thoughts – Licensed Mental Health Counselor

Defeat Unpleasant Thoughts By Ignoring Them

27 Aug 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC5 Comments

I recently read an article on psychologytoday.com entitled Why Our Thoughts Are Not Real. This wasn’t the first time I had read an article that talked about the fallaciousness of our thoughts and how we often misinterpret the information our thoughts give us.

Everyday we are filled with thousands of thoughts, most of them aren’t even real, but we assume and act on them as if they are real and that is what causes us to have many of the feelings and behaviors we have that cause us so much strife.

Our thoughts on their own are just thoughts, they don’t exist in reality, you can’t touch them and they really aren’t anything at all until we make them real by engaging in, dwelling on and trying to do something about them.

I try to explain this a lot when I work with clients dealing with anxiety. They will have a thought pop into their head, such as “I don’t think my shirt matches my pants today and everyone is going to notice and I am going to be walking around looking like a fool and people will be laughing behind my back.”

Consciously the client didn’t chose to have this thought, it just popped into her head and if she ignores it for a while, it will likely fade away and she will forget she even had that thought, but what most people do, especially people with anxiety, we try to do something to get rid of the thought which causes us to pay more attention to the thought which causes the thought to become more real and anxiety provoking.

The person in this case is then more likely to continue wondering if she looks stupid, may go look in the mirror and start scrutinizing her attire even more and may go to a coworker asking “do I look stupid in this” and may feel relieved when the co-worker says “No, you look fine” or may create even more anxiety by saying that her coworker is just too nice to hurt her feelings.

Whatever the case, the point is that because she is thinking about the thought, that isn’t even real, she is making it more and more real and creating more and more anxiety, when if she would have just let the thought enter her brain, allow herself to not do anything about it, including thinking about it, the thought most likely would have left her awareness and she would have went on with her day without being overly conscious about her attire.

When we start given our thoughts attention, that’s when they start to feel real and start to have some control over us because we typically want to do something about it. People with anxiety generally create more anxiety because they attend too much to their anxious thoughts and generally try to get rid of it, by doing something which causes even more anxiety, similar to someone with obsessive compulsive disorder. The same goes for people suffering from depression. They may have the unreal thought “no body likes me” and so they withdraw from people and when they find themselves alone use that as further proof that “no body likes me”.

When it comes to anxiety, I had a client who suffered with anxiety and her boyfriend would break up with her almost every week. When he would break up with her she would have the thought, “If he leaves me I will be alone and miserable for the rest of my life”, that thought would cause her to panic and she would call and text him repeatedly. He wouldn’t respond which would amplify that thought and her anxiety so she would jump in her car and drive fast and recklessly to his house where she would pound on the door and cry until he opened it and they reconciled.

Later she would always be depressed by the frantic and pathetic way she responded, yet the next week she would do it all over again.

I had to help her learn to just sit with her thoughts and feelings and do nothing about them, even though she felt like she needed to. It was hard for her not to call, text and drive to go see him the first few times we worked on this, her anxiety was through the roof, but when she finally allowed herself to sit with the anxiety, to try to not think about it, she was surprised that after about 20 minutes, the anxiety went from a level 10 to about a 2. It would come back when she thought about it and we had to work on letting it go again, and once again her anxiety would go back down without her doing absolutely anything except not giving it life by attending to it and trying to do something about it.

After a few sessions she was able to sit with her anxiety and not have it cause her whole world to stop or spin out of control and with that, her self-confidence increased and she was able to handle her situations a lot better, without panic, but with a clear level head.

I think this is something we can all practice. Remember that our thoughts are not real until we breathe life until them, and especially when it comes to an uncomfortable thought, sometimes doing nothing about it, including not thinking about it, will allow it to leave our consciousness and fade into nothingness instead of causing us to feel and do erratic and irrational things.

Distraction is a good tool to use when it comes to this. Instead of thinking about the thought, do something to distract yourself. I do it all the time and with practice it becomes really simple. Usually in about five minutes whatever the thought was causing the anxiety, sadness, or whatever, will fade from my consciousness and not have crippled my day or caused me a great deal of distress. This is a simple solution that can help us all live happier, more fulfilled lives.

Popular Psychology

Taking Back Control Over Your Thoughts, Feelings And Emotions

20 May 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

This is one of my favorite quotes, not because it is brilliant, which it is, not because it is simple and true, which it also is, but because it is something I teach daily to my clients and something that I personally struggle with.

A large majority of my clients are suffering from various issues because of interpersonal problems, many which could be eliminated or at least greatly reduced if they just stopped allowing other people to control their thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Matter of fact, learning to control your thoughts, feelings and emotions is the hallmark of cognitive behavioral therapy which is the main theoretical orientation I work from.

When I listen to my clients vent in anger, cry in sadness or hyperventilate through anxiety, what I hear a lot of is that they are giving other people too much power over them, many of them who don’t have their best interest at heart and who wouldn’t be sitting across from me in emotional and psychological pain if the tables were turned.

These people my clients let control them, for the most part, couldn’t care less about the agony they were causing them.

Most of my clients allow boyfriends, so-called friends, family members and even mere acquaintances dictate how they feel about themselves, how their day is going, what they think about their life and even their future.

It goes much deeper than that, but the point is that they have given other people power over them and I have to teach them how to start taking it back and keeping it for themselves.

I also try to teach them that nothing matters until they make it matter, something I got out of the book I AM: Discovering Who You Really Are by Howard Franco. It basically means that you decide what effects you, how it effects you and what doesn’t.

Most people’s emotional thermostat is set on automatic, they automatically respond to certain situations the same, usually either with anger, fear or self-pity.

Learning that nothing matters until you interpret why it matters, how much it matters and how to respond to it, allows you to keep your power and decide rationally how and if you should respond to a situation. It takes the automatic response out of it, and allows you to slow down and make a much more fair decision.

Often our emotions and actions are out of line with the actual situation which causes a lot of emotional turmoil, but I don’t want to stray too far from the main topic. The bottom line is, we have to stop the cycle of allowing other people to control us, especially those who invest so little into us in a positive way.

I used to have an ex-girlfriend who I let control my thoughts, feelings and emotions to the point that I was probably a bit neurotic. How I felt about myself depended on how she felt about me that day. If she was happy with me and showing me love, I felt great about myself. If she was in a bad mood and treating me poorly, I hated myself. My life was full of anxiety trying to figure out how to keep her happy with me, something that was totally out of my control.

It took too many anxious days and crying at night for me to realize that she had too much control over me and I needed to take that control back. It took some self-help books, talking with friends who actually cared about me, and even some meditation before I finally found the strength to take back control and leave that person.

Sometimes however you can’t just leave that person because that person is in your family, or your husband or someone you don’t want to lose contact with, but you want to stop allowing them to control you. In that case, the person who has to do the work is you and only you.

It is not easy, but it is one of the most liberating personal experiences you may ever have.

I’ll end this with a line from chapter three in the book I AM: Discovering Who You Really Are, which is titled “You Decide What Matters”:

“What you experience can only have an effect on you in a tangible way if you make it matter. If you don’t make it matter, it will have no effect on you.” – Howard Falco

Taking Control of Your LIfe

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Brief Primer Part 2: The ABC’s of Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviors

24 Aug 201224 Aug 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Albert Ellis is the father of what is known as Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy or REBT. Today, a lot of techniques used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) come from REBT and that includes much of the theory that our thoughts control our feelings and behaviors.

Most people believe that an event or person “makes” them feel a certain way, when in actuality, it’s their thoughts (perceptions) and what they are telling themselves (self-talk) that actually make them feel and thus react in a certain way.

However, REBT and CBT teaches that by controlling your thoughts, you can control the way you feel which will in-turn affect the way you feel.

Let’s take for example that you are dating someone and then they suddenly break up with you. Most people will internalize everything by telling themselves things such as “what did I do wrong”, “maybe he/she found someone better”, “I just lost a good thing” or “I’m such a loser”.

Those thoughts will then lead to the person feeling down, depressed, like a “loser” and possibly even anxious and desperate.

They are then more likely to do things depressed people do such as over eat, over sleep (or under eat and under sleep), cry, isolate themselves, turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the pain of rejection, etc.

Now let’s take that same person and the same situation, but this time after the break up they tell themselves “he/she just lost a good thing”, “Oh well, on to the next one”, “he/she must have other issues”, “now I’m free to find someone worth my time”, or “it’s better to find out things wouldn’t work out now then later”.

That person is more likely to not feel so rejected, to possibly even feel somewhat relieved or even optimistic about the future.

Because of this, that person is likely to go on with their life with little interruption, returning to life as normal, without all the negative behaviors that came along with the first example. The event didn’t change, but the thinking and perception did.

Your thoughts are so powerful! No one can make you mad, sad, anxious or whatever, only your thoughts can do that.

If I am going to speak in front of a million people and all I’m telling myself is that “I’m going to mess up. I’m not qualified to give this talk”, then I am going to lose sleep, be extremely anxious and probably stumble as a self-fulfilling prophecy during the speech.

However, if I convince myself that “I’m going to rock this. I am more than qualified to do this”, then I am likely to be much less anxious and thus more likely to actually give a great speech.

The event didn’t change (having to give a speech), the only thing that changed is my thinking!

In short, Albert Ellis broke it down into four simple rules to help evaluate your thoughts and see if they are rational or irrational.

A. Activating Event: What exactly is going on?

B. Beliefs (perceptions): What thoughts are you having about the event? What are you telling yourself?

C. Consequences (behaviors): What do you do or how do you act in response to the beliefs and thoughts you have about the event.

As a last example, let’s take something almost everyone can relate to, the terrorist attacks that happened in America on September 11, 2001, that would be our activating event.

People in the United States were angry, scared, and shocked about the terrorist attacks, while the terrorist were elated. In America we prepared for war, started avoiding certain places and even slid into a recession, that was our consequences/behaviors, while the terrorist celebrated as seen on CNN and Al- Jazerra video.

How could the same exact event have starkly contrasting reactions? The answer is the difference in the way the two groups perceived the events.

And then there is the last part of the ABC’s of thinking and that is “D” for disputing our thinking.

It is imperative that when we have thoughts that upset us that we challenge or dispute them to see if they are irrational. What evidence do we have that we are going to fail, be alone forever, not get the job we applied for, etc.

Without disputing or challenging our irrational thoughts, we’ll always believe they are true, even when they aren’t. In the next part of this series we will explore negative thoughts a little more in-depth.

Uncategorized

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Brief Primer Part 1: Automatic Thoughts, Assumptions and Personal Schemas

15 Aug 201215 Aug 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most popular forms of therapy used in the Western world. The premise behind CBT is that stressful states such as depression, anxiety and anger are often maintain or exacerbated by exaggerated or biased ways of thinking. The role of the therapist is to help the patient recognize his or her idiosyncratic style of thinking and modify it through the application of evidence and logic.

One of the key components of CBT is getting the person to start recognizing their automatic thoughts which usually serve to maintain their undesired state.

Automatic thoughts come spontaneously, so much so that we often give no thought to them, and they appear to be true even when distorted, which often lead to problematic behaviors and disturbing emotions.

Some forms of automatic thoughts include fortune telling, dichotomous (all or nothing thinking), catastrophizing, personalizing, mind-reading and labeling.

Automatic thoughts could be true or false. For example, someone may have the mind-reading thought that “My boss doesn’t like me” and that could be true. However, the problem is that without sufficient evidence, we usually believe our automatic thoughts to be totally accurate, even when they aren’t. Combine this with the other underlying assumptions and rules that we all have, which tend to be rigid, over-inclusive, almost impossible to attain and ascribe vulnerability into the future, and we have a recipe for repeated disappointment, anger, depression, anxiety and a host of other unhealthy feelings and thoughts (Leah, 2003).

For example, if the person who has the automatic thought “My boss doesn’t like me”, also has the underlying rule that “Everyone must like me or I am a bad person”, will be deeply upset over the thought that his/her boss doesn’t like them. The same is true with rejection which partially explains why some people do not take rejection as well as others. One person can ask someone out on a date and if that person politely says “no”, that person goes on with their day, giving little thought to the rejection. But if another person has the rule and automatic thought “If she rejects me, that means I am undesirable to all women and will spend the rest of my life alone”, they will handle the rejection totally differently.

Underlying assumptions are deeply linked to personal schemas. Personal schemas are basically the core beliefs of what we belief about ourselves. We all have personal schemas, some positive and some negative, which influence the way we interpret information filtered through our automatic thoughts.

Back to our example. If someone has the personal schemas, “I am undesirable”, “I am worthless”, “I am unattractive”, they will have selective attention and memory as they look to validate their core beliefs about themselves and thus their automatic thoughts will also work to validate their core beliefs. So if the person already has the personal schema “I am undesirable”, and the automatic thought “this person will probably reject me” (mind reading), if they get rejected it will validate their personal schema and thus send them into a tail spin of self-pity, depression and anxiety, building on the strength of their erroneous thinking, assumptions, and schema.

(The ego always wants to be in balance with you and wants to make you happy. “The ego’s mission is to take the beliefs of the self and turn them into the experiences of the self.” – Falco, 2010)

This person, like many people with depression or anxiety, will filter out any information that contradicts their negative personal schemas and assumptions. For example, they may not notice the cute guy that flirts with them, but will fall to pieces at the person who makes a disapproving comment about her hair or her dress.

The goal of a CBT therapist would be to get the person to start recognizing all of these erroneous patterns of thinking, unravel them and replace them with more accurate forms of thinking.

We will discuss in a later post how thoughts create feelings.

Taking Control of Your LIfe, Therapist are Humans Too, Uncategorized

Gabrielle “Gabby” Douglas and A.N.T.S.

4 Aug 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

Recently I watched as Gabrielle “Gabby” Douglas won two gold metals in the Olympics and made history by becoming not only the first African-American woman, but also the first woman of color to win the individual-all around in gymnastics. Remarkable feats for anyone, let alone a 16 year old. Being an African-American I was so proud of her, so you can imagine my shock when I was told that much of the talk about Gabby within the African-American community online wasn’t about her gold metals or her history making accomplishment, but about her hair. Her hair? Are you kidding me?

I took some time reading different blogs and websites and was shocked to see that a lot of people were more concerned about the texture, style and condition of her hair than about what this 4’11” exceptional athlete was doing in London. The more I read, the more I found myself enraged at the ignorance of those who expressed that Gabby was representing all African-American women “and her hair should look good” while she was doing it. This is so ridiculous. She is representing African-American women, showing that if you are dedicated, focused, work hard, refuse to take no for an answer and never give up on yourself, you can accomplish all of your dreams. Instead, many people are worried about the superficial and that got me to thinking.

There are so many places I could go with this. I could talk about the psychology of racism, self-hate, the European standard of beauty, stereotypes, the psychodynamic value (or devaluation) of African-American hair, post traumatic slave syndrome, images in the media that make many African-American’s consciously or sub-consciously reject their own images as attractive, self esteem, and the list could go on and on. However, I decided to try to stay as true to this blog as possible, and discuss something I think everyone could benefit from and that is understanding automatic negative thoughts, or ANTS.

You see, we all have automatic thoughts which are thoughts that just pop into our head without us giving much thought about them. We will discuss this more in detail next week. We all at times even have ANTS (automatic negative thoughts), but some people seem to be infested with ANTS and when reading those disparaging remarks about Gabby, I realized that those people were infested. Instead of looking at a beautiful, successful, incredible young woman, they quickly pointed out the negative and decided to focus on that for whatever reason (in the African-American community, the word “crabbing” is often used to describe when other African-American’s complain about more successful African-Americans, often in attempts to make the other person feel bad while also making the person complaining feel better about themselves). Those ANTS keep them from being able to truly see or recognize the beauty right in front of them.

People with ANTS, if you take them to a beautiful beach will complain that it’s too hot, the waves are too loud, it smells too salty or that the sand is getting between their toes. If you take them on a beautiful midnight stroll they will complain that the moon is too bright or that their feet hurt. Or, if you show them a beautiful teenager making Olympic history, will complain that her hair isn’t done nicely. They will never be happy unless they are complaining about something. They are so used to being miserable that they are only happy when complaining. These people usually don’t even know that they have a problem because they have lived with the ANTS for so long that they are part of them.

Are there people in your life who have ANTS? People who always seem to rain on your parade, point out the negative in every situation or seem to only be somewhat content when they are complaining about how miserable they are or pointing out flaws and imperfections in other people? If so, recognizing that they are infested with ANTS helps keep you from making their issue, your issue, and allows you to detach from them either physically or emotionally. Maybe you recognize that you have an infestation of ANTS. Start paying attention to your automatic thoughts, especially those ANTS and next week we’ll start working on getting rid of them.

Taking Control of Your LIfe

We are Living Magnets

27 Mar 201227 Mar 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviors
A Prelude

You are a living magnet. You attract into your life people, situations, and circumstances that are in harmony with you dominant thoughts.

Those words are inscribed on my sister’s wall to wall chalk board when you enter her home. I don’t know where that particular quote came from, but it sounds a lot like The Secret and The Laws of Attraction which I 100% believe, not in a pseudo-new age-science sort of way, but in a we manifest our own destiny way.

I truly believe that for the most part, we design our lives. We are natural architects of our lives, CEOs and CFOs of our lives and it all starts with our thoughts.

We have to constantly be aware of our thoughts. Our thoughts create our situations. I listen to people all the time say things like, “I’m bad with money”, “I suck at math”, “I have no luck with relationships”, etc… We have to be careful of what we say and think about ourselves because those thoughts become reality. It’s that simple , yet I’ve found that its hard to get most people to see, believe and start to change their thoughts. Even I struggle with that often enough that it has caused me to read a handful of books on the subject.

This will be the first post of several that talks about thoughts, feelings and behaviors because I believe that it is such and important and powerful part of creating the life we want and not just being passive participants or even worst, seeing ourselves as victims.

In my next post on the subject I’ll do a brief overview on rational emotive behavioral therapy which I think is a great foundation to starting to understand the way thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all connected.