Have you ever heard the saying, “You are what you eat?” Well, when it comes to your thoughts, “You are what you think.” Join hosts Montez Dove and Cedricia Thomas as they discuss the importance of a positive thought life. In this episode, Montez and Cedricia discuss: How to overcome a toxic thought life, How your thoughts can lead to Self-Sabatoge, How your thoughts can effect your mental health, and How to recognize and defuse cognitive distortions.
Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind by Joyce Meyer
Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts by Jennie Allen p.118-119:
Im afraid that I won't be able to withstand whatever the future might hold. I choose to believe God will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I can endure and will always give me the strength to overcome temptation.
I'm afraid that everyone will abandon me. I choose to believe God has promised not to leave me, and He always keeps His promises.
I'm afraid of being rejected. I choose to believe God has accepted me as His child and will never leave me.
75-98% of mental, physical, and behavioral illness comes from one's thought life.
It all begins and ends in your mind - Alyssa J Cori
Don't be a victim of negative self talk- remember you are listening - Bob Proctor
All problems are illusions of the mind- Eckhardt Tolle
Your strongest muscle and worst enemy is your mind. Train it well. - Anonymous
Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School: How to recognize and tame your cognitive distortions
A critical component to attaining the serenity and focus one needs to be a wellness coach, and to move past an addiction, is learning how to recognize and defuse the cognitive distortions that we all employ. Cognitive distortions are internal mental filters or biases that increase our misery, fuel our anxiety, and make us feel bad about ourselves.
Ruminative thinking — negative thought patterns that loop repeatedly in our minds
Rumination can represent an ongoing attempt to come up with insight or solutions to problems we are concerned about.
Black-and-white (or all-or-nothing) thinking: I never have anything interesting to say.
Jumping to conclusions (or mind-reading): The doctor is going to tell me I have cancer.
Personalization: Our team lost because of me.
Should-ing and must-ing (using language that is self-critical that puts a lot of pressure on you): I should be losing weight.
Mental filter (focusing on the negative, such as the one aspect of a health change which you didn’t do well): I am terrible at getting enough sleep.
Overgeneralization: I’ll never find a partner.
Magnification and minimization (magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive): It was just one healthy meal.
Fortune-telling: My cholesterol is going to be sky-high.
Comparison (comparing just one part of your performance or situation to another’s, which you don’t really know, so that it makes you appear in a negative light): All of my coworkers are happier than me.
Catastrophizing (combination of fortune-telling and all-or-nothing thinking; blowing things out of proportion): This spot on my skin is probably skin cancer; I’ll be dead soon.
Labeling: I’m just not a healthy person.
Disqualifying the positive: I answered that well, but it was a lucky guess.
Many of us engage in emotional reasoning, a process in which our negative feelings about ourselves inform our thoughts, as if they were factually based, in the absence of any facts to support these unpleasant feelings.
Emotional reasoning often employs many of the other cognitive filters to sustain it, such as catastrophizing and disqualifying the positive
Examples of this may be thinking:
I’m a whale, even if you are losing weight
I’m an awful student, even if you are getting some good grades
