FinExecutive Russia website 2020-02-27

Ten simple ways to avoid obsessing over a problem

Below are ten simple techniques to help you avoid overthinking simple things.

At first glance, this may seem strange: the more you think, the better, right? But this approach is not always correct and can lead to serious difficulties. The more energy you devote to thinking, the more difficult it is to formulate a final decision, move from thoughts to actions, and overcome the stress that accompanies any problem.

If all this sounds familiar, here are ten simple ways to break the vicious cycle.

1. Forewarned is forearmed.

Before you overcome the habit of dwelling on problems, you need to learn to determine the beginning of this process by characteristic signs. If you feel the first signs of irritation, find yourself in doubt or under pressure from an uncertain external force, try to look at the situation from the outside. Look soberly at the current situation and your actions in it. By having an understanding of the big picture, you can influence it in a way that benefits you.

2. Don't frame consequences in a negative way.

In most cases, your plunge into a whirlpool of doubt and uncertainty is caused by only one emotion - fear. It paralyzes you at the very moment when you begin to frantically imagine all the negative consequences that await you if you make a mistake. Next time you find yourself on the edge of this “abyss,” stop. Stop and think about the positive consequences your actions will have. Visualize them, and henceforth return to this image when making your final decision.

3. Find a pleasant alternative

Sometimes it is useful to take your mind off the problem for a while and devote time to activities that are favorable to your mood and bring pleasure. Switch your activities to dancing, meditation, warming up, playing music, drawing or hobbies - anything that can distract you from thinking about the problem and help you change your mind in a positive way.

It is very easy to imagine many things to be much more significant and frightening than they really are. The next time you find yourself making a big deal out of a big deal, answer a simple question: How important will this problem be in five years? Or even in a month? This question will immediately put everything in its place and help you look at the situation in perspective, which will help you stop all unnecessary thoughts.

5. Don't strive for perfection

This point is very important in any situation. If you're waiting for the perfect conditions, stop now. Of course, a bit of perfectionism can be useful, but you will never be in perfect condition, and conditions will never work out perfectly for you. As soon as you start to think that something needs to be perfected, remember that such tactics are counterproductive and have never brought success to anyone.

Whatever your fear is based on: a bad previous experience, statistics or ordinary anxiety, always remember: just because something didn’t work out in the past, it doesn’t mean it will never work out. Remember, any failure is only an opportunity to start over, with new experience and knowledge.

7. Make time work for you

Create your own limit. Five minutes is your time to worry, think and analyze. As soon as the time is up, set a new timer - ten minutes to isolate and write down on a sheet of paper everything that haunts you. As soon as the time is up, feel free to throw away the piece of paper and move on to productive activities - - don’t spend a minute more in doubt.

8. Accept an uncertain future.

We are all limited only by the present, and no one can predict the future. If you spend your time worrying about the future, you are only wasting your precious time. Devoting your thoughts to a possible future is simply unproductive - it’s better to fill it with what makes your present brighter.

9. Accept yourself

The fear that forms the basis of most doubts is based on one thought - that you are not good enough; not smart enough, not capable enough, not tough enough. But do your best, and no matter how external circumstances turn out, you will know that you did the best you can. If not, try again and give it your all this time.

10. Rejoice

Your mind cannot be happy and sorry at the same time, so why not choose the most positive option. Every day, make a list of what you are happy with and what made you happy today. Take only the best from what surrounds you.

Everyone can get stuck in their own problems. But if you manage to stop going in circles and direct this energy to useful things, your life will only change for the better.

Rumination- that is, rumination in which you constantly return to the same question - tires you and makes you more susceptible to depression and anxiety.

The last time you saw your grandmother was before she died. This presentation of work last month. Yesterday's argument with your boss. Your performance is assessed in the next quarter. That damn toast you agreed to give at your wedding next summer. What do they have in common?

You can get hung up on these thoughts.

We all do it, and most of the time it's relatively safe. We go over what we should have said or plan what we should do and then move on. It's annoying, but in most cases it doesn't cause any more problems than an annoying song you can't get out of your head or a painful discussion you wish you could replay.

But for some people in certain situations looping does not stop and creates even more problems. This obsessive tendency to overthink has a name in the world of mental health: rumination. And that's not cool.

Although I deal with speculation every day in my practice, I have teamed up with a couple of experts who have written books on the topic: Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg, psychologist and author "The 10 Best Anxiety Management Techniques Ever" And "The World's 10 Best Depression Management Techniques", and doctor Guy Winch, psychologist and book author "Emotional First Aid: Treating Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Wounds". We hope that together we can shed light on this growing problem and help you understand

Well, for starters, it has to do with cows.

« Ruminate - Means "chew » - indicates Winch. “The word comes from the name of the way cows chew their food (meaning the English term - editor's note). Cows chew, swallow, regurgitate, then chew again. This works well for them, but people give preference to sad thoughts. Therefore in our case rumination- thinking about upset thoughts, reproducing them in our mind.”

Rumination is closely linked to depression and anxiety in several ways - it can be a symptom of both, make them worse, or make you more susceptible to them.

As a psychologist who has dealt with looping On both a personal and professional level, I can definitively confirm: it sucks. It steals time and energy and rarely gives anything worthwhile. And, while exhausting you in the process, it makes you more susceptible to her close relatives, anxiety And depression.

Although rumination is not a medical diagnosis, it is unique in that it can be a symptom depression And anxiety. A depressed person thinks about the losses and mistakes of the past, and drowns in a sea of ​​“what if” questions, always coming to a negative conclusion. Whether it's something we can't change or predict, sometimes our brains get stuck trying to control the uncontrollable.

It may seem like you're solving problems, but you're not.

While many problems are solved through careful thought and planning, Wehrenberg explains that “rumination is repetitive thinking—repetition of the same thought or problem without any solution. The problem is not solved: due to mental chewing, it only intensifies. It is simply repeating (usually negative) thoughts without mentally moving to a new perspective.”

Winch adds: “Rumination does not lead to new understanding or resolution, it simply spins us around, as if we are trapped on an emotionally torturous hamster wheel.”

Rumination is definitely harmful. Think about it: You don't usually dwell on good things.

Rumination usually fixated on bad things. It usually doesn't involve reliving your winning shot or well-timed joke; This is usually negative. Winch describes it like this: “Thought processes are by definition intrusive. They pop into our minds and they tend to linger there, especially when the thought is about something really upsetting or upsetting.”

Not to mention the effect it has on our bodies.

“Hinging on heartbreaking thoughts is like picking up emotional scabs because it causes anxiety every time we have a thought and, as a result, floods our body with stress hormones.”- speaks Winch. “We can easily spend hours or days drowning out upsetting thoughts, putting ourselves in a state of physical and emotional stress. As a result, habitual rumination significantly increases the risk of developing clinical depression, problem-solving disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse, and even cardiovascular disease.”

This is not good for our brain

According to Wehrenberg, repeating the cycle of thinking leads to changes in the brain. “In fact, rumination changes the structure of the brain so that it becomes easier and easier to return to thinking.”

And the more you do it, the harder it is to stop.

It's becoming a routine, he says Wehrenberg. “Rumination becomes a habit. It's hard to move on to another thought. The person who believes, “If I just think about it long enough, I'll understand,” is making a mistake. The more habitual a thought is, the more difficult it is to abandon it.”

Mindfulness is your first line of defense

As with many mental health issues, awareness always helps. According to Winch, your first step is to identify the painful thoughts and label them as harmful.

“When a painful thought becomes repetitive (or starts that way), we must catch it and turn it into a problem to solve—making it a problem that can be answered, rather than a problem that cannot be solved.”- he says. ,

For example, convert "I can't believe this happened" V “What can I do to prevent this from happening again?” or convert "I don't have any good friends!" V “What steps can I take to deepen my friendships and find new companions?”

Try to stop it before it starts.

Prepare a stock of positive statements, for example: "I'm trying my best" or “I have support if I need it”. Wehrenberg speaks: “The way to “erase the trail” of a recurring thought—often anxiety—is to block the movement toward rumination and consciously plan in advance what to think about instead. It sounds simple, but it's one of those things that is easy to understand but difficult to do."

Take a break to break the cycle

Winch recommends redirecting your attention to something else that requires focus. “Two to three minutes of distraction, such as a puzzle, a memory task, anything that requires concentration, can be enough to break the cycle rumination» - he says. “If we become distracted every time we have a harmful thought, the frequency with which it appears in our mind will decrease, as will its intensity.”

Keep a journal to get thoughts out of your head.

It may seem strange to give these thoughts more time in the spotlight, but I often advise clients who suffer from rumination, write down your thoughts. People who are prone to obsessing when they're trying to sleep can use a notepad by their bed to jot down thoughts and experiences that repeat themselves. Tell yourself that you won't forget about them now that they are on paper and you need a break from them while you sleep.

Remind your brain of the problem. Jokes aside.

“If you have to stop and start again hundreds of times a day, it will stop quickly, probably within a day.”, she says. “Even if the switch is simply to pay attention to the task at hand, it must be a decision to change thought processes.”.

Don't put pressure on yourself, don't try to deal with this alone.

According to Wehrenberg, “There are several methods, from meditation to cognitive techniques, that can help people take control of their own thinking. But a person who thinks that this is too difficult should contact a professional.".

Sometimes we just get caught up. On various aspects of life. Our decisions, regrets, self-esteem, worries about the future - we are so often stuck in our own heads that sometimes we feel there is no way out. We tell you how to stop splitting hairs and start moving on.

Why do we obsess?

When we talk about overthinking something, we are talking about several things. On the one hand, long thinking is when we find ourselves in a kind of loop, replaying the same event in our heads over and over again.

You analyze what happened, regret what you did or didn’t do, worry about the consequences, etc.

On the other hand, you can similarly consider decisions rather than actions. You analyze your decisions to the point of exhaustion, and one day you may reach the point where you cannot make any decisions at all.

In any case, we become wise when we become fixated on something and cannot think about anything else. This deprives you of strength, mood, energy, and the will to do things. And the ultimate goal is: somehow get out of this “thought loop” and move on.

1. Act now

If you are fixated on something - the best thing you can do is take action. This does not mean that you should suddenly jump up and run to do something, it just means that you need to take a step forward.

Let's say you are planning to move to another city. You can't do it immediately, so you sit there, going over the details of the move over and over again in your head.

And here it is important to start doing at least something. For example, make a list of where you want to go after you move. Research housing prices in that city, find out what jobs are available there, and so on. Create a financial plan and set goals. Make a schedule.

It doesn't matter what you do, you just have to step away from the thought you're stuck on. Creating all these plans and comparing them further can help you make your final decision.

Actually, moving is a simplified example, but it works great in all situations related to your future. In any similar situation, you can start drawing up an action plan - and feel better. Bob Miglani, one of the Huffington Post writers, summed up the idea this way:

Bob Miglani / www.indiaconferenceatharvard.com

“The only thing that helps rid the mind of fixation is turning your anxious thoughts about the future into some kind of effort and work. Take action, do something, and these actions can create a miracle.

Whenever I start to worry about the future, I just get up, go to my computer and start writing something or working on my book. And if suddenly it happened during the day, in the office, then I start writing down ideas on how to make my work more productive, or how to start working on something really interesting.

No matter what task you choose, it should be challenging so that focusing on the task gives your brain enough impetus to break the vicious circle of obsessiveness.”

It follows from this that getting busy is the main cure for overthinking. We tend to be wise because we are afraid of failure, but as soon as we get down to business, fears and doubts dissipate by themselves.

2. Shift your attention to something else

Sometimes, for some reason, you cannot begin to act, and then the only measure to get rid of the “obsession” is to distract the mind. Find yourself a hobby or some other activity that will completely occupy your mind. This will allow you to forget about your “thought loop” for a while, and eventually it will disappear.

Some people at such moments simply go for a walk. Writer Haruki Murakami in one of his books describes this feeling as “emptiness,” and he uses running as a cure for it:

“I'm just running. I'm running into the void. Or maybe I should put it another way: I run to find emptiness. But as you might expect, sometimes thoughts flash in this emptiness. A person's mind cannot be completely empty. Human emotions are not strong or consistent enough to withstand a vacuum. What I mean is that all kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions while I am running remain dependent on emptiness. They are just random thoughts without content, gathered around a void at the center.”

Of course, exercise is not the only way to distract yourself. For some, meditation is a great way to calm an overloaded brain. Completely ordinary things can help cope with anxiety, such as listening to music or any other activity that can distract the mind from anxious thoughts.

3. Stop talking about it

Most of us, when faced with a difficult decision and obsessing over it, ask others for advice, which is completely natural. But in practice this often means that we talk about our problem with so many people that in the end we just can’t help but become fixated. As mentioned earlier, too many “cooks in the kitchen” only leads to a worse decision-making process. Psychology today can explain what happens in our brain:

“The human mind hates uncertainty. Uncertainty implies volatility, randomness and danger. When we notice a lack of information, the brain raises a metaphorical red flag and says, “Pay attention!” This could be important...” When data is missing, we tend to overestimate its importance. Our mind assumes that if we spend resources searching for this information, we will solve the problem.”

We all want to receive useful information from others, but at a certain point this information ceases to be useful. When we have a limited amount of information, we can look at it more productively. Psychologists call it "strategy to take the best":

“The “take the best” strategy means that you reason only as much as necessary. Then you stop and do something else. For example, if there are ten pieces of information you need to make an informed decision, but one of those pieces is obviously more important than the others, then that piece will be enough for you to make a choice. Too much detail complicates things and wastes time.”

4. Find out why you're obsessing.

Sometimes we obsess over something just because we can. We get caught in a cycle in which we recreate an event over and over again or try to analyze an idea from every possible angle. After many hours of thinking and sleepless nights, we eventually reach a dead end.

Psychologists say that although our brain is programmed for such “looping”, something can still be done about it.

Here is their definition of the problem:

“Whether it's anxiety about social interactions, about our self-esteem, our future, our families, or something else, the cycle it causes is always debilitating and rarely produces beneficial results. Most often, we simply spend time thinking intensely about events, about our actions, about the actions of other people, or about their thoughts. We repeatedly try to predict all potential future outcomes, even though most of these scenarios will never come to pass.

The biggest problem here, which we constantly remind people of, is that you are not your brain. We often take the fleeting thoughts, urges, emotional impulses and desires our brains create at face value, and assume from the start that they must all be true.”

To recap, here's a four-step plan for getting out of a rut:

• Decide with what exactly causes the “looping” (self-doubt, anxiety, etc.);
• Reconsider your experience and identify thinking errors;
• Switch attention to the part that matters most;
• Swipe re-evaluating your brain's messages based on new information.

By going through these four steps, you can better understand how often our brain has no idea what it is doing. By stepping back a little, you can figure out which idea is causing the loop, close the loop, and be able to move on.

Anxiety is common to all people to one degree or another, and many of us sometimes perform rituals of varying degrees of irrationality designed to insure us against trouble - banging our fist on the table or wearing a lucky T-shirt to an important event. But sometimes this mechanism gets out of control, causing a serious mental disorder. “Theories and Practices” explains what tormented Howard Hughes, how an obsession differs from schizophrenic delusion, and what magical thinking has to do with it.

Endless Ritual

Jack Nicholson's character in the famous film “As Good As It Gets” was distinguished not only by his complex character, but also by a whole set of oddities: he constantly washed his hands (with new soap each time), ate only with his own cutlery, avoided the touch of others and tried not to step on cracks on the asphalt. All these “eccentricities” are typical signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a mental illness in which a person is obsessed with obsessive thoughts that force him to regularly repeat the same actions. OCD is a real boon for a screenwriter: this disease is more common in people with high intelligence, it gives the character originality, noticeably interferes with his communication with others, but at the same time is not associated with a threat to society, unlike many other mental disorders. But in reality, the life of a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder cannot be called easy: behind innocent and even funny, at first glance, actions hide constant tension and fear.

It’s as if a record is stuck in such a person’s head: the same unpleasant thoughts regularly come to mind, having little rational basis. For example, he imagines that there are dangerous microbes everywhere, he is constantly afraid of hurting someone, losing something, or leaving the gas on when leaving home. He may be driven crazy by a leaking faucet or an asymmetrical arrangement of objects on the table.

The flip side of this obsession, that is, obsession, is compulsion, the regular repetition of the same rituals that should prevent the impending danger. A person begins to believe that the day will go well only if he reads a nursery rhyme three times before leaving the house, that he will protect himself from terrible diseases if he washes his hands several times in a row and uses his own cutlery. After the patient performs the ritual, he experiences relief for a while. 75% of patients suffer from both obsessions and compulsions at the same time, but there are cases when people experience only obsessions without performing rituals.

At the same time, obsessive thoughts differ from schizophrenic delusions in that the patient himself perceives them as absurd and illogical. He is not at all happy about washing his hands every half hour and zipping his fly five times in the morning - but he simply cannot get rid of the obsession any other way. The level of anxiety is too high, and rituals allow the patient to achieve temporary relief. But at the same time, the love of rituals, lists, or putting things on shelves in itself, if it does not bring discomfort to a person, is not considered a disorder. From this point of view, aesthetes who diligently arrange carrot peelings lengthwise in Things Organized Neatly are absolutely healthy.

The biggest problems for OCD patients are obsessions of an aggressive or sexual nature. Some become afraid that they will do something bad to other people, including sexual assault and murder. Obsessive thoughts can take the form of individual words, phrases or even lines of poetry - a good illustration is an episode from the movie “The Shining”, where the main character, going crazy, begins to type the same phrase “all work and no play makes Jack” a dull boy.” A person with OCD experiences enormous stress - he is simultaneously horrified by his thoughts and tormented by a feeling of guilt for them, tries to resist them, and at the same time tries to ensure that the rituals he performs go unnoticed by others. In all other respects, his consciousness functions completely normally.

It is believed that obsessions and compulsions are closely related to “magical thinking” that arose at the dawn of humanity - the belief in the ability to take control of the world with the help of the right attitude and rituals. Magical thinking draws a direct parallel between a mental desire and a real consequence: if you draw a buffalo on the wall of a cave, setting yourself up for a successful hunt, you will certainly be lucky. Apparently, this way of perceiving the world originates in the deep mechanisms of human thinking: neither scientific and technological progress, nor logical arguments, nor sad personal experience proving the uselessness of magical passes free us from the need to look for relationships between random things. Some scientists believe that it is embedded in our neuropsychology - the automatic search for patterns that simplify the picture of the world helped our ancestors survive, and the most ancient parts of the brain still work according to this principle, especially in a stressful situation. Therefore, with an increased level of anxiety, many people begin to be afraid of their own thoughts, fearing that they may come true, and at the same time believe that a set of some irrational actions will help prevent an undesirable event.

Story

In ancient times, this disorder was often associated with mystical causes: in the Middle Ages, people obsessed with obsessive ideas were immediately sent to exorcists, and in the 17th century, the concept was reversed - it was believed that such conditions arise due to excessive religious zeal.

In 1877, one of the founders of scientific psychiatry, Wilhelm Griesinger and his student Karl-Friedrich-Otto Westphal, found that the basis of “obsessive-compulsive disorder” is a disorder of thinking, but it does not affect other aspects of behavior. They used the German term Zwangsvorstellung, which, having been variously translated in Britain and the US (as obsession and compulsion respectively), became the modern name for the disease. And in 1905, the French psychiatrist and neurologist Pierre Marie Felix Janet isolated this neurosis from neurasthenia as a separate disease and called it psychasthenia.

Opinions varied about the cause of the disorder - for example, Freud believed that obsessive-compulsive behavior referred to unconscious conflicts that manifested themselves as symptoms, while his German colleague Emil Kraepelin classified it as “constitutional mental illnesses” caused by physical causes.

Famous people also suffered from obsessive disorder - for example, inventor Nikola Tesla counted steps while walking and the volume of food portions - if he failed to do this, the lunch was considered spoiled. And entrepreneur and American aviation pioneer Howard Hughes was terrified of dust and ordered employees before visiting him to “wash themselves four times, each time using a large amount of foam from a new bar of soap.”

Defense mechanism

The exact causes of OCD are not clear even now, but all hypotheses can be divided into three categories: physiological, psychological and genetic. Proponents of the first concept associate the disease either with the functional and anatomical features of the brain, or with metabolic disorders (biologically active substances that transmit electrical impulses between neurons, or from neurons to muscle tissue) - primarily serotonin and dopamine, as well as norepinephrine and GABA. Some researchers have noted that many obsessive-compulsive disorder patients had birth trauma at birth, which also supports physiological causes of OCD.

Proponents of psychological theories believe that the disease is associated with personal characteristics, character, psychological trauma and an incorrect reaction to the negative influence of the environment. Sigmund Freud suggested that the occurrence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms is associated with the protective mechanisms of the psyche: isolation, elimination and reactive formation. Isolation protects a person from anxiety-causing affects and impulses, displacing them into the subconscious; elimination is aimed at combating the emerging repressed impulses - in fact, the compulsive act is based on it. And finally, reactive formation is the manifestation of patterns of behavior and consciously experienced attitudes that are opposite to emerging impulses.

There is also scientific evidence that genetic mutations contribute to OCD. They were found in unrelated families whose members suffered from OCD - in the serotonin transporter gene, hSERT. Studies of identical twins also confirm the existence of a hereditary factor. In addition, people with OCD are more likely to have close relatives with the same disorder than healthy people.

Maksim, 21 years old, suffers from OCD since childhood

It started for me at about 7-8 years old. The neurologist was the first to report the possibility of OCD; even then there was a suspicion of obsessive neurosis. I was constantly silent, spinning various theories in my head like “mental gum.” When I saw something that caused me anxiety, obsessive thoughts about it began, although the reasons seemed to be quite insignificant and, perhaps, would never have affected me.

At one time I had an obsessive thought that my mother might die. I replayed the same moment in my head, and it captured me so much that I could not sleep at night. And when I’m riding in a minibus or in a car, I constantly think that we’re going to get into an accident, that someone is going to crash into us, or that we’re going to fly off a bridge. A couple of times the thought arose that the balcony under me would fall apart, or that someone would throw me out of there, or that I myself would slip and fall in the winter.

We never really talked to the doctor, I just took different medications. Now I move from one obsession to another and follow some rituals. I am constantly touching something, no matter where I am. I walk from corner to corner throughout the room, straightening the curtains and wallpaper. Maybe I'm different from other people with this disorder, everyone has their own rituals. But it seems to me that those people who accept themselves as they are are luckier. They are much better off than those who want to get rid of it and are very worried about it.

We get stuck because we lead self-obsessed lives. By being self-obsessed, I mean living life in your own head, seeing the world through your own glasses, and connecting everything to your own importance. When you live inwardly, you are closed, your thoughts are directed inward, and you listen to a never-ending internal dialogue of judgment and criticism. You compare yourself to others. You are following a script created by parents, society, advertising and old dreams that are no longer relevant to you. And when they don’t match reality, you form false beliefs: “I’m not good enough, beautiful enough, or strong enough. I could do it better. I do not deserve ________". When you focus on yourself, your world becomes very small.

Unless you were born into a perfect family and all your relationships were flawless, which is impossible, your head will play this broken record of judgment and criticism. Of course, the volume of the record varies depending on your story. However, it plays inside all of us. This is quicksand. It starts with pure emotion, anger, hopelessness, loneliness, despair, sadness and anxiety. We dive deeper until our pure emotion becomes emotion-driven thought—such a broken record. This is where the loop of negative self-talk comes from, that self-talk that gets stuck in our heads.

If you say something enough times, you will begin to believe it. Whenever the pseudo-identity, your false ego, leads your consciousness to thinking patterns that are opposed to the integral identity, such thinking can lead to problems. The tracks on our broken records become false, limiting beliefs. They begin to define who we are and limit our potential. For example, here are some false beliefs:

· The world will be better without me.

· I better start drinking again.

· Nobody loves Me.

· I'm useless.

· Either way, I don't deserve anything better than what I have.

· I can't. I can't. I can't.

Such false beliefs create fear and uncertainty. They keep us locked in our own heads, on a planet very far from joy and happiness.

The way to break this broken record is to get out of your consciousness (identity). Acknowledge your feelings, but not the judgmental thoughts behind them. Allow yourself to feel a true feeling, and then let it go, because it is temporary. It is not attached to you. Many people hold on to them because the feelings are strong and compelling, but as I said above, this negative emotion can quickly turn into a track on repeat, which can then become a false belief. Feelings do not determine your worth unless you allow them to. And how many people do this without even realizing it.

It's normal to feel lonely. Stamping yourself as “unworthy of love” is not normal. It's normal to feel discouraged, overwhelmed, frustrated and confused. However, believing that you are inadequate or cannot do something because at the moment you feel like you can't is not normal. It's normal to feel hurt because someone has decided they don't want to be with you. It is not okay to believe that you are inferior.

There is a difference between what we feel and who we are.

For many, this line is blurred. Living outside of your own identity allows you to draw these boundaries with a permanent marker, not chalk. Separating emotion from thought allows us to be in the present. The world is getting bigger. And bright. Instead of constantly changing gears, we stay in neutral. Our energy is not wasted on unnecessary work.

So how do we separate one from the other? How can we live in our truth and not in our head? How do we separate feelings from our worth and abilities?

First step- This admit your feelings. They don't go away when you ignore them. Like children, they will become even more noisy. Master your senses. They will begin to dissolve, pass through you like wind and water, only after you allow yourself to feel them. Otherwise, resentment is formed. In this situation, we use shame to cut ourselves off emotionally.

Once you have allowed yourself to feel your feelings, next step- This explore where these feelings come from. It is important to let yourself feel first so that you feel heard. If you rush to explore where your feelings are coming from without allowing yourself to feel them, there is a chance that your truth will be diminished. You don't allow yourself to be heard. First fully acknowledge and feel. And let it take as long as it takes. But still not so much that you begin to drown in them and allow them to control your life.

At a certain point, after you feel what you need to feel, you have to move on. And at that moment you put on your detective hat and begin to explore with good curiosity. This step– part of the learning phase, beginning of the growth process. The goal is to see if these feelings have a pattern and what triggers them. Again, you are not judging or arguing with your own feelings. You explore where they came from. If you follow this thread, you will discover valuable information. Once you know why you feel the way you do, you can begin to trace and connect the dots. You can begin to step back and understand yourself and your device better. You can focus on yourself instead of other people. The moment you understand, you can begin to change. Without this understanding, it’s easy to get lost in your own feelings and let them guide you. Because we overthink and hold onto negative feelings rather than positive ones, we will be driven by our negativity. In such moments, we can react very strongly and make decisions that we will later regret.

Unraveling why is where you find your grip. Our motivation comes from answering “why” questions rather than “what” questions. Why are you reacting? Why do you get angry when he says this or acts this way? Why does this hurt you so much? Why do you always go to this place? Why are you running? Why are you hiding? Why are you attracted to this type of person? Why are you putting so much pressure on yourself? Why do you do what you do? Why do you always look at it this way? Why do you use this particular thinking model? Once you develop a better understanding of your “why,” you can make healthier choices to respond to your feelings and stimuli instead of simply reacting to them. Remember, this is a process. It takes time. Be kind and patient with yourself.

Next step- This become aware of all the thoughts behind your feelings. What conclusions do you draw based on what you feel? I'm sure you've heard the statement "feelings are not facts." Many people believe that something is a fact because they feel it. Once you discover the “why,” you can realize that having a feeling doesn’t mean your conclusions are correct. Be aware of the messages you send yourself. Position yourself as an observer and notice them. What does this say about you, the way you think and behave? Now take all this information and apply it to your daily life. This - execution stage.

Growth is 50% discovery and 50% execution. Without execution, you will only have ideas. No change. Remember this. I will mention this many times.

How do your thoughts and conclusions show up in your life? What behavior is associated with these thoughts? Is this behavior consistent with who you want to be?

Working with limiting beliefs

PRACTICE: Stop focusing on yourself.

1. Write down 5 problematic thinking patterns that repeat in your life.

2. Act them out and write down how each one translates into beliefs and behaviors.

3. Then write down how each limiting belief and behavior affects your thought process and life. Give examples. Specific examples.

4. Finally, write down what new behavior and thoughts can replace the old ones.

You have just created a change map for yourself. All you have to do is follow this map and change will happen in your life.

When we replace limiting beliefs with promoting ones, and replace old ways of thinking and responding with new thoughts and behaviors, it is almost impossible not to grow.

John Kim, family therapist, published author, lecturer, life coach, co-founder of SHFT. Known as "The Angry Therapist," he has published and worked with Mindbodygreen, NPR, The Atlantic, and Air BnB, and is the author of The Angry Therapist: A No Bullshit Guide to Finding and Living Your Truth. guide to finding and living your truth)