Your brain is trying to help you - really, it is.
In my last post, I talked about how to feel better by first creating order in the brain. We do that by Identifying feelings and thoughts. Well now that we’ve identified our feelings and thoughts, we are ready to move on to step 2.
A few of my painful thoughts about how messed up the world is are “Humans can’t seem to get their act together; we keep screwing stuff up” and “People should stop feeding hate – it is SO horrible and a waste of the precious little time we have on this planet”. These thoughts make me feel angry, anxious, hopeless, down, ashamed, and more.
Before I can release my emotional pain, I have to look at why my brain WANTS me to have this pain. The truth is my brain is always trying to help me. When it gives me pain, it is either trying to PROTECT me in some way or to honor my VALUES. So how does feeling worried and thinking “Humans can’t seem to get their act together; we keep screwing stuff up” protect me and honor my values? Here are some ideas:
o Being worried about the climate crisis and the pandemic is smart! Both of these things are real. My brain gives me worry so I pay attention and do my part to make my world and myself healthier. That’s good!
o Thinking that “humans can’t get their act together” is realistic and honest (we do make a lot of mistakes). I value being realistic and honest. My brain honors these important values with this thought.
o Feeling hopeless about things is, in a weird way, protective because it stops me from getting too optimistic and then feeling crushed when things don’t work out. So my brain is protecting me from feeling even worse by making me feel and think this way.
I can probably come up with even more ways my pain is protecting me and honoring my values. It is important to acknowledge these positives because the brain seems to hang on tighter to its pain when we don’t. The key to emotional peace is to sit in the truth – the ancients said the truth will set us free. Well the truth is that it make sense to be worried, and that worry shows I’m being realistic and honest, and so on. I need to validate these truths in my pain. This step is called Positive Reframing in TEAM therapy. It is an essential step to shifting the brain.
I can do the Positive Reframing step with my other upsetting thought too, “People should stop feeding hate -…”. How does feeling angry and having this thought protect me? And how does it show my good values? I will leave that for you to think about and maybe try to come up with the Positive Reframe for this thought on your own. Warmly, Karin
