For those of us struggling with mental health issues like anxiety and depression, we tend to have a difficult and pained relationship with our thinking. Our thought patterns cause us considerable mental and emotional anguish. We obsess, we panic, and we give more weight to things than we should. One of the biggest problems in how we deal with our thoughts is our tendency to always believe our thoughts to be true. We don’t observe them, as we’re taught to do in meditation. We don’t question them. We don’t investigate or explore them. We simply believe them. When we believe our thoughts to be true without digging deeper into them and examining them at greater length, we cause ourselves a great deal of hardship. We allow our difficult thoughts to take over our thinking. This keeps us from thinking of anything else, anything more positive and productive, which keeps us trapped in cycles of obsessive thinking, dwelling on our problems, and resorting to destructive thought patterns like catastrophizing. We can’t seem to get out of our own heads, and we can’t seem to escape the negative thought spiral our minds go down.
Know Your Truth & Trust Your Gut
It takes practice to be more objective in our thoughts. Meditation and other mindfulness practices teach us that we are more than our thoughts. We are a deeper consciousness that goes beyond our racing thoughts, fears, insecurities, and doubts. We are the peace underneath our busy, overactive minds. We are our heart, soul, and spirit, not just our difficult thought patterns. And, not only that, we can retrain our minds to deal with our thought patterns differently. We can begin to be more mindful of our thought patterns, giving careful thought to them rather than blindly defaulting to them. We can ask ourselves where these thoughts are coming from – are they a reflection of our inner truth, or are they a manifestation of our fears?
Chances are, the thoughts giving us the most difficulty are rooted in our unhealed fears, and when we take a moment to pause, breathe and reflect on our thoughts, we realize we don’t actually have to believe everything they’re telling us. We can begin to decipher the true meaning behind our thoughts, and why we’re thinking them in the first place. We can question their legitimacy, and we can reclaim our power over our minds. We don’t have to let our wayward thoughts and our overactive minds cause us so much pain and difficulty anymore. We don’t have to give up our spiritual autonomy and simply believe everything our overactive, worried, frazzled minds come up with. We can align ourselves with our deeper truth and believe that instead.
At The Guest House Ocala, our recovery programs include many experiential modalities including traditional therapy, conscious connected breathwork, equine therapy, somatic experiencing, art in healing, grief therapy, mindfulness and other forms of therapy. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.