Dealing with painful and unwanted thoughts ...

We all experience unhelpful, unwanted and even painful thoughts. It’s just one of the things minds do. Part of our mind monitors our performance and passes comment.

If we are doing well it might say things like: ‘well done’, ‘that was great’ or ‘hah, that showed them!’. If we are doing less well then it might say ‘That was rubbish’, ‘’you’re so fat’ ‘you can’t do that’, ‘they don’t like you’ and even ‘you’re useless’ or ‘you’re a failure’.

And associated with some of these comments and thoughts are various feelings – sadness, anxiety, guilt, shame, loneliness, disgust, etc.

Having trained in cognitive-behaviour therapy I’ve spent hundreds of hours helping people identify, dispute and debate such thoughts - for instance using thought capture sheets, looking for evidence for and against them, doing some behavioural experiments etc. And then helping people generate alternative, more rational, less self-disturbing beliefs and forms of self-talk. And many people found this helpful. But I now do this less often, and in part because the evidence suggests that this disputing and arguing with yourself approach may not be as helpful as we first thought.

What I often encourage clients to do now is, rather than try to change the content of their thinking, to change their relationship with their thinking. Helping them develop the skill of seeing thoughts as things which come and go, which pass, more like objects than an enduring part of themselves.

I try to teach them how to ‘unhook’ themselves from unhelpful and unwanted thoughts, whilst taking steps in the direction of the life they wish to live. And when it comes to the unpleasant feelings they may be having, to explore the skill of acceptance – being willing to have the feeling, rather than struggling to get rid of it, or avoid it.

Not wanting the feeling - some feelings very uncomfortable to experience - but allowing it – again, in the service of making progress and taking steps towards what matters.

And there is another approach to better mental health and wellbeing I share with people which is different again! (I do like people to have choices and personalise their approach). And this is to help people recognise that some of their problems might be the result being in a competitive, threat-oriented mental state (no fault of their own) in which their critical self-part (their inner critic) attacks them, puts them down, undermines and beats them up, often with a harsh, condemning tone of voice. And then I help them to activate and experience a different mental state - very old from an evolutionary perspective - and that is their caring, non-competitive, compassionate mind, and to cultivate and experience self-compassion in the face of their suffering, stress and internal struggle.

So, there are many ways to deal with or respond to unwanted or painful thoughts and feelings, and my approach to helping people – and helping myself ! – has changed over time.

I’ll be exploring these and other approaches to reducing unwanted stress in my free webinar next week, which you can enrol on by clicking the link below. There will be time for some Q and A too.

https://drtimanstiss.com/stress-webinar