A Tale of Two Questions
Thoughts are everything when it comes to how we live our lives. That may sound like an obvious statement, but there are many out there who do not examine the impact of their thinking. What we think dictates how we emotionally respond to every single thing that happens to us, which then guides how he choose to act. The conscious and unconscious thoughts that drive our thought-life can make or break us. So wouldn’t it be critical to analyze those thoughts so we are accurately navigating this world the way we want to? You betcha! And that is a lot of what I do in my practice. I help identify and analyze thoughts that may be causing people pain or causing them to react to situations in a maladaptive way. Here are two questions to ask yourself about your thought or thoughts that I have found to be very useful when challenging thoughts in therapy. And to help us out, we will practice on a very common thought I come across when meeting with those who have been through a lot: “So many bad things have happened in the past so even though things are good now, something bad is going to happen”.
The first question is: Is this thought beneficial?
The thought “something bad is going to happen” is not a pleasant one. It can cause all kinds of negative feelings. If one is anticipating something bad to happen, that person would most likely feel anxiety, bitterness and maybe even fear. This anxiety and fear replaces the peace, happiness, joy, gratitude and excitement of the good things that are happening in the present. Through one thought, one’s experience in life may shift from very positive to very negative although the circumstances are exactly the same. Things may not stop at just experiencing negative feelings. Expecting something bad to happen may actually cause one to sabotage their situation so that the “bad thing” comes sooner than later. This is called the self fulfilling prophecy and yes it is real and yes it happens all the time. The question “is this thought beneficial” gets quickly answered when we lay it out like that. However, there are those who would argue that that thought will help them prepare for the bad thing that is inevitably coming and that is when we have to ask the second question.
The second and perhaps more important question is: Is the thought true?
Is something bad going to happen? Well I can’t tell you that something bad will never happen again. However, at the same time it is not guaranteed that the feared “bad thing” will happen. We just don’t know. The thought may be completely false but some live their lives in misery swearing that it is true. Think of all the positivity that was tossed aside because they were mistaken.
The thing is, some thoughts may seem very true but aren’t. This may sound really weird, but logic can betray us and lead us to false conclusions. I have seen it countless times in therapy sessions. Jess (my beautiful wife) grew up in Englewood, Colorado. Unlike Inglewood, Los Angeles there were not many Mexican restaurants there. The only thing she had was Taco Bell. Needless to say, her idea of Mexican food was a little off. When she came to Los Angeles and got a taco, it was two corn tortillas with meat, onions and cilantro. She thought “This isn’t a taco. A taco is yellow, curved, crunchy, and filled with ground beef lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. And where is the Fire Sauce?”. All of her experience led her to the logical, yet wrong, conclusion of what a taco was. In the same vein, having a bunch of bad experiences can lead to thinking “bad things will always happen” but it could be a false conclusion.
If you take your thoughts and use these two questions to sort them out you can really help yourself lay aside thoughts that you don’t need to be thinking. We all live our lives with these underlying beliefs and thoughts that go unexamined. When we do, we start seeing how destructive and/or ridiculous they are and that is a huge step toward living the life you know you should live.