As we search for the best ways to defeat our anxiety symptoms sometimes we assume that the best solution to our problem just has to be complicated. How else could such a problem be dealt with right?
Well I think that this is in fact not true. You’ve heard all the cliche’s before, the shortest distance between two places is a straight line or how about the best solution is usually the most simple one so on and so forth.
Although not always true, like if you wanted to build a space shuttle to reach Mars, simple is usually better. After all why complicate a complicated problem by bringing in more confusing ideas.
When it comes to your thinking patterns you are surely going to have times when your thoughts turn negative, maybe even disturbing. The simple solution to this problem did not come to me in a dream – I wish. I instead thought back to a resource I revisit frequently for information and reassurance.
That resource is Australian doctor Claire Weekes . Although she is no longer with us her work is and she thought about issues like this in great detail and came up with several gems of solid advice on how to handle anxiety or what she called "nervous illness".
With respect to negative thinking Dr. Weekes said the following:
"let your thoughts play their tricks as they will. Concentrating hard on trying to forget one-self is merely another way of concentrating anxiously on one-self. Do not try to forget yourself. Do not try to force your way back into anything. Accept yourself as you are now, with all your strange thoughts. It does not matter what you think about, or how much you dwell on yourself, providing you do not do it anxiously. That is the key. It is anxiety that tenses, sensitizes, not the thoughts. Accept your thoughts, whatever they are, as part of your ordinary thinking. Do not make the mistake of believing that there are certain thoughts you must not think, dare not think, as if there are parts of your brain you must not use. Use them all, even those that may hold an obsession; but use them willingly, shrink from none of them. None of us completely forgets himself. You are only much more conscious of yourself than you normally would be. This is not important, although it can be devastatingly frustrating". Weekes, Claire. 1969. Hope and Help For Your Nerves : Signet.
Now this, to me, is one of the most elegant and effective ways of coping with negative thoughts. Essentially let your thoughts "play their tricks" and pay no mind. You must be saying but this is too easy, do nothing? Yes that’s right because you have to think about the alternative in clear terms. The alternative being that you obsess about your negative thoughts, rewind and replay those thoughts and worst of all begin to believe those negative thoughts.
Sometimes distraction just won’t do the trick and we have to be a little more honest with ourselves. We have to be honest about the fact that we think negatively and that these types of thoughts bother us a great deal. But we must also accept the thoughts and cease to be so involved with them as well.
You’ll see that overtime as you tell yourself that it is o.k. to think anything you want that negative thinking won’t be as impressive and won’t stop you in your tracks. Fear tends to rule our waking moments but accepting your thoughts, whatever they are, will surely make a positive difference.
Acceptance will change how you see yourself and how you see the world. Your grand fear of insanity will subside a little more and you will gain a little more control over yourself. We are human so we can’t help but think however we also have the capacity to recognize a thought for what it really is – only a thought.
Yes! Isn’t it amazing that in fact the less attention we pay to negative thoughts, the fewer brain resources are devoted to those unhelpful circuits. I talk about these ideas in my new book, Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking: Powerful, Practical Strategies to Build a Lifetime of Resilience, Flexibility and Happiness. If we thought of our negative thoughts more like “junk mail” or “telemarketers” or “spam” we would know to ignore them because we don’t (yikes, and apologies to those in those businesses) value them– they certainly DON’T know what we need as well as we do even though they seem to assume that authority. We are in charge, however, and can decide where we invest our attention. When we realize the choice is ours, we can start making better choices.
I wonder how many psychiatrists, psychologists, hypnotists, NLP practitioners and self-help gurus there are in our world. Then I wonder how many of them ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING or are capable of communicating what they understand so that the average person can even begin to grasp what they are going on about. From experience, I would hazard a guess that the answer is ‘very few’. Still, they make a lot of money out of selling their lack of real knowledge to people who often desperately need help. Many of these ‘so-called’ self-help gurus have no formal training whatsoever. Yet they charge 100 or more an hour for completely ineffective treatment. Most of them are of course charlatans.
But their patients are very real people who are in very real trouble – so much, for example, that they very often kill themselves.
Still, the new BMW comes out in January and those patients are going to buy it for you – and that’s what really matters. Oh, I’m sorry … am I being negative?
PS: Nice bit of self-promotion for your book Tamar Chansky!