Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Ep58: Harnessing the Power of Thoughts
Ever wonder why our life seems to follow the path of our most powerful thoughts? That's because thoughts hold immense power over our life's direction. This episode is a replay from my other podcast, and I am sharing it here because it is still among the most powerful thoughts I have had as a mother and a person. As you listen, you will learn about the influence of our environment on our thoughts and emotions, learning practical strategies to disrupt the loop of irrational thoughts and regain control over our behaviors.
Do negative thoughts often overwhelm you? Do you find yourself caught in a cycle of self-deprecation? Sometimes seeking professional help when coping becomes a struggle is the answer. I'll share my insights on how to use words to our benefit and break free from negative self-talk. Emphasizing the correlation between our thoughts, behaviors and the words we use, we will explore how our sensory experiences and surroundings influence our minds and how daily 'vacations' can improve our mental health. So, gear up for an enlightening session that promises to transform your perspective on the power of thoughts and words.
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
If you are a therapist or psychologist and want to be a guest on the show, please complete this form to apply: https://forms.gle/ooy8QirpgL2JSLhP6
www.bethtrammell.com
Hello, dear listener, welcome back to Things you Learned in Therapy. I'm your host, dr Beth Tramell. I'm a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University East, where I also am the director of our master's in mental health counseling program. Today I want to talk a little bit about this one line that I heard from a devotional that I was reading yesterday. That really has got me thinking right, that my whole approach, my whole philosophy, is to use our words for good. Right, actively make our words matter for good. And I also know, and have talked a lot about how our thoughts inform our actions that then influence our feelings. Right, and so it starts with what are we thinking about? So if we really want to make words matter for good, we have to spend time evaluating what we're thinking about, and all of that makes a lot of sense to me. All of that probably makes a lot of sense to you.
Speaker 1:But the one line that really rocked my world yesterday was this sentence from Roxanne Parks, from the Speaking Life devotional, and she said your life will always move in the direction of your strongest thoughts. Wow, wow. You know, I think the thing that stood out to me was that I think a lot, I ponder a lot and I never really stopped to consider the strength of my thoughts, right? I guess I always just believed that all thoughts were created equal. Right, that I never put a weight to my thoughts. In other words, my strongest thoughts are those that I think over and over and over. Right, I get this image of a snowball that's kind of rolling down a hill. It's gathering force and it's gathering mass and it's getting bigger and bigger. And so when I think about my strongest thoughts, those are the thoughts that I think the most, the phrases I say the most. In my mind, those are the ones that are the strongest thoughts. And then to realize that my life moves in the direction of the strongest thoughts, that was really powerful for me to really stop to think about. And so later she challenges the reader to pause and ask yourself this question what input establishes your thoughts each day?
Speaker 1:So we know that the things we think about are directly related to the environment around us. What are we seeing, what are we hearing, what are we smelling, what are we tasting, what are we feeling? Right, it relates to all of our senses as we experience external stimulus. Then we have thoughts that go along with all of the external stimuli that we experience, and that's how we are moved to behave. And then we have certain feelings, certain emotions around the experiences we have.
Speaker 1:And so, as I think about a few things, for us as parents particularly in you know, as we're trying to be the best version of ourselves for our kids, the first thing I want us to realize and remember, I guess, today, is that our words have power. We know this, yet I'm not sure we kind of pause enough to really think about everything we're saying has power around us, and some people believe that it is the most powerful weapon we all have. Right, we all possess the ability to use this power we have in our words, and so it has me thinking how am I using my power? How am I using my voice, my words around me? The old phrase of you know, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, is one that I think we may need to remember, particularly in the world of social media, where everybody gets to share their opinion, everybody gets to share their words, and even if you are sharing your opinion, that you think is the right opinion if it isn't something that is building or uplifting the people around you. Perhaps it's best left just to you and your closest allies.
Speaker 1:The second thing to remember is that our thoughts drive our behavior, which inform our feelings. Then our feelings, our emotions, loop back to our thoughts. So we're in this constant cycle of thoughts, behaviors, feelings, thoughts again. And the way I see this play out for people in the therapy room is when we have anxious thoughts, it tends to lead us into behaviors that then leave us feeling anxious again, which fuels those anxious thoughts. And so if you're in this sort of loop, right, if you find yourself feeling the loop of anxiety or the loop of depression or the loop of negative self-talk, realize that that's the loop you're in. The thoughts drive the behavior that inform how we feel, and those feelings also trigger all sorts of other thoughts. So you have the ability to pause your thoughts, pause your behavior, so that your emotions don't just spiral you and spiral you and spiral you.
Speaker 1:So I've talked before about how we can't control our emotions. I have people challenge me about that just about every time I say it and until I'm able to explain that you can't control how you feel, but you can control what you think about, you can control how you behave. So, as you are kind of going about your day, your feelings are going to come and sometimes your thoughts are going to come, whether you like it or not. And the way you combat that is to learn specific strategies to stop those irrational thoughts, those irrational beliefs that keep coming, but not that they are going to stop coming altogether. I mean, that's just how our brains work. When we take on sensory stimulation around us, we have automatic thoughts to the stimulation around us. We can't stop them, but we can control the behavior that we engage in as a result of that. So I want to pause for a second here and talk about what input establishes your thoughts. Right, and I've really been trying to challenge myself to think about this too.
Speaker 1:So what is the input that I'm taking in? So when I talk about input, I mean what is the environment around me? So I have four kids, right, those of you who know me, I have four kids a 13-year-old daughter, an 11-year-old son, a 7-year-old son, a 5-year-old son, and we have lots of things In fact, I even try to Marie Kondo my house from time to time just getting rid of clutter, getting rid of things, and it seems like we are just in this continual cycle of stuff, stuff, stuff all over the floor. I clean it up, I organize it and then we still have more stuff. And we're still kind of in this phase of having kids who, you know, like my 5-year-old, he loves to play with toys everywhere and he tends to follow me wherever I go. So I try to keep certain spaces sacred, without matchbox cars or Legos or Marbles, but inevitably it just seems like they just follow me wherever I am because he wants to play in the space that I'm in. Anyways, I think about the input, the sensory experience I have in my home.
Speaker 1:Many of us don't want our house to be cluttered, because we experience this sense of stress or chaos when the input around us is chaotic. So you see how the environment around us creates this internal feeling, these internal thoughts that then lead us to maybe avoid certain spaces in our house, or maybe we feel a certain way in certain spaces in our house. And so, as I was thinking about this whole thing, it brought me to think about vacation. So we've got spring break coming up for many of us. Maybe you're looking forward to a summer vacation, maybe we've been kind of looking forward to getting out, getting away for quite some time. Right, the pandemic last year and continued pandemic now really keeps us in this place of looking for a sense of normalcy, the way things used to be. We want to get out, we want to get back to you know, the way things were. So, as I think about vacation, right, there's a reason you tend to be happier on vacation. You see your surroundings as beautiful.
Speaker 1:Most of us go on vacation to places that we want to see, we want to experience. Do you see how that input of your vacation and seeing things as beautiful impacts your thoughts? That then impacts your behavior and your emotions. You see your life as more peaceful on vacation. Think about it. When you wake up on vacation, you go out, you have your coffee by the beach, you watch the sunrise.
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe that's too nostalgic for some of us, but when you have a different input, you experience your thoughts and your emotions differently, and so you might be finding yourself saying, well, beth, I can't afford a vacation right now. Or Beth, there's no way I'm going on vacation right now, not in the midst of everything that's going on. Okay, so how do we vacation quote vacation each day to influence more positively our thoughts that lead to our words and our actions. So I have a couple of thoughts here, right? So if I'm thinking about vacationing every day, if I think about the mindset I'm in when I'm on vacation or when I'm in vacation mode, the first thing that comes to mind is I need to be careful of my social media intake.
Speaker 1:So we know that engaging in social media scrolling can put us in this place of comparison, right? I see all these other pictures and all these other words and these images from other people who seem to have a perfect life, or who seem to have it all together, or who seem to be living their best lives all the time, right? And we know that social media is just threaded through this lens of what any of us want to present that particular day, at that particular moment. So, logically, we know that's not the whole truth of how all of us live our lives, yet our brains trick us into thinking that that is the truth because that's what's in front of us. So if we're trying to be cautious, if we're trying to be aware of the input that we are engaging in, we have to pay attention to our social media use.
Speaker 1:We also have to be aware of how we are taking in the news right, current events. What is your method for accessing the current hot topics? World news, us news, whatever it is, what is that news outlet and how are they presenting information about what's going on in the world? So often I will talk with clients in therapy about how they need to just take a week off, take a month off of watching the news, because they tend to get so caught up in the negativity that is presented that it fuels those thoughts that then drive behavior of watching more and more news that then leads to more and more anxiety. So, as you're thinking about your input and how do we vacation? Well, outside of actually going to the beach or to the mountains or to the ocean, wherever you want to go on vacation, we've got to watch our social media use, we've got to watch where we're getting news and I believe we also have to cultivate a practice of gratitude.
Speaker 1:So when we have grateful thoughts, it often leads to more grateful actions and then more feelings of gratitude. So, if you are in a habit of journaling or creating messages on Facebook or Instagram that are around gratitude, we know there's so much research on the positive impact of having a gratitude practice, and usually that practice is daily. So it might mean starting your day with stating three things that you're grateful for in your life. It might mean ending your day with some sort of meditative practice or yoga, where you are really focused on what are you grateful for and realize that having a practice of gratitude doesn't mean we don't experience negative emotions from time to time. Right Doesn't mean that we ignore all suffering, but it does mean that we choose to remind ourselves of the things that we are grateful for, even amidst tragedy and suffering. And so the last thing that came to mind as I was thinking about how we vacation right, how do we pay more attention to our input is to realize what I mentioned earlier that those thoughts may continue to come on repeat. So one of the hardest things for people to realize in therapy is that it is a practice to continue to manage illogical thoughts that come right.
Speaker 1:So maybe you're a person who has some fear about your kids getting hurt, right, and you might have this particular fear, and one of my fears that come across is that my kids will be hurt in a parking lot. I have these images often, that my kids will be kind of running in a parking lot and will get crushed by a vehicle. That is something that kind of plagues me frequently, actually, and the thing to realize is that those thoughts may continue to come and likely they will and our job is to always stay grounded in the truth. So when I have this thought of, oh my gosh, what if my kids get hurt in a parking lot, I then remind myself of the truth that when I'm in a parking lot, I always require extra precaution from my kids, even my older kids. I'm always reminding them before we get out of the car, when we park somewhere for my little guys, I always require them to stay right by me, either by holding my hand or holding onto the cart or just staying really close to me, and I'm continually reminding them with my words that they have to stay safe and stay nearby in the parking lot.
Speaker 1:So realize that that is something that will keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, because that's how our brains work and it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you're not strong enough to overcome this thought. That's how lies work. They keep coming.
Speaker 1:So the thing I remind folks of when I'm in therapy with them is that these thoughts are just there to inform us of our behavior and how we can kind of work to overcome those, to see the truth. And if you're a person who's really struggling with lots and lots of those thoughts and you do feel like you're overwhelmed by them, then I'd encourage you to reach out to a therapist. I have lots of really great recommendations of friends and colleagues in the area and if you don't live in this area, I'd really encourage you to reach out to a therapist and have them help you walk through some of those thoughts. Now, our words have power and I really want to encourage us myself included to really think about what are those strongest thoughts that we have and how are they directing our lives. And as we get better at directing those strong thoughts where we want them to be, we will be the better version of ourselves that our kids need from us. Until we see you again, stay well everyone.
