Those darn “Thought Monsters!”
Hello families! I often challenge my clients to imagine talking to another person the way that they talk to themselves when they’re stressed. And their response is usually, “I couldn’t do that! They don’t deserve to be talked to like that!”. Isn’t it interesting that so many of us are so much more willing to have critical thoughts towards ourselves than toward another person?
In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one of the main goals is to identify and call out these negative thoughts and challenge them. They can be hard to detect and sometimes it takes practice to get them to the surface. Sometimes small negative thoughts are attracted to each other and can form these big thought constructs that often overgeneralize and wage wars in our heads! I like to call these the “thought monsters”!
“I’m too irresponsible....too broke….not good enough….not brave enough….I can’t do it....I’m not smart….I’ll hurt his/her feelings….I’m a bad parent….they’ll all laugh at me….my friends won’t like me...everybody talks about me” are some examples of these little irritating thoughts that often throw a monkey-wrench into our plans or goals and can cost us huge amounts of energy.
These “thought monsters” can develop early on in childhood. We all have them. We most likely created them to protect us in some way - perhaps from the pain and discomfort of failure, or being bullied, or from stress in relationships, ect. But they often don’t serve us well anymore. Or do they?
David Burns, PhD, a professor at Stanford who developed “The Feel Good Institute” created a system for working with these thoughts that I learned in one of his workshops. He challenges clients to decide whether they REALLY want to change them! How have they served us? Are we really ready to let them go? Most of his work involves us preparing ourselves to let these destructive thought patterns go in a series of written assignments. Great stuff!
One great tool to help break up these destructive thoughts is the “three question technique”. It goes as follows:
Ask yourself the following three questions and if you answer “no” to at least two out of the three then you know your thought is irrational and probably coming from a “thought monster!”.
1. Is my thought based on fact?
2. Does my thought help me achieve my goals?
3. Does my thought help me feel the way I want to feel?
This month we will look for those pesky little thought monsters through art, books, writing and narratives, and replace them with positive thoughts that serve us. Keeping it light and fun is key!!