4 minute read
How to Change Your Thinking
Written by Dr. Natalie Christine, Clinical Psychologist and Wellness Coach
At a very basic level, humans don’t do anything unless we believe it benefits us in some way, even if the benefit isn’t obvious at first, or the action is counterintuitive. This applies to our thinking habits as well. Take “worry,” for example. Most people might say that worrying is a negative thing. But when you probe a little further, you’ll find people hold some very positive ideas about worry. Like: “worrying helps me solve problems,” “worrying helps me prepare,” “worrying makes me feel like I’m doing something,” or “worrying shows I care.” These positive beliefs can make a negative “worry habit” very resistant to change. In other words, we cling to negative thoughts, like worry, because we believe they serve us even when they don’t.
As a therapist and coach, my job is to listen for patterns of unhelpful thinking. There are clues in the way a person talks that signal their outlook on a situation or life in general. Sometimes a person’s thoughts can contain overly pessimistic, self-critical, self-blaming, ruminative or obsessive patterns, and when these patterns of thinking lead to significant distress, we consider them negative or “maladaptive.”
However, it isn’t always the case that negative thinking is “bad.” Sometimes a negative appraisal is the most appropriate and accurate one to make. Our goal in therapy is to give people the tools to adjust their thinking when needed. We do this by asking a series of guided questions that begin to reveal how a person really thinks.
We also use methods to help break “bad” mental habits. Meditation is one of the very best scientifically-backed ways to train the brain to let go of negative thoughts. Through meditation practice, we gain greater awareness of our thinking patterns and are able to observe our thoughts better.
You can also train your brain to think more positively. For example, studies show that a person’s outlook on life is heavily influenced by their “explanatory style.” Essentially, how we explain an event significantly influences how we experience that event, for better or worse. If you tell yourself that a bad situation will last “forever,” affect “everything,” and is “all my fault,” you will most likely feel depressed or defeated. However, if you tell yourself that a bad situation will last “for a while, but not forever,” affect “many things, but not everything,” and “it’s nobody’s fault–it just is,” you will most likely feel neutral, maybe even optimistic. Because our thinking style can determine how quickly we bounce back from adversity, it also fuels our resilience.
In therapy, we don’t work to control thoughts–we teach people how to relate to their thoughts differently so they don’t have so much control over us. We do this through a variety of techniques designed to help people monitor their thinking patterns and develop alternative ones. This is called “cognitive reframing.” Our goal, ultimately, is to develop greater cognitive flexibility, which may include seeing the bigger picture, taking a different perspective, adjusting expectations, and making more accurate predictions. This has been shown to influence our emotional reactivity and behavior as well. Other skills we teach include getting better at accepting uncertainty, “testing” theories about how helpful our negative thinking is, and recognizing the difference between “productive” and “unproductive” worry.
For more information or to book a speaking engagement, visit www.drnataliechristine.com
