Sunday, June 30, 2024

What I needed to hear today

Daily Om interviewed psychologist and author Eric Maisel. (I've snipped the following from the article posted Sunday, June 30, 2024.)

 For thousands of years, natural philosophers and spiritual leaders have accurately pinpointed our thoughts as a primary source of our suffering. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a contemporary version of that long tradition. CBT therapists ask you to notice what you are thinking, reject thoughts that aren't serving you, and replace them with thoughts that do serve you.

There are two questions that come up when we ask what will help us meet life's challenges, heal emotional distress, and deal with states of being associated with depression, anxiety, and addiction. The first is, "What's causing it?" The second is, "What helps?" Many kinds of answers have been offered to both questions. One consistent answer to the first question is "how we think," and one consistent answer to the second question is to "take charge of what you think." 

Thinking life is scary naturally leads to anxiety. Thinking that you don't matter can naturally lead to depression and continual thoughts of feeling completely overwhelmed, which can lead to addiction. The thought is tied to your moods and behaviors.

DAILY OM: "If you're smart, sensitive, and creative, I'm guessing that you're also regularly troubled." What do you mean by this?

ERIC: I have identified many of the special sources of pain and difficulty that smart, sensitive, creative people regularly face. The pain from what I've dubbed "the smart gap," the great distance between what you perceive to be your talents and abilities and the intellectual or creative work you feel called to do, ends up putting them in a small corner of a large universe.

DAILY OM: In your course, you suggest that people substitute silly words to stop caustic thought patterns. How and why does this work to alter thought patterns?

ERIC: If you use language in one way, it can support you, but if you use it in another way, it can sabotage you. If you repeatedly say, "I have no chance," that repeated demoralization really does matter. But if you change that to "I have no celery," or "I have no animal crackers," all that does is send you off shopping. Changing our inner language, in serious ways or in silly ways, really does help and really does matter.


2 comments:

  1. All very well when we are aware of our thoughts and feelings, but often I don't seem to be. I finally get around to sorting out something which seems unimportant, and suddenly I feel a great weight lifted off my shoulders. Obviously it was worrying me in some kind of subconscious way. Gradually over the years I've learned to not leave tasks undone.

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    Replies
    1. Good point. I have a house full of unfinished things, which I want to finish someday soon. But they continue to just sit there mocking me.

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