The Power of Thoughts
I'll give you two scenarios to show you how effective the thoughts in our minds can be, and the power they hold over our emotions and behavior.
Imagine you've attended a get-to-know-you meeting for a school club. You're in the meeting hall, and there are many people you don't know. The interesting part is that the others don't know each other either. There's a lot of new material you could discover in that room, and many people you could get to know. But you feel a sense of tension and unease. You notice your heart rate speeding up, and maybe your breathing quickening. There's a question that can help you make sense of this tension: 'What's going through my mind right now?' Let's assume the thoughts going through your mind are like this: If I say something wrong I'll be humiliated, I won't be able to find anything to talk about with people I don't know, and people won't like me. Accepting these thoughts as true and important without question, and acting in line with them, will, as expected, keep you from connecting with other people.
Now imagine that the same thoughts come to your mind again, but this time you consider how much these thoughts truly reflect reality.
How much do the thoughts going through my mind reflect reality?
If I act in line with this intense thought, would I really be behaving the way I want to?
What does this thought mean to me? With examining questions like these, you can arrive at different, new thoughts. The alternative thoughts you might come up with could look like the following.
I might say something wrong, but that's human, everyone can do that, and it's not the end of the world.
It might be hard to find things to talk about at first, but as you get to know people and discover common ground, finding topics can get easier.
I have acquaintances and friends who care about me; there's no actual evidence for my thought that people won't like me.
Generating alternative thoughts will also help reduce the impact of the hot, intense thought that suddenly comes to mind. It's quite normal — even if it feels challenging — for the thoughts that come to mind first to be fairly pessimistic, but the ability to question the reality of these thoughts helps you develop alternative perspectives instead of getting trapped by them. And being able to develop alternative perspectives will increase your courage to adopt a different, more functional behavior in the situation you find yourself in.
Duygu Çankaya Çadırcıoğlu, Psychologist
