Our community is quite full of people that identify very strongly with their thoughts. They have formed the habit of latching on to their thoughts almost automatically. They see thoughts as sacred, powerful, and worthy of attention, honor and respect at all times.
“This must be important. It comes from inside ME!”
If you feel that statement in your bones, then you are likely used to following some basic rules surrounding thinking and interpreting your thoughts.
Do any of these statements about thinking sound familiar to you?
“I must trust my gut.”
“My thoughts are my intuition telling me something. I must find out what that is!”
“My thoughts are who I am. They signal my virtues and represent the core of my being.”
“My thoughts are the voice of my soul. To heal, I must examine my thoughts to find out what my soul is saying.”
These are just a few short examples. If any of them resonate with you, then there is a chance that you are in the habit of identifying with your thoughts and treating them as very important automatically and by default. This is likely having a real impact on your mental state by helping to fuel your anxiety or at least keeping you stuck and struggling in recovery.
Let me be clear on this to avoid any confusion. Nobody is ever telling you that you’re not allowed to have thoughts or that nothing you think ever matters. This is not an Ayn Rand book. I am only saying that automatically treating all or most of your thoughts as sacred and worthy of attention and examination can be problematic.
Why?
To put it bluntly, our minds are capable producing extreme genius and astounding beauty, but they are also capable of producing mundane nonsense or even complete garbage. The ability of a human mind to produce crap becomes especially pronounced when under stress. A stressed out, anxious mind will throw all kinds of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Much of it winds up being unhelpful, to say the least.
If you’re reading this, the odds are high that you’ve experienced rapid, persistent thoughts that tell you that you are in continuous danger of dying, losing control, going insane, or performing unspeakable acts against your will. These thoughts never come true no matter how loud and powerful they may seem, yet they persist. Here we have real world examples of the ability of a human mind to produce content of questionable value.
Before you freak out, take a breath. You are still a beautiful being, but sometimes your mind doesn’t bring it’s A game. That’s OK.
When you stop and look at this situation, can you start to see why operating from the assertion that you must follow every thought could cause a problem? Maybe you can start to see how viewing your thoughts as sacred and important has already contributed to anxiety and recovery problems in your life. If you’re in the habit of following your catastrophic “what if” thoughts every time they pop up, you know what I’m saying.
The goal today is to point out the habit of living as if every thought is special, and why this not terribly helpful, especially in the context of anxiety and recovery. This is a topic we will return to and touch on pretty regularly.
For now, see if you can take a few minutes today to consider how you relate to your thoughts and what you believe about them. Are you relating to your thoughts in a way that is helping you, or hurting you? Do you want to BE your thoughts?
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the benefits of doing one thing at a time.
I just finished listening to “Long Story Short” by Margot Leitman on Audible. It’s a really interesting analysis on the art of effective storytelling as a form of entertainment. I really enjoyed it. It even gave me some creative writing and journaling ideas!
Every Tuesday I’ll let you know what I’m currently reading. I read quite a bit on psychology and philosophy, but really you never know what I’ll have in my Kindle or Audible libraries! If you’re on Goodreads and into books, you can follow/friend me over there. Here’s a link to my “currently reading” shelf. I’d love to see what you’re reading and what you recommend.
31. You Don't Want To Be Your Thoughts