Thought Habits
A core aspect of the therapeutic approach known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the concept that our thoughts impact how we feel. What does this exactly mean and how can this information be useful? This is what I'll be discussing today.
When we experience something, we might naturally believe that our feelings are a response to the situation. But this is only partially true. In between our experience and our feelings is a very defining factor: our interpretation and corresponding thoughts about the event.
Let me explain with an example. Say Bill and Ruth are walking down the street and see an acquaintance across the road. They both smile and wave, but the acquaintance does not make eye contact and rushes away instead. Bill may interpret the situation to mean the acquaintance is angry with them and does not want to see them. As a result, he might feel a wave of confusion, shame, or anger himself. Ruth, who knew the acquaintance was experiencing a lot of health issues, attributed the behaviour to the acquaintance either being distracted and not noticing them or else feeling unwell and unable to interact with others right now. As a result, she may experience feelings of concern or not feel much at all about the interaction. See how two people experiencing the same situation may end up with very different feelings depending on how they interpret the event?
To take a step back and start looking at our own thought patterns, we might notice that our brains have a tendency to interpret things a certain way. Although not a term regularly used in the CBT literature, I like to call these tendencies "thought habits." These thought habits likely developed out of our past experiences, and were practiced often enough that they now are the automatic way we think. Thought habits aren't inherently bad - after all, our brains love habits of all kinds because they help us save mental energy by using them. The trouble comes when our thought habits are preventing us from looking at the full picture and are leading us to conclusions that aren't accurate or helpful, often with painful feelings showing up more than they need to as a result.
If you think some of your thought habits might be outdated, inaccurate, or are otherwise not serving you, the good news is there are steps you can take to change them! The same way we can change our daily habits through practice, you can change your thought habits through practice too. This is taking advantage of the fact that our brains can change and adapt through experience, known as brain plasticity.
The first step, as with most things, is to build awareness. Start to really take note of how you interpret situations and how certain ways of thinking tend to make you feel. You might find that when certain thought habits kick in, you aren't considering all of the information when interpreting a situation. To help you do this, consider some of the common unhelpful thought habits that people experience known as cognitive distortions (aka biases in thinking). Don't be alarmed if a lot of these resonate - they're very common! If you're interested in a more in-depth perspective on a thought habit, I discuss the cognitive distortion known as all-or-nothing thinking here.
Once you've begun to notice your thought habits, you then have the power to start changing them. You can practice catching yourself when you fall into the thought habit, and then practice intentionally shifting your thinking by looking at things from different perspectives, looking at evidence you may typically disregard, or learning through experiences that challenge the validity of the thought habit. As you do this more and more, you'll be training your brain to think in a more flexible way, and those new flexible perspectives will ultimately turn into more accurate and more helpful thought habits.
The full process of how to shift your thinking is beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say that noticing when you're engaging in a particular thought habit is a powerful place to start.
From there, I would encourage you to seek support from a CBT therapist to learn how to begin creating new thought habits to replace the unhelpful ones. If therapy is not accessible for you at this time but you find these concepts resonate, another way to start working on this could be to get the workbook Mind Over Mood and work independently. That said, this type of work really is some work (you are changing your brain after all), so please consider getting the support of a therapist if possible.