✿ Our Thoughts ✿

Our thoughts are created by our mind, which is constantly helping us to interpret the world around us, describing what’s happening and trying to make sense of it by helping us interpret events, sights, sounds etc.

Without even realizing it, we are interpreting and giving our own meanings to everything happening around us – pleasant or nasty, dangerous or safe.

Because of our previous experiences, our upbringing and family values, we may well make very different interpretations of situations to someone else. These interpretations we give events result in physical and emotional feelings.

Particular types of thoughts tend to lead to particular emotions.

Thoughts of being in danger and not being able to cope result in anxiety and fear.

Thoughts of being treated unfairly and not standing for it result in anger and frustration.

Thoughts of everything being hopeless, feeling totally worthless, no-one liking you, lead to depression.

Automatic thoughts can be words, an image, a memory or a physical sensation, often based on a sense of ‘just knowing’.

We tend to automatically believe our thoughts, which are based on emotions rather than facts.

They are automatic and just pop into our head.

They are ours and can be quite specific, based on our experiences.

They are habitual and persistent. Our thoughts seem to repeat over and over, and the more they repeat, the more believable they seem, setting off a whole new chain of new related events that lead us to feeling worse and worse.