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]]>If so, you’re not alone! Many people struggle with unsolicited negative thoughts and the harmful impact they have on their lives. While there is no overnight fix, the good news is that managing these intrusive thoughts is a skill that you can learn to be intentional about what you give your attention to.
The first step to managing unwanted thoughts is to distinguish between those that are helpful versus those that are not. The easiest way to do this is to ask yourself a few key questions to determine which thoughts are beneficial and which are destructive:
Much of the distress we experience in life, is not just related to the situations we find ourselves in but is largely a result of how we interpret and think about those situations. Our thoughts result in words and actions that affect how other people view us and respond to us. Regularly engaging in toxic thinking habits can lead us into a downward negative spiral that affects every area of our life, instead of empowering us to flourish.
When I first began working as a counsellor many years ago, I had a strong desire to make a difference, coupled with a deep sense of calling to this work. The first few times I met with clients, I was bombarded with unhelpful thoughts such as ‘What if I don’t know what to do’? or ‘Someone else would do a much better job’. If I had listened to those thoughts, they would have quickly undermined my confidence and sabotaged my early counselling sessions. Thankfully, I knew how to disengage from these thoughts, and replace them with far more encouraging ways of thinking. Instead of the paying attention to the words of discouragement my mind had on replay, I chose to reflect on how much people have appreciated talking to me, finding me a safe place and trusting me with their stories. As you can imagine, focussing on these more constructive thoughts led to much better counselling sessions than if I’d let the negative ones take control!
It’s natural for all kinds of words, trains of thought and images to come into our minds, whether we want them to or not. They are often reflections of our life experiences, beliefs and convictions, exposure to media, and by default, the culture we live in. In my work as a counsellor, I have journeyed with numbers of teenage boys struggling with depressive and suicidal thoughts. While it is not the only contributing factor, one of the common themes I observed was their deep immersion in the world of dark computer games, often spending many of their waking hours engrossed in horror-themed content, which was reflected in the focus of their thoughts and the impact on their emotions. The quality of our thought life affects not only our emotional health but also has a direct impact on our physical health, relationships and our spiritual wellbeing.
We often have engrained automatic thinking patterns that are shaped by our early experiences with other people growing up. As a little girl I felt very loved and valued by family and friends, and had a happy, healthy sense of self. This changed at age 7 when I was bullied for a year of my school life, leaving me with a deeply engrained sense of inadequacy, translating to an underlying belief of not being good enough. This outworked in an expectation that others would reject me and left me feeling as though I continually had to prove myself, causing me to engage in an unhealthy level of people-pleasing behaviour as a result. (I have since engaged in a journey of healing that has shifted to a much healthier, happier sense of who I am!)
The key insight here is that just because a thought enters your mind, doesn’t mean it is true – in fact many of our thoughts are downright lies about ourselves and other people! Whatever thoughts we focus on gain power in our lives, so we need to be intentional about which thoughts we engage with and give our attention to. This begins with identifying which thoughts help us move in the direction of how we want to live, and conversely to recognise thoughts which hinder us from living in alignment with our true potential and values.
The first principle in managing your thought life is not to panic when a stray unwelcome thought wanders into your mind. It’s completely normal and most of these thoughts don’t reflect your values or who you truly are. The goal is to recognise which thoughts are worth engaging with, and which ones we should simply let pass by.
A common mistake people make is to try to get rid of the thought and banish it from their minds, but that often backfires. Have you ever tried to not think about something? The more we try not to think about it, the more it seems to occupy our mind! A more effective strategy is to notice the thoughts that float through our mind, without automatically engaging with them. We don’t need to be worried or dismayed by these thoughts, they are simply random words and pictures that have no power over us unless we choose to engage with them.
Like any new skill, learning to notice thoughts without giving them airplay, takes practice! There are many ways to develop this skill, which is called defusion. I think of the example of 2 metals being fused together under high heat, sometimes we get fused with our thoughts in the same way. Defusion is the opposite process of disentangling ourselves from unhelpful thoughts we have been fused with.
One of my favourite mental exercises to help master the skill of defusing from unhelpful thoughts, is to imagine yourself watching clouds floating across the sky. As a thought enters your mind, visualise yourself picking it up and placing it on a cloud, then watching it float away. Alternatively, think of each thought as luggage on a conveyer belt — you watch each piece of luggage as it passes by you, and choose which luggage item you will pick up and open to see what is inside, letting the remaining pieces continue on their way. This simple visualisation technique can help you detach from the thoughts that don’t serve you, allowing you to focus on what’s truly helpful.
Alternatively, if you find yourself feeling bullied by an internal critical voice in your mind, it can be helpful to picture this as a mean cartoon character, and give it a funny name such as Horatio, and respond back with some humour or sarcasm such as ‘Is that the best you’ve got? Or ‘that’s getting a bit old, or thanks for the warm, fuzzy thought!
At times when I find the voice in my head is harsh and self-condemning, I remember that this is probably a defence developed from my younger years of being bullied, and I remind myself that I don’t have to be perfect, and it’s ok to make some mistakes, and my good friends still like me regardless.
Managing unwanted thoughts is a skill that takes time and repetition to develop! The more you practice, the easier it becomes to allow unhelpful thoughts to pass on their way and focus on engaging with thoughts which foster a healthy state of mind that enables you to flourish.
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]]>I love the gems found in the poetic writings of the biblical psalmists:
I read with interest the life of Jesus the healer, who regularly sought silence and solitude in quiet places away from the crowd. Even though there were still many needing healing and freedom, he prioritised time to quiet himself and sit to be replenished at the feet of the Father.
In this day and age, slowing down and waiting don’t come easily. We are better at microwaving than marinading, and even if we manage to shut the door on all the competing voices, and demands of daily life, it is not uncommon to find some internal resistance to stopping and stilling our interior world. Our busy minds have been likened to a tree full of monkeys jumping about, constantly distracting us, making internal quiet a challenge! Stillness is not just about finding space from the external pressures of life, but about stepping back from the busy activity of our minds, quieting our racing thoughts and cultivating a tranquil interior space where we tune into shalom peace.
This was illustrated to me by a profound metaphor in 2016. My husband and I went scuba diving on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a globally renown dive site. As we travelled there, I felt God whisper to me that he was going to teach me something on this trip, leaving me intrigued! Our first scuba dive was at a depth of 20 metres exploring a stunning underwater reef wall. The turbulent current was running quite fast and suddenly, I found myself floating rapidly to the surface. This was alarming as ascending too quickly can be dangerous because of nitrogen bubbles in the blood potentially causing decompression sickness. I eventually deflated my air vest enough to descend again, only to find the same thing happening again, leaving me feeling very anxious throughout the dive!
The head instructor noticed and invited me to go diving with her in the afternoon. She explained to me the challenging diving conditions had made me anxious which meant I was breathing faster, increasing the oxygen in my lungs, causing me to rise to the surface. She took me to a beautiful calm dive site and taught me to focus on slowly exhaling whenever I felt anxious, allowing me to control my depth by changing the way I breathed. As I mastered this new breathing technique I found I could dive at greater depths, opening up a spectacular new world filled with exquisite marine life; stunning tropical fish, corals, sharks and turtles which could not be seen in the shallow waters. I knew God was speaking to me through this incident, teaching me to slow down. I needed to learn to ‘exhale’ in life, He was inviting me to make space to go deeper with Him into the new realms of experience He wanted to open to me.
Slowing down and stilling ourselves in the rush and noise of life is a discipline that like anything else, requires practice to cultivate. Interior stillness releases a capacity in us to engage with God at a deeper level. As our gaze settles on Him, we become aware of a listening stillness and a deep awareness being awakened, our spirit is alert, and we can sense the presence and peace of God within. In this place of internal quiet and spiritual attentiveness it is easy to be conscious of words that God drops into your heart. The apostle John described this state as being ‘in the spirit’ (Revelation 1:10), a state where we are totally engaged with the active flow of God. It is in this place our perception is heightened to thoughts, pictures, impressions and feelings flowing from the heart of God. Here we experience fresh insights, ‘lightbulb’ moments, words of wisdom, direction, encouragement, loving adjustments, reassurance and divine encounters.
In my own personal journey, and in my observations over decades of inner healing and counselling work, cultivating the capacity to be still with God, listen to His voice and encounter His presence, has been the most restorative, healing practice I have ever witnessed.
Some of the simple ways to facilitate this are making some space in your life to:
What is 1 thing you can adjust in your life to make space to be still and tune into the presence of God?
May you be blessed as you journey deep into the heart of God and experience the fullness that is shalom life.
Noni Potter
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