Throughout the day do you notice yourself focusing more on the negative things and things that you are worried about or do you notice that you are focused more on things that you’ve done well or things that are going well for you?
You’ll notice if you keep track of your thought pattern throughout the day that if you focus more on negative things that you are going to feel very negative mentally, emotionally, and physically. I’ve spoken with several patients who are so used to talking about problems that even if I ask them what good things happened during the week they still reply with a negative.
I’ve asked couples in couples counseling what is going well in their relationship and they will start going down a rabbit hole of negativity trying to outdo one another with the negative things that either one of them has done to the other. It is a pattern that many, or most people in society are used to.
Most people like to complain and focus on their problems because they believe that in doing so they will be able to find solutions to their problems however you cannot find solutions where the problems live.
Therefore, if you want to start transitioning your thought process to a more positive pattern it is necessary to be mindful of what you’re thinking throughout the day so that you can begin to slowly transition to a more positive mindset through affirmations and deep breathing, and focusing on things that you are grateful for and things that you have done well throughout the day.
So, take a minute and reflect on how your thoughts are throughout the day. Are they more fearful, negative, or anxious in the morning or in the afternoon or perhaps the evening? Are they more sad, apathetic, or isolating in the morning in the afternoon or in the evening?
A great thing about being in therapy is that it kind of forces you to reflect on your patterns of thought and behavior. If you don’t know the pattern that you are in, you cannot make changes to that pattern and attempt to feel better.
Mindfulness is a huge part of noticing patterns as you have to be really mindful of your thoughts around different people, situations, events, and places in order to know what is triggering different feelings, thoughts, and emotions.
Then once you know the pattern and the triggers you, you can take a little break throughout the day to do some deep breathing and say some affirmations or write and a gratitude journal or do a meditation to try to lift your mood or create different thought patterns.
If you typically feel negative and down at work throughout the day then taking breaks to do with some deep breathing, say some affirmations, and perhaps watch a funny YouTube video at lunch, and an attempt to change how you feel at work.
Then once your mood is elevated a bit you will start to notice what you really like about work or what you’re doing well at work. This is a slow gradual change needed to create lasting affects for mental health and wellness.
If you try to change too quickly it’s like going on a crash diet. When you make this huge sudden change and then it’s not sustainable, so you end up going back to what you did in the past.
What we’re trying to do here is make slow and steady changes so that the changes are sustainable and long lasting and become a habit. We are creatures of habit, and it is somewhat difficult to make or break a pattern or routine but once it’s in grain then it will be hard or to change that pattern or routine for the better.
There are several books out there that will talk about cognitive behavioral therapy for mental health which I really like because I truly believe that what we focus on is how we feel and if we are able to manipulate that we will feel better.
Our mental health and wellness book has a chapter dedicated to patterns as well as worksheets in the back of the book dedicated to noticing your patterns and writing them down as you reflect each day and then also doing little things to change your patterns throughout the day.
So you can kind of write in to the chart what you would like to change each day and what do you want your schedule to look like after having reflected on your current pattern so that you can try to make a little changes and see if things improve or see if the changes that you’ve made are too drastic or perhaps too much to where it’s causing you to mentally multitask.
Again, there is a very fine line between reflecting and analyzing, analyzing will leave you feeling physically drained where reflecting on something to learn about yourself will leave you feeling a neutral.
Talk therapy is great when action is involved. If there is only problem talk or neutral talk, patients will get stuck and there will be little to no progress. It is imperative that goals and action steps are taken to make progress in therapy.
If a patient keeps coming back to sessions talking about the same issue, saying the same thing week after week, there is not going to be any change because they are not changing their way of thinking and they’re not changing the way that they talk about their situation.
Change starts with our thought process, and then action is a necessity. This ideology forces therapist to hold patients accountable for their progress and action steps. Too often accountability is lost in the talk therapy realm.