Mind Traps That Keep Us Stuck in Stress

[progressally_objectives]

“Anxiety is … a kind of fear gone wild, a generalized sense of dread about something out there that seems menacing – but that in truth is not menacing, and may not even be out there. If you’re anxious, you find it difficult to talk yourself out of this foreboding; you become trapped in an endless loop of what-ifs.”

Robin Marantz Henig

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Mark Twain supposedly quipped,

“I’ve been through a lot of terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

It’s so true! I once read that 95% of the things we worry about never actually materialize. I’m sure that’s a completely made up statistic, but if I sat down and analyzed all of the things I’ve ever worried about, I imagine I’d find that very few of them actually came to pass.

So we’re back to the mind. As we continue to deepen our mindfulness practice, we’re becoming more aware of our patterns of thinking. We may be discovering that some of our mental habits are not serving us well, and are contributing to our stress. Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein have developed this list of the habitual “mind traps” that we get stuck in, and make our stress more intense. Do you do any of these?

Mind Traps That Keep Us Stuck in Stress

Negative self-talk. Call it the inner critic, your stream-of-consciousness, or give it a name and call it “Bob,” but we all have it. We all talk to ourselves – and we probably speak to ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t tolerate anyone else speaking to us! “I’m so clumsy,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m such a loser,” “I’m such a terrible parent,” …. I could go on and on. Here’s what I know: WORDS MATTER. THE WORDS WE SPEAK TO OURSELVES MATTER. Speak kindly to yourself. You deserve it.

Catastrophizing. We jump immediately to the worse-case scenario. “I’m going to get this report in late and then I’m going to lose my job and we’ll be living in a box.” NOT HELPFUL.

Discounting the positive. We tend to downplay compliments, even the ones we give to ourselves. “I’m losing some weight, but I still have so far to go!” As we talked about in week 2, it’s important to acknowledge the positive.

Mind-reading. We often assume we know what someone else is thinking, or what their intention is. “She didn’t even look at me! She clearly doesn’t like me.” This is another made up statistic, but I’m just going to guess that 95% of the time, other peoples’ actions are NOT about us. {And, FYI, we’re not really good at diagnosing other people: psychologists tell us that we often misattribute other people’s behavior to character flaws (e.g., “she’s so arrogant,” “he’s so lazy,” etc.), while explaining our own behavior in terms of context and situation (e.g.,“I just had to share my exciting news!,” “I worked a 12-hour shift and just needed some down time.”)}

Always needing to be right. We can’t always be the expert. We have to allow ourselves to make mistakes. Constantly being on guard to solve every problem and answer every question (without a flaw) is overwhelming and exhausting.

“Shoulding” all over yourself. “I should keep the house cleaner,” “I should run 45 minutes every day,” “I should volunteer more…” Stop shoulding all over yourself! Intentions and goals are fine, but “should” almost always involves feeling guilty and/or resentful.

Blaming others. We can’t control other people’s behavior, but we CAN control our responses to their behaviors. This doesn’t mean we blame ourselves; it simply means we focus on what we can actually control.

Black and white thinking. Sometimes we think things have to go completely perfectly to be considered a “success,” and that one small misstep means “disaster.” Life is complicated. Last summer, we took our children to Paris, and we had a meltdown at the Palace of Versailles that, to this history teacher, felt like the worst disaster at Versailles since 1919 (the year the devastating treaty that ended WWI was signed). My daughter threw a fit and tossed her ice cream into the meticulously tended gardens. My son ran off down the Grand Canal to pout behind the trees. But you know what? We laugh about it now and I still look back on that trip as AN AMAZING SUCCESS.

Psychologist Christopher Willard provides this list of words to watch out for – notice when you’re using the following:

• All
• Always
• Every
• Everyone
• Everything
• Have to
• Must
• Never
• No one
• None
• Should

 Those words usually mean you’re caught in mind trap.

Think – Practice – Reflect

Set an intention for today to pay attention to your words (including thoughts AND spoken words).  Do you notice yourself using the words on the list above? When? How does it make you feel when you use them?

Do you find yourself in any of the “mind traps” listed above? When? How does it make you feel?

As you pay attention to your words today, ask yourself, “Are they true? Do I have enough information? Am I assuming I know what someone else is thinking? Have I seen things in a larger context?”

As always, I’d love to hear what you notice today – share your insights in the Facebook group!