Empowering Thoughts

It’s not easy to think about thinking. Most of the time, we simply take our thinking for granted, never questioning it, however biased or flawed it might be. When we are anxious or depressed, our thinking can become extremely negative and illogical without us even realising it.

Here are some thoughts and tips from the field of cognitive therapy. If you can learn to recognise and evaluate subtle yet disempowering thoughts, you will be able to replace them with empowering thoughts and begin feeling better again:

1. Catch the Negative Thoughts

The first step is to keep a record of your experience and break it down into simple categories:

Situation:
Unable to get served in a department store

Negative Thoughts:
He is avoiding me…he doesn’t like me…no one likes me…I’m so worthless…

Feelings:
Depressed, Anxious, Hopeless

Sensations:
Knotted stomach, dry mouth, tension in shoulders, tearful.

Behaviour:
Went home with no new clothes to enjoy.

Keeping this Experience Record will help you to understand the crucial role of thoughts (or cognitions as psychologists often call them) in your everyday life.

2. Use Empowering Questions

You need to really home in on the Negative Thoughts. Can you see how the thinking of the person in the above example jumps from one negative conclusion to progressively more negative conclusions with no evidence for doing so?

Try to cast yourself in the role of a scientist and examine your thoughts objectively.

Here are three Empowering Questions that can help you gain a balanced perspective:

Measurement Question:
How true are these thoughts on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100% (completely)?

Evidence Question:
Have I done anything to upset the shop assistant?

Alternatives Question:
What other explanations might there be for his behaviour?

The more alternatives you can generate (eg: He dislikes his job and would rather be elsewhere… He’s having a bad day… perhaps he just had an argument with his boss etc) the less likely you are to believe your original Negative Thought.

Generate Empowering Thoughts

You can generate your own Empowering Thoughts by reviewing your answers to the Empowering Questions and using these as a basis for re-writing your thoughts:

I’ve done nothing to upset him. There could be lots of reasons why he hasn’t served me. It makes no sense at all to think it’s anything to do with me. In other circumstances he might enjoy my company.

Go back to your original Negative Thoughts and re-rate how strongly you believe them to be true now. As you practice, you’ll find yourself believing them less and less and feeling better and better.

To begin with, achieving even just small shifts in negative thinking, such as being able to recognise the thoughts as theories open to question, rather than seeing them as absolute facts, can be very empowering and give you a greater sense of control over your moods and behaviour.

Words of Wisdom

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgement about it
(Marcus Aurelius)

Our life is the creation of our mind
(The Buddha)