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Okay. Let's say you're ready to lose weight, change the way you eat, or feel less stressed or depressed. If you have ever decided to create a permanent change in your life before, you know it's going to take a lot more than simply eating differently or dieting. What you need to create a permanent solution is lots of self-supportive, positive, and encouraging self-talk.
If you want successful, long-term weight loss or an end to emotional or stress eating, you are going to need all the optimism and self-support you can generate. That is where encouraging, motivating, and self-supportive self-talk comes in. Self-defeating thoughts and negative thinking habits, on the other hand, can have a devastating effect on your outcome. "Stinking-thinking" are the types of thoughts that create stress and produce negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, sadness, or frustration. These negative thoughts often begin a vicious cycle: you think negative thoughts, you feel bad, and then you find some way to feel better by engaging in eating. If you can learn to speak gently to yourself in the first place, you can save yourself from feeling bad!
Negative thinking patterns are learned ways of thinking - which means that with some effort and desire, you can learn new ways of thinking. The first step to changing your self-talk is to identify the different patterns of thoughts that activate your negative emotions and cravings for food. By learning new patterns of thought, you can reduce stress, improve your level of confidence, and benefit your happiness. The following lists some of the most common types of destructive thinking patterns that occur:
All Or Nothing Thinking
This thinking involves seeing things in absolute terms, like "always" or "never". You might also hear this referred to as black and white thinking. For example, if you slipped off your goal action plan and ate doughnuts at midmorning, you then say, "I've already blown it. I might as well give up on the rest of the day." If a situation falls short of 100% perfection, you see it as a total failure. This train of thought is very damaging to your success.
Over-Generalization
You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. If one negative event occurs, you might think, "It's just my luck. Nothing good ever happens to me." While you might experience negative events some of the time, chances are there has been at least one exception to it. Holding on to this wide generalization simply keeps you from seeing the truth as it really is. It's negative and self-defeating.
Magnification and Minimizing
This type of thinking does two things: It sees the positive results of your actions as smaller than they really are, and exaggerates the negative results of your actions. Another example occurs when you exaggerate the positive attributes of other people and minimize their negative attributes. This style of thinking may also inappropriately shrink your achievements down until they seem insignificant, while you obsessively dwell on what is 'wrong' with you. Sometimes this is referred to as "making a mountain out of a mole hill."
Disqualifying the Positive
This is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking without the "all"! Positive messages and actions are continuously deleted or rejected. The positive experiences just "don't count" and you only attend to the negative. You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it - discounting any other evidence to the contrary. This negative thought darkens every positive that has proceeded. For example, imagine you lost 30 pounds. But for some reason you gained back five of those pounds. Negative thinking dwells entirely on the five pounds gained back, darkening the entire situation. Discounting the positive takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.
Emotional Reasoning
You assume that your emotions reflect the way things really are. This thinking reasons, "I feel it, therefore it must be true." Emotions are considered forever truths. For example, you might reason, "I feel frustrated, I'll never get through this."
Should Statements
You try to motivate yourself with should statements, such as, "I should be eating healthy", "I should not eat that", "I should have lost more weight by now", or "I should start exercising." Often it is habit to use words such "should", "shouldn't", "have to", "must", and "must not" in an attempt to create change. However, these are negative, action-stopping words. If you feel you should do something, then it's something you don't want to do but for some reason feel obligated to do. The emotional consequence of using "should" on yourself is guilt - which generally is ineffective as a long-term motivator. Realize that as an adult you always have a choice.
Labeling and Disparaging
Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to yourself. Underlying labeling is the thought that if you get angry enough at yourself, maybe you will change. Instead of describing your action or behavior, you judge yourself harshly by saying "I'm a failure", "I'm fat and ugly", or "I'm such a stupid idiot." Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself. Labeling yourself harshly never helps the process of self-awareness or understanding. These statements are likely to cause massive emotional swings of anger, frustration, and low self-esteem.
Mental Filter
You concentrate so strongly on a single negative or upsetting detail and dwell on it so exclusively that your vision of reality becomes darkened. An analogy is like the single drop of ink that discolors an entire beaker of water. If, for example, you had a great day following your eating and action plan, but then you made one mistake, you become preoccupied with the error instead of focusing on the larger picture of your efforts and success. Don't let one disappointment ruin your entire day.
Personalizing
You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible.
Constructive Self Questions
Only you can decide to alter your mental dialog. You alone are the pattern maker and breaker of your own existence. The first step is to explore (without judgement) what you are thinking. Are your thoughts encouraging and loving, or a depressing mix of fear, doubt, and punishment? Watch your thoughts and write them down on paper.
What am I thinking or dwelling on?
Am I seeing the whole truth?
How does this thought make me feel?
Which of the above thought patterns am I using?
Is it really true? How do I know?
Can I look at this another way?
What would I say to a friend in this situation if I was trying to help?
What am I needing right now to feel differently?
Identifying your style of thinking can help you challenge your thoughts instead of acting on them. By turning negative thinking around, you can alleviate stress, be happier, and feel more optimistic about yourself and your abilities to cope with life. Negative thoughts and feelings can be very powerful and are hard habits to break. However, if you commit to identifying your style of thinking, you can discover new ways to think of what is right and true about yourself, and your whole life will change before your eyes.
Dr. Annette Colby, RD can help you take the pain out of life, turn difficult emotions into joy, release stress, end emotional eating, and move beyond depression into an extraordinary life! Annette is the author of Your Highest Potential and has the unique ability to show you how to spark an amazing relationship with your life! Visit www.LovingMiracles.com to access hundreds of content filled articles and sign up for a Free subscription to Loving Miracles! newsletter.
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