Chained Thoughts

When we feel exaggerated and unhealthy emotions such as anxiety, anger, depression, etc., it is because we are having an unrealistic and negative dialogue with ourselves. As Epictetus said, “it is not the situations that disturb you, but what you tell yourself about those situations.”

People normally put the responsibility for our emotions on the outside, either in the world or life in general or in other people, which puts us in a position of victim rather than in a position of taking control and coping .

Normally, these thoughts are produced in a chain. This means that from a particular automatic thought, another is derived and from this, another, until we discover a deeply rooted irrational belief in the person, usually very negative and dysfunctional.

Let’s take an example of a chain of thoughts. A boy comes to the office suffering from anxiety due to his work as a nurse. The boy attributes the cause of his anxiety to something external, in this case his work, which according to him, is extremely stressful.

What our patient does not know is that the reality is that his stress is not due to his work, but to his way of interpreting and evaluating the conditions of his employment. If we investigate inside his head, we will find a chain of catastrophic, intolerant or demanding thoughts, which is the true cause of his anxious state.

An example of chaining

T: From what you tell me, you have sleep problems due to stress. You say that your boss has sent you to solve many complex tasks this week and has asked you to do it quickly, what did you think when he told you?

Q: I thought that I must do everything perfectly and quickly and that I will not be able to

T: What if you weren’t able to do it?

Q: That my boss would call my attention and think that I am not a good professional and I would get very nervous.

T: How would your boss do and think that affect you?

Q: It would be terrible… I have worked hard to be where I am and the way things are… I could lose my job!

T: What would happen if you lose your job?

Q: Well, I could not pay all my bills and on top of that I would feel like a failure, a worm!

T: If this really happened, what consequences would it have?

Q: I could not live, I would feel like a social waste and my life without work would stop making sense

If we realize it, this typical therapy dialogue reflects a chain of catastrophic thoughts that are exaggerated because they are not based on empirical or logical evidence but are distorted due to the irrational beliefs of our patient.

By analyzing the conversation, we can see that exaggerations are derived from a particular event that probably will not happen and that if they did, they would not be as horrible as the person believes.  The patient claims to have sleep problems, but in reality he is causing it himself because of the great importance he is attaching to things.

This importance makes you feel anxious and not able to sleep well and, in turn, lack of sleep makes you perform worse at work, which makes you even more anxious and produces more exaggerated and dramatic thoughts and more sleep problems. .

All this becomes a spiral without exit and an emotional cocktail that in the end can end in loss or poor performance at work, which will end up confirming the fears of our patient.

Cutting the circle

We have the key to our emotions, it is very relevant to know that we are the true owners of how we feel at all times.  We decide how we want to feel since we are not disturbed by what happens to us but by our own dialogue.

Therefore, we will cut the vicious circle when we think rationally and realistically. We cannot let our fanciful mind think what it wants and how it wants.

We must force her and train her to think according to the data, to reality. There is no certainty that our patient should do everything perfectly, since it does not exist. Nor that your boss is going to think you are a bad professional, perhaps he is more lenient than our patient thinks.

And obviously, it is not realistic to believe that by losing a job, we will not be able to live and our life will cease to have meaning. When one door closes, others open and there are always thousands of alternatives, another thing is that at that moment we do not see them. By forcing ourselves to think like this, we will deactivate the spiral and take perspective on the problem.