Can You Change Your Mind?

With today’s technology and excess of communication, humans are constantly being exposed to an unprecedented amount of negative circumstances across the globe. Thankfully, humanity has a long history of overcoming some of the most difficult experiences and has found a way to survive. This is quite remarkable, given the statistics that humans vividly recall negative experiences at a significantly higher rate than positive experiences. Throughout the day our thoughts are mainly on auto pilot and we are basically in a trance, being lulled by our thoughts, approximately 76% of our day.

Our body responds to our thoughts with corresponding hormone and biochemical reactions, that can significantly impact our health. Our thoughts and reactions to circumstances powerfully impact our mood,

general well-being, self-worth, trust in others, and our overall quality of life. The good news and wonderful thing about human beings is our ability to change their mind about any given number of issues. Taking the time to study our thoughts and practice shifting and reframing them can be vital in positive mental health.

So, how does one go about changing their thought patterns? The following list of Cognitive Behavior Therapy steps, will help you to know what is needed to make significant shifts in how you think.

1. The first step is to begin to notice any negative mood state you experience. This is crucial, because our thoughts are the most likely culprit in fueling negative emotions. Take notice of anything that may trigger a negative mood or emotion.

2. Next begin journaling or simply listing out the negative thoughts. We have 60,000+ thoughts per day and that can be dizzying to keep track of in your head. Start writing down a few of the negative thoughts you have when you notice that your mood is shifting to negativity.

3. As you develop a list of common negative thoughts that you experience, it is time to study their impact. For each thought, ask yourself: What mood does this thought pattern create? How do I behave, when I am thinking this thought and feeling this emotion? How do these thoughts influence my physical body (i.e. muscle aches, headaches, nausea, fatigue, shortness of breath)? Thinking through thought patterns is a crucial motivator to working on thought change! Our thoughts rule our emotional, behavioral, and physiological experiences.

4. The last step is to become an investigator, to see if your thoughts are based in truth or are simply beliefs instilled at a young age, or by stressful life events with no ongoing basis in fact. Write the negative thought at the top of a new page and draw a line down the center, to the bottom of the page. On the left side write “evidence for” and on the right side write “evidence against” this negative thought. If you take your time with this step to list the evidence, you will become aware that your thought has either no basis in fact, or that you only have slight evidence, but significantly more evidence that this negative thought is not true. Even if there is some truth to your negative thought, it is almost always an intense exaggeration of the truth. From this activity, you are now able to remind yourself when repetitious negative thoughts return, that these thoughts are not true or are significantly skewed towards the negative. You can use the evidence against the thought and the typically limited evidence for the negative thought, to help you with reframing what is more grounded in the truth.

This is the process of learning to change how you think. If you practice the above steps, you will be amazed at how creative your mind is and how much your entire body responds to what you think. These tools, for the practice of changing your mind from negative to positive thinking, have shown to have remarkable results with improving mood and overall quality of life. Give it a try!

We are always available on our phone number 828.669.9798 or by visiting our website www.blackmountaincounseling.org.