negative thoughts

Deborah Horton

Positive Focus

Most people in therapy do not react positively when it is suggested that they focus on the positive. To many, it seems like an oversimplification and that combatting life long trauma and negative beliefs cannot be that simple. It is not simple, but it is absolutely effective in combatting negative beliefs and trauma conditioning.

It is not simple, nor is it fast. Many people who come to therapy want both. A simple and quick solution to their problems. Likely, it is a combination of our society now where everything is easy and quick to get with just a click of a mouse or an app on our phones. The other part of the combination is that people just want their issues to go away like magic. Processing trauma and conditioned responses from trauma is work and nobod wants that.

The one thing people forget in all of this is that your thoughts are your life.

Whatever you think is how you will live your life. If you think you are not valued, not worthwhile, not lovable, not smart, not pretty, not able to love yourself this is exactly how you will live your life. It will be how you engage in every relationship from those points of view. It will be how you experience everything.

Negative thoughts and beliefs will impact every aspect of your life. Not only do they impact how you feel, but they also impact how you think others feel about you. Your responses will be guided by your thoughts and beliefs. Every decision will be based on what you think that gets translated into how you feel that gets translated into what you do.

Every negative thought and belief has an equal, absolute positive opposite you just have to be aware and find it. You have to be aware of the negative things you think and believe about yourself. The things you say to yourself repeatedly every day. If you stop and think about them you will know what they are. Your brain is intimately familiar with them. Ask yourself, what negative things do I believe and repeat to myself. Write them down just as they come to you word for word.

For each one also write down the absolute positive opposite. The brain works in absolutes. It absolutely believes you if you say I am not valued enough. It cannot differentiate between a lie and the truth or in this case conditioning and the truth. It will only believe what you tell it. If what you believe and think is I am not valued then the absolute positive is I am valuable. Absolute positive opposite.

You must come up with these for every negative thing you think and believe. Write them down. The next step is to incorporate them into your life. The incorpoation involves saying them, repeatedly and often. Saying them when the negatives are there. Putting them where you can see them repeatedly every day. Where you brush your teeth, on the refrigerator, at your workspace, as reminders on your phone. Say them often and with belief in them.

How long will it take for you to replace negatives with positives? There is no measurement to fit every person. For each person it is different, and it depends heavily on that person’s investment in doing the replacement. How long did it take you to get where you are right now with the negatives? A long time I would guess. But by being aware and noticing the differences that happen when your brain starts to incorporate and believe the positives, you will be able to move the process along.

Positive focus is a powerful force that can change your life forever if you are willing to invest the time and energy.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Starting Point

Everything has a starting point. Everything including thoughts, beliefs, emotions. Everything starts somewhere.

When we say we have always been sad or angry for as long as we can remember. Or we say we have always been anxious, we do not generally associate it with a starting point. Always implies no starting point. It implies that we were born with these emotions, these thoughts, these beliefs we hold. That is simply not true. We are not born with these things, they occur at a later point and they occur because of something outside of ourselves.

We are born as a blank slate. We do not enter this world sad, angry, anxious believing any number of things we decide are true. It just doesn’t happen. We receive messages from outside forces – people, social media, TV, news, etc. We receive messages in the way people treat us – neglect, abuse, abandonment, words and actions. We receive messages from the things that happen in our lives due to other people – divorce, domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, death. We receive messages from bullying. And then we form beliefs about ourselves because of these things and accept these beliefs as true. And we carry them for so long that we then think we have ALWAYS had them…that we were born this way.

Think carefully about when your emotions and/or beliefs started. Think very carefully. What was happening in your life at the time or what had happened around the time you first noticed these emotions or beliefs. Notice everything that was going on – everything. Write it down. Then look at it carefully and you will find your starting point. This is the place where therapy should begin. Addressing the starting point is like starting at the top of a waterfall, if you address the beginning it flows down to everything that comes after because it is ALL connected.

This doesn’t mean that just because your starting point came from something outside yourself that you can blame everything you have ever felt or done on someone else or something else. In fact, the truth is that it is always your choice what to do with any outside message. Do you let it go because it is not your truth or do you take it on and make it your reality? That is your choice. Everything you do after that is your choice. Everything.

Recognize your starting point and address that. Then recognize your choices that follow. Accept the responsibility for your choices. Let go of the starting point that was not yours. And then work through them. And yes it is work. You worked very hard to get where you are today at believing everything, you can work just as hard to stop believing it.

What is your TRUE starting point?

Until next time,
Deborah

I am currently accepting new clients (girls and women) for counseling. To set up a FREE Initial consultation call 406-413-9904 email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the BOOK NOW button on Facebook

Deborah Horton

Where Is Your Proof?

Many people battle with negative automatic thoughts. These thoughts come from several sources including our families and friends, strangers, people in authority over us (teachers, coaches, bosses), social media, and of course from inside our own minds. However, those inside the mind came from somewhere or someone else almost all of the time.

A message, or seed, is introduced to our mind. Something someone has said, a way someone has acted or not acted, an assumption we have made about what someone has said or done or what we have seen online. This seed is at first nothing just as the words we hear or we create are nothing but thoughts. They have no life, unless we provide them with what they need to grow. If we water them, fertilize them, give them a place in our minds to live they become implanted and are always there.

There is of course one other thing we must do in order to grow our negative thought seeds – give them truth. By agreeing that this thoughts are true and using absolutes to describe them – I am, I do, I can’t, I don’t, etc. – the brain then views them as truths – not thoughts or seeds. But where is your proof that these thoughts are true? Where is your absolute proof?

When these thoughts appear, we must stop and question them just as any lawyer would do in court to prove an accusation is true. Imagine a stop sign appearing when the thought appears. Imagine yourself looking at this thought (only words) and asking where is your proof? Just because you think it does not make it true. Just because someone else said it does not make it true. Just because you read it does not make it true. Where is your proof? Almost always the proof will not be found except the truth that the thought is just words we have given life to and assumed a truth about.

Where is the proof that the thought is false? For example, if you have the thought “I never do anything right.” What is your proof of things and times where you have done things right? Did you put on your own clothes, take a shower, do your hair or makeup, drive a car, pass a test, complete a job task today? If you did, you obviously did it right. Therefore, “I never” cannot be true. There is no proof.

Without proof, we are left with giving truth to just words because we assume there must be some proof or we wouldn’t think these thoughts. Thoughts come and go all the time. It is up to us whether or not they grow and live in our minds or whether they are dismissed for lack of proof.

Where is your proof?

Until next time,
Deborah

I am now accepting new clients, girls and women, for counseling in Montana. If you would like to set up a FREE initial consultation please call me at 406-413-9904, email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the Book Now button on Facebook.

Deborah Horton

The Boss Of You

When we are growing up, we have people who can appear to be the boss of us. Parents, teachers, employers, friends, romantic relationships, or just about anyone who we feel has the ability or authority to tell us what to do and how to do it. Also as we grow, we start to develop the ability and the desire to make our own choices, to be the boss of ourselves. The struggle comes when we have the ability to make our own choices but we continue to let others or our own negative thoughts make them for us.

Over time, our own negative thoughts can become louder than the words of any real person or even our own words. Much like the voice of a military drill sergeant, it is constantly talking to us, repeating the same negative thoughts over and over. Many times it can sound like the voice of someone in our life who was critical of us, who abused us, who hurt us in some way, someone whose voice makes us feel even worse about ourselves. This voice becomes the boss of you.

Listening to this voice every day reinforces the negative things and your brain believes that these things are true. This voice becomes the boss of you and it is no longer you making decisions about your emotions, your choices, your life but it is the voice.

What if when the negative voice speaks to you, instead of going along with it and believing it, you talk back to it with something positive. It takes practice and it takes time and it takes doing it over and over. You did not come to the place of having your negative thoughts be the boss of you overnight and you won’t replace them overnight. As long as you let the negative thoughts continue to boss you, your brain continues to believe them and then looks for ways to make them true.

If you have the same negative thoughts repeatedly, write them down. For each negative thought you write down, write a positive thought next to it. Example, “what happened to you was your fault” positive “I did the best I could at the time” or “what happened to me was not my fault”. Rate your percentage of belief of your positive thought on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being you barely believe it to 10 being you totally believe it. If you find positive thoughts with a higher percentage of you believing them to be true, use those. However, your brain will start to believe the positive things you tell it if you say them over and over just as it has done with the negative things.

Start today to be the boss of you. One thought at a time.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you are a teen girl or adult woman or know one who could benefit from learning how to be the boss of their own thoughts and lives, I offer FREE Initial consultation appointments to see if counseling with me is a good fit. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up an appointment.