Negative thoughts come from more than one place.
We cannot change the past, but we can change our reaction to it. This is where hearing and understanding negative thoughts is helpful. Mindfulness helps us locate and identify them.
Negative thoughts come from more than one place in our minds. Negative thoughts are influenced by our feelings, the thoughts that we create, and our behaviors. We choose how to behave or act in every situation. In the past, we made the best decisions at that time. As we age, we may understand differently and think we “should have done something differently.” We gain more life experience or wisdom each day. It’s unfair to judge ourselves for the past since we had limited resources and knew less than the present.
Blaming ourselves for the past only leads us to more depression and anxiety. Blaming keeps us in a perpetual state of worry. A person falls into an anxious habit of thoughts and behaviors that become “well-worn paths.” We continue down these old familiar paths in life and we choose the same abusive people, abusive actions, and abusive reactions in our lives. It is what was learned in the past, and we keep repeating this, even though it is unhealthy. Blaming minds keeps us a prisoner of the past. It does not allow us to live today since we constantly return to the past and blame ourselves for something.
Self-Blame
If only I had done _____________________________________________________________
I wish that I could have done
_____________________________________________________________
Self-Forgiveness: Becoming Non-judgmental and Forgiving Oneself
You cannot forgive someone else unless you can first forgive yourself for being in the wrong place at the right time. Forgiveness requires acknowledging your inner regrets about saying or doing something and wishing you had not done it. You must become at peace with yourself for what happened and may have caused trauma.
This is a process and is not done overnight. Accepting the past is part of the process. This is difficult, so write down any notes and bring them to an individual therapist. This helps untangle the large snarl of shame and guilt. Judgements and opinions help us understand ourselves. We can get into negative thinking patterns, and it’s important to understand the pattern, notice it when it comes, and notice our habits with negative thoughts.
Creating quick judgments is the job of the brain. When you notice that your thoughts are judgmental, write them down. Try to return to a neutral stance by sticking to facts.
Practice not judging or criticizing yourself and others.
1 Imagine a stop sign when you do have judgmental thoughts.
2 Take 5-10 deep breaths.
3 Tell yourself to start over without criticizing or swearing at yourself.
4 Talk with a support person if you have trouble.
Common Humanity: Our Connections to Others
We are all connected to each other. Even when we feel isolated and alienated from others, we need to break out of the prison that our distress creates: our depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, stigma, fear, psychosis, or PTSD symptoms.
We have negative thoughts that continue to come to mind and when we pay attention to them without understanding how they affect our feelings and actions, we increase the intensity and make poor decisions. The negative thoughts also affect psychosis symptoms and PTSD triggers and cause them to increase in frequency. Each day that we choose to ignore these negative thoughts and each day that we try to drown them with drugs is another day in our own prison, that we created. It is time to let ourselves out of this prison and do something different.
Other people have the same depth of feeling and distress. We are not alone in this. We need to pick up the phone and make a call to get help. We cannot go on isolating ourselves. It does not help the soul, and it is not good for the physical body. It leads to self-injurious, suicidal, and homicidal thoughts.
We need to feel that someone else understands our distress. We need someone to listen to and not give advice. We need help from others who are in the health care profession. We cannot do this alone. We have already tried to do this alone, and it did not work.
Understanding and Accepting Change
We cannot change and proceed with life until we are ready to acknowledge our distress and problems, try to resolve them, and forgive ourselves and re-define ourselves. We need to reconsider our values and build our self-regard, our self-esteem. We need to be ok with our choices and our new direction chosen.
Life experiences vary in degrees from being pleasant to neutral or content to experiencing pain and suffering. Wisdom come from difficult experiences and understanding how suffering is a teacher of new values. Painful events, such as grief and loss situations challenge our thinking and our values. We can learn from suffering as it presents new ways of thinking and acting, thus creating new values for us.
The practice of forgiveness and moving forward is explained in many different world cultures.
When we are ready to make changes in our lives, we can proceed. Until this time, we need time to reflect and evaluate our values and why we hold onto patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. When we feel regret or remorse, we are ready to change our values.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Regret (verb) Remorse (noun)
__________________________________________________________
Something I feel Avoiding hurtful or wrong actions
I feel sorry Understanding other's empathy
I feel disappointed Accepting responsibility for wrongdoings
I feel bad about … I am sorry for what I did.
I feel a loss or sorrow I was wrong.
I feel regretful that I missed out … Feel guilt or shame
A feeling of woe Wrongdoing for a sin
A feeling of sadness Repentance for the past
__________________________________________________________
Different religions ask you to pray for forgiveness and have ceremonies or rituals to achieve forgiveness. Prayer can help reconcile past issues. Churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples can aid in relieving anxiety around regrets and remorse. Religions can be a source of support for people and a safer way to meet people than other social activities.
PTSD:
Group therapy members talked openly about their regrets about past behaviors. They admitted to taking risks and being in unsafe areas, situations, or relationships. They wanted to change their values to stay safe, stay sober, and stay in a reliable and safe relationship.
Psychosis:
Group therapy members that had trouble with voices criticizing them, commanding them to harm themselves or others were allowed to talk openly about it. Other participants who had self-persecutory delusions or other delusions and believed that they did things wrong and deserved to be punished talked with the group. Medications helped stabilize symptoms. Recognizing that their thoughts are too strong and that they did not do anything wrong takes time. A support person, individual, or group therapy is helpful to do reality checks around the situations. Dismantling the delusion takes days, weeks, and months and therapy.
Mood:
Group members developed anxiety and depression around their past regrets and felt remorse for things that occurred. They held on to negative thoughts and irrational beliefs from their childhood. They learned to identify their feelings, negative thoughts, or cognitive distortions. They use self-compassion to accept that past and then try to let it go.
Comentários