Changing Your Mindset
My panic attacks began when I was a teenager. From that moment my only focus was on avoiding them at all costs. Little did I know that with this way of thinking, I was attracting panic attacks to me. I vividly remember waking up in the morning, opening my eyes, scanning if the panic symptoms were present, and then found my heart racing. I felt trapped in my own living hell and from that moment went on a quest to stop them. If not, I feared it was something I would have to tolerate my entire life.
I am a big believer/advocate of the Law of Attraction. This basically means that what you throw out into the world will return to you. If you are kind, others will treat you with kindness. If you are a bully, you will get bullied. Therefore, in order to change, we need change within ourselves.
I look back on my anxiety and see it as a gift. Gift? You might think I’ve gone mad. However, if it weren’t for my anxiety, I would have never sought out counseling, learned how anxiety was simply an indicator that I wasn’t listening to myself, and grown into the man I am today. Back as a teen, I felt my anxiety attacks were a curse, now I have learned to work with it and use it as a motivator.
Anxiety is probably the number one ailment we see at our clinic. How people deal with anxiety can range from running away to taking illegal and legal drugs – including alcohol. However, being dependent on alcohol comes with a huge cost.
The focus in therapy is discovering the root of our problem, then work is conducted on treating it appropriately. I am grateful for my education because what I was taught has been proven beneficial for thousands of clients. Though, in order to treat people, I have had to take care of myself first. In my own therapy, I found that at the root of my problem was an intense fear of death. So now you know one of the reasons I chose to study spiritual psychology. Now, without any beliefs about God, life seemed like a death sentence to me. I wanted to learn from my schooling what they believed was the ultimate purpose of life.
I discovered through my education that there were many reasons why down deep I had become such a frightened person. I grew up poor, was in the minority as a non-colored person, had to run from gangs, my dad abused me, and also had an acute fear of death. All rolled into one, I got frightened in crowds, on elevators, on airplanes, and was frightened by women who wanted to date.
I was fortunate. I learned to befriend my abused younger self. I was exposed to many spiritual beliefs and opened up to the existence of God. Where there were no spiritual beliefs my mindset shifted into a working relationship with – what I deemed “Our Creator.”
Since a problem like depression can result from chronic negative thinking. This negative thinking can be etched in the brain and it takes real effort to change those automatic thoughts. Changing your mindset is not as easy as snapping your fingers. In fact, affirmation work has you repeating a positive statement 100 times a day in order to change that wiring. If you are used to focusing on what is wrong in the world, you will seek out other evidence that supports this. Sometimes it takes great effort to discover what is good in the world. I guess here lies the concept of Yin Yang. Yin Yang refers to creating a balance within you of both shadow and light. Yes, we have both but if you are to focus only on the dark, you attract it. If you focus on the light you attract that too, but too much of either side is not realistic. Balance is the ultimate key.
Another way to balance your mindset is more emotional in make up. Opposite handwriting and opposite hand play is more relationship-based healing within yourself. With writing you write out a conversation with a younger part inside of you that went through difficulty. Opposite hand play is literally playing a game with yourself like basketball or tennis. You allow your opposite hand to represent your younger self and your dominant hand to represent your adult self. Now, play a game of HORSE. In the play process, instead of blaming your younger self for making you the way you are now, embrace your other hand as it draws a self-portrait out of crayons.
This week I had an interesting breakthrough. Something they taught us in school seemed to become very apparent. A client’s father had recently died and everything to them went dark. Their mood, their self-care, their hopes, and thoughts of suicide bubbled to the surface. Everything can go dark if we believe things are dark. With bereavement, it can be natural to get stuck in the sadness, feel as if life is nothing but a death sentence, ruminate about the negative things that were done, and words that were said, and wish things were different. Since we cannot change the past, it is easy to get stuck in helplessness.
Is life only bad? If you say yes, you have a gloomy world vision which normally leads to depression. Major depression is like a magnet that attracts negative things. Health ailments, the loss of a job, the leaving of a partner, and even the car breaking down can be seen as another reminder that only bad happens to you. Many with this negative world mindset will turn to substances to numb out.
Life is bad if we believe it is. “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right,” a quote from Henry Ford. There are two paths you can walk: A happy path or the path of misery, you choose. You may think that other people are “making you feel bad,” but I have some news for you, they aren’t making you feel the way you do, you do.
The investigation of our thinking patterns is vast and there are many mental approaches to therapy. Changing thinking patterns is at the heart of therapy and many of the older psychological approaches focus on repairing dysfunctional thinking into more functional. Let me ask you this – how many negative thoughts do you have in a given day? If your thinking is bad, you will feel bad. If good, you will feel good.
There is a story of a man who got skin cancer, learned it responded well to positive thinking, and from that day all he did was watch comedies. His healing was rapid. Dr. Bernie Siegel in his book, ”Love, Medicine & Miracles,” documented how people healed from the most severe cancers when they had a positive purpose in life.
We have noticed that the overall tone of sessions has been from the changing of this nation’s administration. If you are fear-based, you will look at this change as something to fear. If you are hopeful, you will look at this as beneficial.
We ask people who enter our facility, what they want to get out of treatment. Mostly they tell us what they don’t want. “I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be depressed. I don’t want to be anxious.” Since our mind doesn’t hear the word “don’t”, our mind will hear I want to be angry, depressed, and anxious. Helping people focus on what they do want often brings quick results. Do we really know what we want? We know what we don’t want because our society has trained us to think this way. Flipping around to what the opposite is to what you don’t want, people discover they want to be happy, sober, and happy about life.
Sometimes change doesn’t come easy – that is okay. Just flow with whatever presents itself. If it is negative, embrace it by writing it out and then ripping that up. When you try to block something, it causes stress and anxiety. If you feel your boss is a bitch, write the bitch a letter that tells her off and then discard it. This is simply to vent your frustration.
Lastly, it is important to realize that what you think about another person is how you also feel about yourself. To change the way you think about yourself, set intentions. For example, if you realize you are judgmental, change your mindset to this format: “My intention is to be more accepting of others.” You can repeat this intention as often as is needed.
Compassionate Care is Always Available
There are many more tools and strategies you can use in your pursuit of happiness. Here is where we come in. Contact us at Basic Steps Mental Health and let us support and educate you on this journey back to your loving heart center. Imagine living a heart-centered life, regardless of what is happening externally. We’d love to be of help.
For 25 years, Dr. Scott Alpert, the clinical director of Basic Steps Mental Health, has treated over 7,000 people with mental health and addiction problems, using a Psychological approach that mixes and matches ten of the top approaches used in the industry. We are here virtually and in-person to help you get through this COVID-19 pandemic and many other difficulties you may be experiencing.
May you have good mental health.
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