When it comes to thoughts it’s important to make things as simple as possible. Our thoughts, basically come from 2 different places; Negative Ego or Soul. The thoughts that come from our Soul are positive or neutral, supportive, truthful in a kind way, inspiring, and empowering. The thoughts that come from our Negative Ego are distorted versions of the truth and are All Lies! The negative ego houses our pain, trauma, fears, confusions, and negative entity attachments. Therefore, the thoughts that come from our negative ego are a product of negative life experiences and emotional wounds, and are exacerbated by negative entities that have burrowed in the pain body.
There are also times when negative entities send in negative thoughts that feel random; this is usually a thought that you can easily bat away, because you know that you don’t believe it.
The more awareness we can bring to our thoughts and where they come from, the more we empower ourselves. This empowerment is key to mastering your mind. None of us are victims of “mental illness”, we have just been victims of negative entities and negative programming from the controllers of society. (The supportive truth of emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health is hidden from us, as well, making true healing even more difficult.) We take our power back, and rise above the “Victim Program”, by becoming aware of where are thoughts come from. Then we get to Choose what thoughts we engage with. We can Choose to only engage with the thoughts from our Soul! Our Souls will always tell us the truth and be supportive. Our Highest Intelligence comes from our Souls!
Remember: Negative Entities feed off your negative emotion, so they try to get you to think about upsetting things; for example, pain from your past or fears about your future.
Living in the Present Moment: God works in the present moment. It’s important to carve out time for self-reflection, but then, get back and stay in the present moment. The present moment is where we feel love, joy, peace, and live out our Soul Purpose. It really is the place to be!
The following list of thought distortions are helpful in recognizing where you might be stuck in your thinking. Thought distortions usually come from negative entities, and can be cleared with awareness. These entities want to keep you stuck, habitually thinking negatively to create more pain. These habits of negative thinking create neural pathways in the brain. If you have been experiencing a thought distortion for many years, it will take effort and diligence to correct it. Free your mind of these distorted ways of thinking, and allow the Highest Intelligence of your Soul to flow through your mind and heart!
Cognitive Distortions
The work of Psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck
Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that can perpetuate the effects of anxiety and depression. They are thoughts that cause you to perceive reality inaccurately. They can cause and/or reinforce negative thoughts and negative emotions. Cognitive distortions can lead to an overall negative outlook on life and reality causing depression and anxiety. Awareness of your thought distortions is 90% of what you need to clear them. Choosing Positive or Neutral and Optimistic Interpretations of your experiences, will take you the rest of the way.
- Blaming – Holding other people responsible for the way you feel and/or the actions you take. Example: Someone blames their spouse entirely for the marital problems, instead of looking at their own part in the problems.
- Filtering – Focusing entirely on negative elements of a situation, to the exclusion of the positive. Also, the brain’s tendency to filter out information which does not conform to already held beliefs. Example: After receiving comments about a work presentation, a person focuses on the single critical comment and ignores what went well.
- Labeling – a type of overgeneralization. Attributing a person’s actions to their character. Example: Instead of believing you made a mistake, you believe you are a loser.
- Jumping to Conclusions – Reaching conclusions (usually negative) from little (if any) evidence. Example: A journalist assumes the readers of their article have already made up their mind concerning its topic, and therefore writing the article is pointless.
- Catastrophizing – Giving greater weight to the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or experiencing a situation as unbearable or impossible when it’s just uncomfortable. Example: A teenager is too afraid to start driver’s training because he believes he would get himself into an accident. Example: Not wanting to change because you think it’s impossible, when really it’s just uncomfortable.
- Magnification & Minimization – Giving proportionally greater weight to a perceived failure or weakness, and lesser weight to a perceived success, strength, or opportunity. In depressed people, often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated.
- Splitting – All or nothing thinking. Evaluating the self, as well as events in life in extreme terms. It’s either all good or all bad, nothing in between. Splitting involves using terms like “always”, “every”, “never” when this is neither true nor equivalent to the truth. Example: A person in recovery thinks they can never live a sober life because they are a bad or broken person.
Week 8: Journal
How do you sense and feel your Negative Ego? How do you sense and feel your Soul? How often are you living in the present moment? Could you make more of an effort to be present, more often? How would that feel? How would that effect your life?
Write about any Cognitive Distortions you currently have. Do you have any clarity on why? Is there a certain time when they are triggered? Is there a secondary payoff to not changing the distortion (for example: exaggerating gets you more attention, or catastrophic thinking keeps you on edge and you identify that as your personality, or you might use blaming to make others feel sorry for you, etc) What would life be like without any Cognitive Distortions?