one of the things that bothers me most about the mental health field is how many of the interventions and strategies we apply to our work with clients seem to be geared towards people with mild to moderate presentations of things like depression and anxiety great example of this is cognitive behavioral thought challenges I love these activities on paper cognitive behavioral thought challenges are tools that allow you to assess and reframe the negative thoughts that we all have from time to time negative thoughts about ourselves other people or the world in general they're often pretty filled with
inaccuracies or exagger minimizations or things like that and with a little bit of logic and rationale we can usually dismantle these thoughts pretty easily in theory the problem that I run up against as I'm learning about these tools and as I'm trying to practice them in my own life is I realize they're not made for me these tools are not made by people who think the same way that I do because when I look at examples of cognitive behavior thought challenges and it's like this nice calm bullet point list of like I'm not a failure
because people have value no matter they do and I I don't disagree with that statement okay they're not strong enough though and if I imagine a dialogue or a debate in my mind between what my inner negative thoughts actually sound like inside of my brain and what these cognitive behavioral thought challenges sound like what I picture is a debate between a guy in a suit with a PowerPoint and a nice organized presentation and a guy who sings in a death metal band and has a megaphone and is screaming and shouting vulgarities and obscenities and abuse
at the other guy the guy in the suit might have a more technically and logically compelling presentation but it doesn't matter because no one is going to hear it because he is going to be utterly drowned out by this loud aggressive uncompromising person and that's what my negative thoughts sound like they're the metal head with the megaphone it's going to take a lot to get this voice to quiet down logic alone isn't going to do it one of my core principles in working with severe symptoms of depression and anxiety is that we have to fight
fire with fire this can look a lot of different ways it often means matching your negative thoughts in the format that they show up in but something that is equally important to try to match is the intensity your negative thoughts and if there is a mismatch between the intensity of your negative thoughts and your thought challenges the negative thoughts are still going to win even if the thought challenges make more sense it's just the nature of how our brains prioritize information when I challenge my negative thoughts I don't want to calmly and quietly prove them
wrong I want to make them regret their existence I want to make them feel so stupid for the hurtful things they said to me that they apologize and they beg me to forgive them which I will then deny them and obliterate them from my brain that's what I actually want to do and that might sound ridiculous but I've actually been able to have some amount of success in doing this and I'm going to teach you my technique today the easiest way I can do this is with an example now I'm going to give you an
example from my own life because I can't share your client information it's private because I'm giving you an example from my own life and because I'm challenging negative thoughts and I'm going to challenge it with things that I think good about me this might sound a little bit like I'm bragging so I just want to give you a little disclaimer for that that's what it's going to sound like when you do it too it has to because that inner negative voice that you have is ruthless and uncompromising it will not hold back and you know
this it will find every little thing it will not spare your feelings so if you're afraid to talk back to it in a way that matches that if you're afraid to really put out there everything you're happy with everything you're proud of everything that is good about you you will lose because you have one person one voice I guess I should say who will not compromise and one who will well guess what happens in that conversation the one who does not compromise and holds nothing back wins every time so you have to hold nothing back
in your response and it might make you sound what other keep in mind you're not saying this out loud right this is all just in your mind it might sound narcissistic or egotistical that you're listing all these things about yourself that counter the negativity it is your only chance though it's uncomfortable at least at first but you have to be willing to do this if you ever want to be able to win this battle definitively and make this part of your brain actually shut up for once so here's my example and this just happened today
got a text message from my maintenance guy for the office here and he said hey Scott I just wanted to let you know that the check you sent me I pay him obviously um was completely blank and when I say completely blank I don't mean like I forgot to put dollar amount in I mean I literally just like ripped a check out of my checkbook put it in an envelope and sent it to him so obviously that doesn't work and I bet you can guess exactly what my first thought was when I saw this text
from him it's probably what a lot of your first thoughts would be too I am such an idiot now the first thing I do when I have this thought is I paused for a second because you you have to register that you just had a thought that's messed up that's harder than it seems because you're so used to thinking this way that having the thought that you're an idiot doesn't even like Spike the way it should you know if you if someone else especially someone who's like nice to you or who you used to treat
who you are used to having treat you well calls you an idiot it it's it's got that little stab of hurt right like oh like what what happened here but when you say it to you and you're used to hearing it from you sometimes it doesn't even register you're so resigned to hearing this that you don't even consider fighting back so pause did you just call me an idiot this is me talking to me obviously of course I make mistakes everybody makes mistakes and you know what let me tell you a little bit about what
I'm going through right now I opened a business eight months ago it was just me and there's 11 people that work here now I am learning on the Fly what it means to be a business owner I am learning terms that I did not go to school for I have spreadsheets and meetings on my computer to track stuff I've never even heard of I'm a family man working 10 to 12 hours a day I am making content every single week trying to help people who my field of mental health and the world in general has
given up on and has left behind I am giving every ounce of energy and attention that I have every single day and sometimes it's not enough sometimes the days take even more than I have so yeah I sent my maintenance guy a blank check you want to tell me how that makes me an idiot please go right ahead funny thing is when I talk back like that my negative thoughts don't usually have a response they don't have much else to say now that doesn't last forever you know I I'd love to tell you you do
that one time your negative thoughts are gone forever probably not I bet I won't make it a week before I call myself an idiot again over some minor little mistake like that because I will make more because I'm in a very busy season of life right now but once you do that something kind of like what I just did one time it's a lot like if you have a conversation like that with another person like if you really if someone says something really messed up to you and you have to kind of put them in
their place a little bit they'll be quiet for a while they might say that thing again later down the road but once you've really let them know the truth of the matter and why they're so off based in what they're telling you sometimes you can just remind them of that conversation you don't necessarily have to even go through that again you just kind of give him that look right like I'm an idiot are you sure do you remember when we talked about this last week and you had nothing to say and then look oh oh
okay yeah you're right sorry your negative thoughts will do that too you can make them this might sound crazy but I mean this you can make him Afra because if you take the logic and the rationale and the correctness that comes with these thought challenges but you package it in the intense that your negative thoughts present with you can score the kind of Victory against that dark part of yourself that you've been looking for for years please give this one a try it's one of my favorite tools it will feel really weird the first time
you do it but you'll get used to it and once you get used to it it can change everything for you I hope this helps I'll see you next time take care
