What If Finding Joy Was This Simple
Do our thoughts cause our emotions, or vice versa?
What if our thoughts create all of our suffering?
Truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it. Walt Whitman
Dr. David Burns has a new book out called Feeling Great, and he believes that our thoughts cause our feelings. He is one of the fathers of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and I have been binging on his books and podcast (Feeling Good). I just think he is brilliant as well as funny, kind, self-effacing, and charming. Check it out…you will not be disappointed.
In my study of the science of happiness I have found many methods to let go of or challenge our thoughts like The Work from Byron Katie and the Sedona Method. I love their “letting go” methods, and may write more about them later, but today I want to focus on Dr. Burns work.
He has a list of “Cognitive Distortions”, just another way to say we humans tend to have serious crazy making thoughts. We all do from time to time, some more than others. And all of our suffering comes from those thoughts.
One example I use is to imagine you get an email from your boss in the morning asking you to come to her office at 4. Is your first thought “Oh, fantastic! I bet I am getting a promotion or a raise?” Or is it more like, “OMG, what did I do? Am I going to be fired? What if I can’t pay my bills? What if I end up homeless?”
Most of us do the latter. Nothing has changed from the minute before you got the email from your boss to the moment after. Except your thoughts about it. And the suffering from it. What can we do about it?
Dr. Burns’ list of cognitive distortions help us look at our painful thoughts and start to question them, analyze them, put them into categories, and perhaps think about them differently.
One of them is “All or Nothing Thinking”, meaning we view it in black and white. I am 100% a bad employee if I make one mistake. Another is “Mental Filter”. We dwell on the negatives and discount the positives. In this case we completely forget all of the good reviews we have gotten and all of the accolades and have a complete meltdown wondering what we must have done wrong.
My favorites are “Mind Reading” and “Fortune Telling”. We assume someone else is judging us, finding fault with us, when the reality is most people are so self absorbed they hardly notice us at all. And fortune telling in this case is going down the bunny trail of all of the horrible things that you are sure are going to happen, lose your job and end up homeless.
Another goodie is “Emotional Reasoning”. I feel like an idiot, so I must be an idiot. I feel like a failure, so I must be a failure.” And he also spends a lot of time talking about those dreaded “Should” statements. I shouldn’t have said that in the meeting. I should be able to do this easily. Many of our thoughts fall into several of these categories. “I should have gone for a run today, I feel so lazy so I must BE lazy.”
I have been doing some challenging (for me) tech things, and I am slower at it than I like. I get it and then I forget it a week later when I need to repeat it, and I have to ask for help. I can certainly get into a cycle of stinking thinking and self criticism. It is easy for me to completely minimize all that I HAVE learned and maximize what I am still struggling with. I have even caught myself saying “You are such an idiot.” Yikes.
Can you identify with some of these distortions of thinking? The next time you have a panicky thought, see which categories it fits into. He has a few more like “Labeling” and “Magnifying and Minimizing”.
We are not our thoughts. We are the observer of our thoughts, and yet we latch onto them as if they are our reality. It is freeing when you realize that you can create some separation between you and your thoughts? You can question them, and even change them. Do you find that freeing?
I know I do.
Betsy Smith
Certified Happy For No Reason trainer and coach
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