How to Change Your Thoughts
Disclaimer: This blog post is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your healing journey. I am not a psychologist, therapist, or medical doctor. I do not offer any medical or professional advice. If you are suffering from mental illness, please seek help from a qualified health professional.
One of the most influential steps on my healing journey was when I learned how to change my thoughts and thought patterns.
Little did I know how much thoughts control your entire life!
Here’s how it works: Your thoughts trigger your feelings, and those feelings trigger more thoughts. The more you stay stuck in those thoughts and feelings, the more you’re strengthening old neural pathways. In order to change, we need to strengthen new neural pathways to make new change. See, it all starts with your thoughts!
The more positive and truth-based your thoughts are, is when you’ll see your life begin to shift. One of the many ways I learned to change my thoughts is by reframing.
When I started to put reframing into practice, it wasn’t an instant shift.
But when I noticed what my thoughts were, honored them, and began to reframe them over and over and over again as a mantra, is when my life started to change.
I started having fewer and fewer panic attacks, and less anxiety in general. I started to get less triggered by the things that usually really triggered me. And even when I was triggered, I was able to work my way out of it.
Reframing was healing my anxiety.
Read here my entire story on how I overcame my chronic panic attacks.
So what is reframing?
Reframing is looking at the same situation from a different angle that will cultivate better feeling emotions. It is removing the negative lens to see things to a new light. It’s changing your thoughts and thought patterns toward a painful memory, current situation, limiting belief, or ongoing struggle.
It can be used on any circumstance that is bringing you some sort of pain, frustration, anger, or even just plain annoyance. Reframing sparks the creation of new belief systems and diminishes the old ones. Reframing helps strengthen new neural pathways. Reframing is rewiring your brain to think differently.
Let’s look at snow as an example.
Susie sees snow as:
beautiful scenery! She can enjoy sitting and watching it snow.
an opportunity for a potential snow day!
relaxing and calming.
Tom sees snow as:
an inconvenience. Now he has to shovel and wipe off his car.
a hindrance. Now he has to leave early so he can get to work on time.
a sign of cold weather and being sad.
Do you see how the exact same situation can be perceived two different ways? That’s reframing.
Why should I reframe my thoughts?
The whole point of reframing is to feel good in any circumstance, break out of unhealthy thinking patterns, take control over your life, build self esteem and confidence, move on after a hard time, and ultimately, to be happier.
For a longggggg time, I would cross my fingers and hope for a good mental health day. I was depending on my circumstances for good feelings.
I was letting my external world control me.
Learning to reframe my thoughts and memories, has allowed me to be the one to control my mood regardless of my external circumstances, all because I changed my perception of those circumstances.
Changing your perception will change your life, just like it did mine!
When I started to reframe my thoughts, and believe them as truth, I felt so much better–about myself and about my life. My anxiety started to dissipate and I had fewer and fewer low mental health days. When I learned to embody my truth statements, is when I changed my life for the better.
Disclaimer
IMPORTANT: Reframing DOES NOT invalidate your pain, struggle, grief, and heartache. That is not reframing. Every bit of pain in your life is valid–you’re allowed to feel hurt because of the thing that is hurting you. And in my opinion, pain, struggle, and adversity are inevitable. I don’t believe it’s realistic to be happy, motivated, and inspired every second of every day.
When reframing was first introduced to me, I got really frustrated. I felt that if I downplayed my struggle and pain that it meant “I shouldn’t have been hurt by that” or “my pain doesn’t matter” or “I’m wrong for being upset.”
I was saying things like, “I feel like I’m being fake if I try to convince myself that this doesn’t bother me as much as it does.”
But I was confusing reframing with what I call the Band-Aid Method.
The Band-Aid Method doesn’t work. The Band-Aid Method states: If I cover up the problem with enough positivity, the problem goes away.
Trying to avoid a negative emotion is like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. It never wants to stay there and will continue to resurface!
Choosing to ignore negative thoughts doesn’t make them go away. Google “Toxic Positivity” to learn more on this topic.
But reframing doesn’t disregard the fact that the situation or memory was hard and it doesn’t downplay the frustration at all. Part of reframing is acknowledging the hurt, and then choosing to see it differently. That way, you’re still seeing the the hard situation, without the negative feelings that might be associated with the situation. Do you see the difference?
I found a lot more authenticity and peace through this method.
How to reframe in everyday life.
As with everything, you’ll begin to see changes in your life when you put the things you learn into real time practice.
There are four steps on how to change your thoughts using reframing.
Observe your current thoughts.
We all have thousands of thoughts every day. And 90% of those thoughts are the same ones we had yesterday. In order to begin cultivating new thoughts you must first build an awareness of the thoughts you’re already thinking.
What are the thoughts that you’re thinking throughout your day? What are you fixated on? And how do they make you feel? How do you speak to yourself? What tone do you use?
Once you start to notice what negative thoughts you’re thinking, you’re ready to start reframing them.
Do one at a time.
Identify one thing that is bringing you anxiety/pain/sadness/stress/anger, or any negative emotion.
This part should be easy. Chances are you think about it frequently throughout your day and you feel yourself start to bubble up when you catch yourself thinking, or even talking, about it for too long. It could be something that happened to you in the past that you’re still struggling with, a curveball that popped up out of nowhere, or maybe an ongoing struggle that you’ve dealt with for a long time.
Here are some examples:
Are you being too hard on yourself? Are you “beating yourself up” for doing or not doing X, Y, or Z?
Do you replay scenarios over and over that hurt you? Or imagine painful scenarios that couldhurt you?
Are you in an undesired circumstance that you can’t easily get out of?
Do you worry about things too much? And stress over things you can’t control?
Do you feel unmotivated to improve your mental state or situation because you believe that it won’t actually ever change?
*Hint: All of these can be reframed. Also, before I started my recovery journey, my thoughts were all of the above. So if yours are too, don’t fret. I know just how it feels to be overwhelmed with bad thoughts!
3. Be honest with yourself.
You have to admit that the memory/situation/belief/ongoing struggle/trauma is hurting you.
Denial won’t get you anywhere. Remember my beach ball analogy? It’ll keep bothering you and popping up until you decide to deal with it. I think this is where most people get stuck. They deny their pain or downplay it’s severity, and by doing so, they’re doing themselves a disservice. Acknowledging that something is bothering you, is validating your own feelings. It is a form of self respect.
Invalidating your feelings looks like this:
It’s not that bad.
No, really I’m fine! I just have to get through it.
At least I have *insert good thing* so I don’t have a reason to be mad!
I am just overreacting.
I am sensitive, that’s why this bothers me!
Validating your feelings looks like this:
This has been really tough.
I felt hurt when they did/said ______ to me.
I know it may seem small to others, but it really gets under my skin when ____ happens.
I know others might like this, but it makes me uncomfortable.
4. Ask yourself, “How can I see this differently?”
This part is usually pretty hard to do, or at least it is for me. Pain, anger, stress, and sadness are all-consuming emotions that cloud our vision so much–it’s hard to feel anything but the negative emotion. So I did some heavy lifting for you. Check out the chart below or see if any of these situations resonate with you:
A break up could be seen as an opportunity to love yourself more.
Being laid off could be seen as an opportunity to go for a job that you like better.
A strained relationship could be seen as an opportunity to be a better communicator.
An angry boss or teacher could be an opportunity to learn how to be more compassionate.
A needy friend could be an opportunity to enforce boundaries.
Having a difficult child could be an opportunity to be more patient.
The list goes on. Nearly each one provides an opportunity for growth in some way.
If it’s an ongoing struggle, thought pattern, or belief, I made a chart for some more specific thoughts to reframe.
During this process, remember to be kind and gentle to yourself. Notice how each reframed statement has a tone of compassion. Remember that changing your thoughts takes patience and persistence. If you have a week or a day or even a moment that you reframed the the thoughts in your mind, celebrate it! Don’t give up if you go back to old thinking patterns shortly after. Chances are, you’ve been thinking the same way for a long time, so it might take some time to build up consistency. But I promise it gets easier and feels more natural over time.
I’ll say it a million times, but if I can do it, so can you! I am no different than the person reading this. If you have a thought you’re struggling to reframe, send me an email! As always, I’d love to help.
Happy reframing!
