Stopping Self-Torture

When my daughter was tweleve years old, I let her ride her bike down to the neighborhood shopping center about a mile away. Without being conscious of it, I was churning out worrisome thoughts. I imagined her getting hit by a car, getting lost, getting abducted, etc. etc, until I found myself in tears. That occasion was when I first became aware of the amazing power of the thought process and it's connection to our emotional state. I managed to totally upset myself when nothing was actually happening except in my imagination!!!

I began identifying this phenomenon in myself and in the clients I worked with. It's quite amazing how many of us and how often we torture ourselves by our negative thinking! You can test this out for yourself. The next time you feel badly, think back and trace your thoughts. Most of the time you'll find a connection between the two. Even when something negative is happening, our thoughts invariably add embellishments that make us feel worse.

Undisciplined thinking is like a puppy that is not housebroken. Once we can identify how our thinking is upsetting us, we can learn to interrupt that thought process and stop suffering more than is necessary.