Thoughtful Ruminations

Oh hey! You came! Thank you!

Lately my mental health has been in the dumps. It came to a head this weekend when I had plans I’d been really excited about, yet found myself not wanting to go. At some point, I realized I was having some really irrational and negative thoughts about myself.

I want to share the internal experience I went through yesterday in hopes it may help you process your thoughts and feelings, too.

First, I need you to know that after years of putting it off I went ahead and did therapy for 4 years. It started off weekly, then tapered as time passed and I learned to regulate my thoughts and feelings better.

When I pictured therapy, I thought it would be a place where we would pinpoint a few pivotal moments in my life so I could figure out why I am the way I am.

Spoiler: Therapy doesn’t usually work that way. Oftentimes there is no one catalytic event for why you are the way you are. THAT IS A BUMMER! It would be so much easier to make my unhealthy patterns someone else’s fault. Part of how we develop unhealthy patterns is by repeating the same internal, subconscious beliefs.

I am going to be very specific about the 2 thoughts I had yesterday so I can tell you how I overpowered them. Authenticity comes easily to me, but vulnerability can have consequences, so please be kind.

Toxic Belief 1: “I am disgusting because I am so large.”

Toxic Belief 2: “If I go to social events alone, and not with Ryan, people will think I am unloved.”

So to combine them: “I am unloved and disgusting.”

Once I boiled it down, I shared both thoughts out loud to Ryan. The look on his face said it all. Those were some of the dumbest statements I could make about myself, and saying it loud made it evident.

Even though those thoughts were super irrational and incorrect, they were still causing me significant pain and causing me to disconnect from people.

After I boiled down my core thought, I spent an hour spiraling internally to determine “WHY” I think that about myself. I do, honestly, know some of the reasons, and they were experiences I had in my childhood friendships and the messages I received about body sizes growing up.

HOWEVER, knowing the WHY doesn’t make me stop believing it, so what do I do?

This is where the therapy work kicks in.

Although I may not be able to figure out the catalytic moment (because it doesn’t exist), I can absolutely provide mountains of evidence to show I am NOT disgusting or unloved.

These range from very basic (I bathe regularly and use deodorant) to very layered (I am loved and beloved by my family and friends and many peers).

No matter what, the process of arguing with that toxic belief is pivotal.

This is a lot like math for me. I finally did well in math when I stopped trying to figure out WHY “Y=mx+b” and just followed the algorithm to solve the problem.

So, my friends, next time you find a nasty toxic belief repeating itself in your noggin, ARGUE WITH IT.

You can do this. I’m here to help.