With my TBI, I had damaged my frontal lobe mostly. When you damage your brain, it will inevitably effect parts of your life that one might not expect. For me, that happened with the connection of the frontal lobe and a small part of the brain called the Amygdala. The portion of the brain which governs our emotional response. I had become unable to handle my emotions and, as a result, unable to control my own thought processes. This Post will be going over a step by step process to help you gain control of your thoughts and in turn, the direction of your life.
A slightly annoying question to answer for many people is:
“What’s on your mind?”
Others may ask this in those awkward moments when we can’t really think of what to say. I like to call those awkward moments “Paradigmal Conundrums.”
Paradigm – a typical example or pattern of something; a model.
Conundrum – a confusing and difficult problem or question.
We have no idea what the other silent person is thinking and it is typical of a person in this situation to ask “What are you thinking?” to be less vulnerable to the possible judgment of the silent person.
“Nothing”
seems to be the most common response. One might think it’s strange that I’m thinking of how nasty it can be to change a babies poopy diaper. But “Nothing” is most definitely an evasive and untrue answer. As people, to have nothing on our mind is practically impossible. It is at least not a sinful answer in the way that “Nothing” actually just means “Nothing important and you don’t want to know what I was actually thinking about.”
Does that mean we are aware of what we are thinking about all the time? the answer is most definitely no. We can find ourselves in a place where we are thinking about things out of habit, nature, or even influence from other people or things. Our thoughts can massively effect our productivity, motivation, victimization, leadership, essentially every aspect of we as human beings. Our emotions are no exception. our thoughts can be influenced by our emotions OR our emotions can be manipulated by our thoughts. Controlling those thoughts is the start of success. Letting our emotions, which can be both helpful or harmful, control our thoughts and in turn our actions, is a dangerous game. We want to be able to tell our destructive nature to sit! We want our nurturing and cooperative nature to engage with others who are successfully living their life. Then we can learn how to think from those shining examples of love and righteousness such as Dr. Rev. Prof. Larry D. Siekawitch.
With all that in mind, wouldn’t it be great to have control over the thing that can determine all of that? YOU CAN!
Below are 5 steps which I have used to help me control my thoughts and do what I set out to achieve, in spite of my severe brain damage. If you haven’t read my story, you can see where I had to start with rebuilding my brain here.
3 STEPS TO CONTROLLING YOUR THOUGHTS.
Step 1 – Stop Thinking
The first thing we must do is stop in the middle of your thoughts (good, bad, lame or even exciting). At various times, catch yourself thinking and ask yourself: What emotion are you feeling? and no, “I’m feeling like eating a pizza” is not an emotion. If the answer to that question is more than one word long, the answer is wrong. For our pizza example, the correct answer would be desire. Try to think of the actual emotion you are feeling during that thoughts process. What are you thinking about? The thoughts we have could be out of habit. “It’s lunch time so off to McDonald’s!” you think automatically as the 12 o’ clock bell dings. Let’s say you want to break that habit, pay attention to what is running through your mind. Stop thinking for a moment and re-direct your thoughts! Tell yourself “I want to go for a lunch time walk with a banana and an apple!” instead. Why are you thinking about that topic? Make yourself think of the origins of the thought you were having. Why is that topic standing out to you? could it be a habitual thought? Maybe even a natural thought. It is natural to think a person is attractive, but is that natural habit healthy? contrary to popular belief, we live in a fallen world and what is “natural” is not always what’s best for us. notice the thoughts origins and determine if that thought is actually helpful. Daydreaming about Tiffany sitting in the cubical next to you is totally natural, but not in the least bit helpful. Rather it can distract you from your work and potentially even get you fired for various reasons.
“This is much easier said than done. Usually, when you’re feeling frustrated, upset, tired, or angry about something, your tendency will be to “press on” or “fight through” or “get past” whatever it is that you’re feeling. This is not a good strategy.” ~Travis Robertson
Since our thoughts can either control or be controlled by our emotions, The angrier and more emotional you become, the dumber you get.
It’s easier to see this in others than it is in ourselves. If you have kids, think of how dumb your kids become the more frustrated or angry they get. If you don’t have kids, borrow your friend’s kids for a day. If that scares you, think of that guy or gal at the office who is hot-tempered. You’re no more immune to this result than they are. That being said, getting someone to help keep you accountable (a friend, family member, SO, even a mentor or teacher) can help you to see the moments when you’re being “emotionally stupid.”
Instead of pressing on, take 5 minutes to stop what you’re doing, and think about your thoughts. Ask yourself the questions above and you”l be at the start of the right track. The following steps will make it even easier.
Step 2 – Pick Out Negative Thoughts
The better you become at stopping your thoughts, the faster this step will work for you. Until then, here’s tip to make it a bit easier for you: begin with how you’re feeling and work backwards. Every feeling we have is the direct result of a thought we had. Therefore, if you’re feeling anxious, begin by stepping back for a minute, and asking yourself, “Why do I feel anxious?”
Maybe it’s a final paper you need to write or a meeting you’re dreading. You might be forced to fire someone on your team or meet with the principal at your kid’s school. Figure out what that thing is that’s making you feel that negative emotion.
But you’re not done yet!
What about it is making you feel negative? Did you previously have a bad experience in a similar situation? Did you miss your last deadline? Did you receive some toxic feedback from your boss? Was it something else? Identify what that root cause is.
Keep in mind that the event negatively impacting you is usually just the vehicle your mind is using to create the negative emotion – it is rarely the root cause of the emotional state.
Step 3 – Write Out Your Mental Picture
If you did the last step, you can identify the picture book that is flipping in your mind. It might be when your Sgt chewed you out for bringing the wrong antenna for the radio to the field op. Possibly the time you were overheard badmouthing your CEO behind their back, BY THE CEO. Maybe it’s the sound of your husband’s voice telling you you’re worthless.
By default, the majority of people have negative mental picture books that fire off inside our minds – not positive ones. When a current situation reminds us of a previous one, we tend to open up that picture book again. Even if we had five successes and one disappointment, it is the disappointment our minds will return to because most of us want to avoid pain more than we want to seek out pleasure.
What you need to do is give that book a name and write it down. Why? Because you want it out of your head. Inside of your head, it has power and seems much larger than it really is. Now that it’s written down, it’s now outside of your mind; you put distance between your thoughts and the emotion it creates.
It is called dissociation and writing out your mental book is just one form of doing that. It’s also the easiest because it requires nothing more than a pen and a sheet of paper (Note: typing it out does not work as effectively as writing it down by hand. See the facts about handwriting here). Dissociating yourself from an event means to remove yourself from the first-person position in the memory and look at the situation from a bird’s eye view.
If I asked you to think of a painful time in your past and to remember it as if it were happening, you would put yourself right back in that situation. It would bring back old emotions and you would feel yourself becoming angry, bitter, hangry, frustrated, depressed… wait, which one of those isn’t an emotion? (ding, ding, ding! hangry is the answer!) Just plain old negative emotions. This is known as associating – putting yourself inside of the event. By default, this is how our mental books read out – with us back in the position of pain.
By writing out your mental novel (what happened, what was said, what was felt, etc.) it removes you from being immediately associated with the pain and allows you to step back and gain a little bit of outside perspective on the situation. Professionals say that by doing this simple step, it usually calms us down in a big way because, getting your pages out of your mind removes some of their power over you.