What Are You Thinking?

Here’s an illustration. We might compare these memories to scratches or grooves in a vinyl record. Depending on your age, you might struggle with this analogy.

A record would sometimes get a scratch on its surface, and then as it rotated, the needle would just drop right into that scratch and the song you’re listening to would loop the same few seconds over and over. If CDs get scratched, they don’t work well either. (This problem doesn’t exist anymore thanks to our music now being in digital form!)

This is similar to how emotional experiences work.

We have certain mental and emotional scars or scratches. Our mind constantly falls back into these old grooves and keeps us locked into certain attitudes and patterns of thinking.

These emotions can be triggered by something small or unexpected, a thought, an experience, or a flashback.

Any number of things can suddenly trigger one of these memories that we thought we had taken care of. It can come rolling back on us like the ocean tide if we’re not right on top of our thoughts, disciplining ourselves, and making sure that we keep these things suppressed. Otherwise, we tend to put our mind in neutral and just drift right back into some of these old patterns of thinking.

These thoughts are oftentimes fantasies and are almost always both negative and unhealthy by nature.

And yet, we continue to harbor them in our minds. We can’t seem to get rid of them. When they come, they seem to take over our behavior and our outlook.

87