as quickly as they come? The answer is the amygdala (emotional centre of the brain). The more an emotion is attached to a thought, the more it is flagged as important and return!
For example, intrusive thoughts are scary thoughts either sexual or violent in nature that repeat themselves over and over again. Every single human on the planet has them. But for those of us who are anxious or stressed out, we are more likely to respond to them by panicking.
When we panic about them, the brain says that they are important and means that they will come back rather than be forgotten. In the past, that process helped us survive. Now it hinders us. That holds true for any other thought. Even when it comes to depression,
we have certain thoughts that tell us “we are worthless or a failure or unloveable”. Because they make us feel sad (emotion attached to them), they are likely to come back and make us feel even sadder. Thoughts can also influence our behaviours.
Intrusive thoughts and ones that give us anxiety may make us feel so panicked that we no longer leave the house. The ones that make us feel depressed will affect our self-esteem, and self-efficacy because we try to look for evidence that these thoughts are true.
How do we break from them? First of all, it is important to adopt a non judgmental approach to our thoughts. The main reason why they remain is because we attach an emotion to them. But if we just look at them and let them have their space in our minds without judging them,
those emotions start to go down and the thoughts are more likely to leave. Another mechanism is the one I mentioned in a previous thread. Are these thoughts facts or interpretations? Facts mean that they are confirmed by logic whereas interpretations are ones that are not.
Finally, let’s look at evidence for and evidence against. What evidence is there to suggest that these thoughts are true or not? Is there any history to confirm that? Most likely no or very little evidence. Then we write a new thought based on the evidence.
The world is nuanced and grey, so those thoughts that say “no one loves me” etc are very likely to be wrong simply because even if one person loves us, it invalidates the whole thought. This is the approach we take in cognitive behavioural theory.
We slowly shift the way we think to a more nuanced realistic way and slowly move away from those patterns of thinking that keep our depression and anxiety around. I hope that this made some sense and wasn’t too confusing 😊
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