I say it all too often but it's a good reminder: We have thousands of thoughts a day. Most of these 'thoughts' we barely register. But there's some thoughts that we recycle and ruminate on.
These thoughts can either be true or not true. Most of us have learned the truth versus a lie from a young age. When it comes to our thoughts, there's true statements, things we have evidence to be accurate. Then there's what I sometimes refer to as stories. Our brain tells us stories sometimes - these can be things that are assumptions such as 'she doesn't like me' or 'he's going to cheat on me' or 'something bad is bound to happen.'
Sometimes these thoughts are helpful. Such as remembering to do something for someone, be kind to ourselves, not run over the curb that sticks out awkwardly at that one intersection, or even 'wow, I made someone laugh today!'. All these thoughts might come up often and aren't necessarily bad to think about. They don't hurt us in our day to day.
However, some thoughts are hurtful. They don't do us any good. These thoughts might be things like 'what if that person doesn't like me?' or 'someone's going to be upset about this' or 'he's going to harp on me about this.' These thoughts can cause intense negative reactions or emotions in us. They are not helpful, they are hurtful.
Sometimes true thoughts can be hurtful. Sometimes they can be helpful. Oftentimes, stories can be hurtful. We want to throw out hurtful thoughts. If a thought has no evidence of being true, so a story our brain is telling us, and it's hurtful - causing a negative emotional reaction, throw it away!
Recognize the thought has harmful and not true. Visualize a trash can and throw it in there. Sometimes I also visualize a conveyor belt and the thoughts coming down the belt and I'm the inspector picking up each thought and assessing it's quality. Hurtful story = bad quality = trash can.
It can take practice, just like any skill, to be able to do this because we often believe we have to react to every thought we have like this and because we have worry or sadness or fear from these thoughts, we think we definitely need to address them. But they aren't helping you.
Disclaimer: sometimes stories are true. And one of the reasons we believe or give attention to the stories we tell ourselves is because there was another one in the past that we experienced that was true and so now we think every one is true. But not every single story you tell yourself is true. And if the story is true, you will eventually find the evidence that proves it is true and that is when you process the emotions. But it's only truly helpful to do that when the thought is actually true.
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