The
Imprisonment
Have you ever had bad
or negative thoughts? Would you be embarrassed or delighted if others
could listen to the thoughts? How would this situation make you feel?
As mental health clinicians
we often work with individuals who self-report as feeling like a bad person…because
the thoughts in [their] head are bad. As we probe for more
information about their personal quarrel, many times individuals are confused
because they do not know where the thoughts are coming from. Some clients
may say, “I have a good life. Nothing terrible has ever happened to me
but I just can’t stop having these negative thoughts.” Another client may
have a situation in which they have an extensive history of trauma (i.e. some
forms of abuse). When I work with these types of clients, they usually
indicate that their negative thinking began as a result of their trauma.
Though the situation for each individual client is different, there is a
common connection or theme in how most of them label themselves. “I aint sh*t”, “I’m pathetic”, “I’m not
worthy of love”, “My moms’ is right – I’m just a stupid dude,” “I’m better off
dead because I'm a burden to other people,” etc. The problem here is not
the thought itself but the fact that the client is identifying with the
thought and claiming it as being their own. As soon as a
person claims allegiance with a thought, the thought begins to achieve its
mission of subverting the person’s well-being. The thought no longer has
to convince the person that they are pathetic, bad, or a piece of sh*t, because
the person has already decided (consciously or unconsciously) that the thought
has more validity, credibility, and power than the person experiencing the thought. The person then
begins to feel stress, anger, anxiety, etc. When a person falls victim to
this maladaptive thought process, they do not become a prisoner of their own
thinking, they become a prisoner of thoughts.
Regaining
Freedom
In order to regain a sense
or state of healthiness one must understand that thoughts are simply
thoughts. They are not necessarily anyone’s property. Some thoughts
are welcomed and some are not. Some have a brief stay in the mind and
some stay longer but they are not necessarily our thoughts. They enter
and exit our minds. For example, “When looking up at the sky, many
phenomena such as clouds, birds, planes, etc. are perceived to be passing
by. You can see the clouds float by because you are not the clouds;
rather you are the witness of those clouds,” (Edwards, 2004). In the same
way that Dr. Ian C. Edwards vividly explains that we are witnesses of the
clouds, we are also witnesses of our thoughts; but we are not our
thoughts. Occasionally, I experience negative thoughts and some of them
are extremely unhealthy. I am not fully aware of what causes them or
where they come from, but because I do not identify with them, they do not
bother me. Many times I laugh at them which makes my experience humorous
and not horrifying.
I recently listened to some
audio archives of Alan Watts discussing the Buddha Mind and he said:
“If you bothered about one
such reflection [i.e. thoughts], you are certain to go astray. Your
thoughts don’t lay deep enough. They rise from the shallows of your
mind…Thoughts aren’t entities. So, if you permit them to rise, reflect
themselves, or cease all together as they are prone to do, and if you don’t
worry about them, then you’ll never go astray. In this way, let 100 [or]
1,000 thoughts arise and it’s as if not one has arisen.” (Watts, 2004).
My recommendations to anyone
who is being imprisoned by thoughts are the following:
1) Do not claim
total allegiance with thoughts (especially negative or unhealthy ones).
Remember that “…the mind becomes empty when we disidentify with the experienced
phenomenon,” (Edwards, 2004).
2) Recognize
that you are powerless when it comes to trying to control your
thoughts, but understand that you can find power within this
powerless experience if you become a spectator or a witness of thoughts without
becoming them.
References
Edwards, D. I. (2004). The
Dawning of Awareness on a Juvenile Sex Offender Unit. The World Of OSHO -
VIHA CONNECTION, 19.
Watts, A. (2004). Out of
Your Mind.
© May 13, 2015 PerspectVe
LLC
PerspectVeLLC@yahoo.com
(412)592-2291
