Years back, I was a specialist in a peer-based recovery initiative. The plan was to offer a peer-to-peer perspective with hopes to an improved level of interpersonal understanding. In fairness, the initiative was somewhat successful.
I found myself at the ground level of where I wanted to be; and more, I found myself at the platform of a future that I wanted to create and build for myself.
First, an experience like this opens up to meeting people from all different walks of life. There were members of every race, religion, creed, orientation and gender. In all, I had the opportunity to learn and interact with people who came from different cultures and backgrounds. While there were countless differences, there was a base of similarities and a platform of relatable items, which is where I learned to begin.
In the face of addiction and in the near-death experiences of overdoses and otherwise, I learned that, while the obvious is at stake, the compulsion and the drive is something that defies our best judgments.
I have listened to people tell me about their opinions of the obese or the overweight. I have heard people talk about people living with depression or different emotional disorders. I have heard this with a level of misunderstanding.
It is, therefore, my conclusion that there’s no wonder why people choose not to speak up or seek help because the lack of understanding and the abundance of stigma-based concerns is certainly overwhelming.
No one wants to be weak. No one wants to be flawed or seen as unworthy because “something” is “wrong” with them.
What do we do about this?
What do we tell people when they tell us what they’re thinking?
I have simplified this down to an understandable nature and, in fact, I understand that thinking errors are common amongst all people.
Now wait –
There is a word that needs to be mentioned here. This word is not new nor is this word a new subject in any of my journals. However, when discovering what sanity means and while covering the bases to create a rebirth of sanity, it is important to recognize one very simple word that is used so commonly and regularly yet in the case of restoring ourselves to our best nature, it is important that we talk about the word “just.”
As in, “just don’t do that anymore.”
“Just do it like this.”
Or “why can’t you just stop that?”
For the record, the word “just” extends far beyond the challenges of substance or alcohol use disorders.
This word is a weed in the flower bed of our lives
and in this entry, we are going to discuss how –
We are certainly a species of overthinkers.
Are we not?
When we assume the worst and our fears begin to grow, almost everyone has found themselves in a situation where their thoughts begin to catastrophize and, immediately, our thinking connects to the worst case scenario.
There are times when compulsion takes over to override the discomfort of this. There are times when our nerves reach a “nail-biting” response and perhaps we slip into a behavior that either soothes or allows us to pacify ourselves, perhaps only mentally (and momentarily) yet we are a species in search of comfort.
No one wants the worst cases possible. Nobody asks to be miserable yet there are ties that we are bound to and connections that lead us to thoughts that bring us to the worst-case ideas.
“We play the movie out in our head,” so-to-speak.
Erase the subject of compulsion or the data we have about behavioral responses and stick with the common data of wanting to be understood, accepted, valid and valued. Next, consider the worry that understanding, acceptance, validity and value are at risk.
We dramatize and sensationalize the problems before they even arise. And, of course, someone will come along and offer a suggestion which is both obvious as it is simple: Just don’t think that way!
When we talk about the commonality of catastrophizing, which is to imagine the worst case possibility of an outcome or an event to the point where, literally, we have allowed ourselves to accept the defeat of the future that has yet to happen – or when we talk about the commonality of imposter syndrome, which is the constant doubt of your abilities as if, at some point, someone is going to come along and reveal the fact that you are actually a fraud and that you don’t know what you’re doing – or, at some point, the idea is that you are going to be exposed as a hoax and that someone else who is obviously better equipped, suited, more worthy, likable, desirable and matched for your role will come in and take your place; leaving you to deal with your shame, either publicly or internally. Therefore, in the face of our thinking, our thoughts move down the habitual patterns and due to past experiences and fears, or additionally, due to the insult and violations of boundaries, we find that our thinking moves down usual pathways to come up with usual judgments and expectations.
So –
Let’s start with the simple suggestion:
“Just don’t think like that!”
Does this make sense?
In part, yes. This absolutely makes sense.
However, in part, when we are practiced in the art of self-despair and when we are practiced in the art of rejective thinking which means that, habitually, we bring ourselves into crisis and put ourselves through the ringer with internal judgments, all of which are based on fears and worries that somehow bring us to the concerns of humiliation, we find that our thought patterns are in need to be rewired and overhauled.
The idea of telling someone “Just don’t think like that,” especially in post crisis-mode or once the anxiety machine is off-kilter, the idea to “just” not think this way makes no sense at all.
To tell someone, “just don’t do that anymore” when they are in the face of unhelpful addictions or self-destructive habits curl into their thought loops and trigger an understandable mechanism in the brain – and, even if only for a split second of relief or understanding for a burst of temporary control; to think otherwise is unbelievable.
In fact, to believe otherwise is something that could not and would not make sense. While intellectually, the answers are usually and almost always obvious; emotionally, our connections with biased thinking lead our belief systems away from rational thinking.
As a result of this and due to the early mappings and our life-long assumptions, which have been programmed and almost hardwired from our years of experience – unless we find a way to rewire or update our thinking, the idea of “just” don’t think that way is something that “just” does not make sense.
What are the sources of our discomfort?
This is an important question.
Why do people almost automatically go to the worst case scenario or assume the worst is about to happen?
Is this fear?
Does this impact the worries about social acceptance or does this burst the bubble of internal acceptance?
Why do we have the suggestion, if something is too good to be true, then it probably is.
Or how many times have we heard the suggestion, “Don’t get your hopes up!”
Living in defense of the worst possible scenarios, we begin to expect them more than defend ourselves from them. The truth is, it is safe to say that there are moments in our life when things are too good to be true. There are times in our lives when we were both optimistic and cautiously optimistic yet we found ourselves in the laps of disappointment.
Or, how about this –
“Just don’t take it personally.”
How many times have we heard someone tell us this?
How many times have you brought your hopes up?
How many times have you worked for something to come true and then you get to the moment of truth and bam – how many times have you stumbled and fell down, face first into disappointment?
This happens to everybody.
Again, the thing about life is no one gets out alive. No one goes without a scratch and yes, some have more luck than others and some people decide to make their own luck. Rather than connect with the results, they invest themselves in the efforts to make their life and their dreams come true.
But how?
Are the answers to these questions the same as for everybody?
Is there such a thing as a one-size-fits-all cure to our thinking errors or the cognitive distortions that come up in the mind?
Well, if there is a one-size cure, the answer is not in the word “just.”
As in “just” don’t think like that.
I say this because if it were ‘just” this simple and we could “just” not think ourselves into crisis modes or into the depressive concepts that destroy our hopes or degrade us, and if the answer is to “just” not think this way then no one would ever die from suicide or addiction, alcoholism, obesity or other eating disorders and no one would die from tobacco related deaths because they would “just” be able to adjust their thinking and “just” quit.
No one would ever have a panic or anxiety attack because they could “just” not think that way.
In our efforts to bring on our rebirth of sanity, yes, we have to understand what sanity means. As well, we have to recognize our attachment to our otherwise insane, irrational and cognitively distorted thinking.
Next, we have to find a pattern of behaviors that can and will help us replace thought with action. Or, in our first entry, we discussed our connections with old memories and talked about the separations of the crowd and the social needs or draws to belong, fit-in and be comfortable.
If all the mind wants is ease and to feel “better” then how can we defend ourselves from problematic thinking when our thoughts immediately go over the same bridge or causeways of defeat?
It is true that success is a mindset.
So is failure.
Therefore, to each is their own ingredient, which means this is personally focused-based and with this, to each is their own answer as to how to replace thought with an effective and applicable action.
This is the first helpful point of action: to replace thought with action which is something that can reverse the side effects of irrational and often irredeemable thinking.
Our aim in this phase is to both recognize and identify our thinking errors.
What thoughts betray our better sense of self?
What thoughts degrade our sanity?
What causes our worry system to lead us to catastrophize assumptions and opinions?
Our plan to identify the root of this thinking is to weed-out the contaminants; to identify them, to pull them from our categories and remove the roots of the problem. Hence, we can stop treating their symptoms and re-seed our thinking to flourish in a better field of ideas that do not come with the worst case scenarios.
For the record, I have worked with people who, by far, outweigh their talents with fear and who can shine brighter than they ever believed possible. I have met with executives who worked in big corporate positions and, with this being said, their thinking still needed to be addressed to avoid the catastrophizing ideas that someone else better, younger, stronger, smarter and faster is going to come along and take their sot on the team.
In order to be better, they had to think better and in order for them to do this; they had to update their hardwired ideas and move away from their automatic assumptions.
Life happens to everybody, which is fine.
We just want the best life to happen to us
in whichever way this comes
then – so be it
The Written Addiction 