Empowering yourself to think differently
When people come in for therapy they’ll often ask for tools to help them stop thinking a certain kind of way.
For example:
“ I get really angry when things don’t go my way, what are some tools I can use to stop?”
“I can’t get over my breakup, what are some tools to help me stop thinking about my ex?”
While there certainly are tools and techniques that help with emotional regulation and thought challenging, our ability to redirect the way we think is sometimes underrated.
It makes sense to want a structured tool to help us get out of our uncomfortable emotions, but sometimes the process of overcoming these emotions needs to come from somewhere deeper.
If you’d like to start thinking differently, it might makes sense to first ask yourself the following question:
Can we control the way we think or are our emotional reactions out of our control?
On one hand, as humans we have the power of perspective - meaning that our emotions aren’t purely instinct, they’re a response to our perspective, or how we perceive something. Ultimately, we do play a role in why we feel the way we do.
On the other hand, emotions can be really powerful and sometimes we know we shouldn’t be feeling a certain kind of way….but we still do.
Where do we find the line between throwing in the towel / feeling uncomfortable with how we’re feeling and challenging yourself to think differently?
That’s where learning to empower yourself to think differently comes into play. If you believe your reactions to situations are inevitable, they likely will be. If you believe you have the power to redirect the way you think - it’s not a guarantee that you will, but it gives you the opportunity to fight the good fight.
Where a lot of people get held up from buying into this is by thinking about their past experiences and how in the past, this way of thinking has always been a problem, so why should it stop now just because they’re telling themselves to stop thinking a certain kind of way…
(If you haven’t seen the Bob Newhart clip where he plays a therapist it’s well worth the watch.)
While this process entails more than just telling yourself to just stop feeling that way, I’d respond by saying that our emotional responses are always evolving and changing. Obviously that which upset us a child no longer does as an adult, we change, mature and re-prioritize our concerns. That evolution never needs to stop as we can always challenge our emotional reactions regardless of what our past illustrates.
Viktor Frankl speaks on this concept with the following sentiment: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
In other words, we are absolutely limited in our external situations. We can do our best to change our situation, but often, we reach a limit where there is no more we can do. What we certainly have more control over, is our internal dialogue, our perspective, the narrative we are telling over in our minds about our current circumstances.
Again, this isn’t to say our emotions can’t get the best of us, that’s part of the human experience, rather the point is to recognize that our power of redrecting and reframing the way we think is likely more in our hands than we might believe.