We all have negative thoughts that we repeat to ourselves and over times the more we repeat these thoughts to ourselves, they become a part of core beliefs. We filter every action and experience through this lens. These thoughts develop from our past experiences and can sound like “I’m not good enough”, “I’m helpless”, “I’m alone” or “I’m not safe”. These thoughts often can be the very beginning of a chain of many other thoughts and memories of past situations and traumatic events when these felt true. This chain of thoughts of all of our worst experiences can create a “snowball” effect and can escalate our body into the fight or flight system. They put us right back into the panic and fear that we felt in our worst moments as if they were happening in the present. Your body senses the danger right there in that moment, and responds to the threat the best way it knows how.
Working together, we can identify and challenge these negative thought patterns and their origins. We explore and work through the fears and emotions that flowed from these experiences from the past. These emotions are not something to dismiss or to ignore, but to acknowledge and soothe. It can be helpful to name those feelings and develop tools to self soothe, anchoring ourselves in the present moment.
Once the body is regulated, we then can identify the types of thoughts that you are having and label them to help you more easily recognize them in the future. Together, we can explore alternate adaptive thoughts and beliefs and rehearse these statements. These may be hard to feel are true at first. You are then able to “test out” these new beliefs in different situations to help strengthen and secure them. Essentially we are changing out the “old tape” that played on repeat in our head. In order to do that, we need to develop a new tape that replays these healthier thoughts until they start to feel possible, and eventually true. This can sound simplistic, but like most of therapy, it is a process that unfolds overtime. You will learn new tools and strategies and begin to be able to practice healthier ways to manage stressful situations and events that won’t feel as overwhelming as they once did.
