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An event is interpreted, judged and labelled in such a way that a
particular emotional response is inevitable. You are constantly
describing the world to yourself, giving each event or experience
some label. You make interpretations of what you see or hear, you
judge events as good or bad, painful or pleasurable, you predict
whether they will bring danger or relative safety. Since childhood
people have been telling you what to think. You have been
conditioned by family, friends and the media to interpret events
in certain ways.
These labels and judgements are fashioned from the unending
dialogue you have with yourself, and colour all your experience
with private meanings. The thoughts are constant and rarely
noticed, since they are without prior reflection or reasoning, but
they are powerful enough to stimulate your most intense emotions.
Such "self-talk" is often composed of just a few essential words
or a brief visual image, acting as a label for a collection of
painful memories, fears or self-reproaches. They would be seen as
unrealistic, exaggerated and over-generalised if reviewed
objectively, but in practice they appear automatically in response
to stimuli. They just pop into the mind and are believed without
being questioned or challenged, nor are their implications and
conclusions subjected to logical analysis.
Automatic thoughts are often couched in terms of "should", "ought"
or "must" and their negatives. Each iron-clad "should"
precipitates a sense of guilt, or loss of self-esteem. Also
automatic thoughts tend to be pessimistic, always expecting the
worst and are the major source of anxiety. Because they are
reflexive and plausible, automatic thoughts weave unnoticed
through the fabric of your own (conscious) thinking. They seem to
come and go with a will of their own and they also tend to act as
cues for each other - one depressing thought triggering a chain of
associated thoughts reinforcing the depression. To consider
something is awful, is to attach a self-created traumatic tag to
what is in reality simply what is there.
Preoccupation or obsession with one type of thought causes tunnel
vision, in which only those aspects of existence that support that
way of thinking are recognised. The result is one predominant and
usually quite painful emotion, such as chronic anger, anxiety or
depression. Tunnel vision is the foundation of neurosis and is the
opposite of awareness.
Increasing awareness requires noticing and questioning automatic
thoughts, particularly those which are causing continued painful
feelings. Regard your thoughts as a slow-motion film. Look at your
internal dialogue frame by frame - notice the millisecond it takes
to say "I can't stand it", or the half-second image of a
terrifying event. Notice if you are internally describing and
interpreting the actions of others: "She's bored ... He's putting
me down". |
