How to work with negative thoughts - an example.

The first step is to catch an thought that is negative.

"I don't ever want to break up with anyone again, because if I break up with someone again, I won't survive how much it hurts."

Helpful thoughts and how it doesn't have to be true:

"I've always survived it, if it happens it will hurt but I'll get through it. That's life, it can happen, but I can handle it... I'll be with the pain, I won't run away from that emotion when it comes. Pain can also be transformative.... The essence is to be with the root of that pain..."

Even this different perspective will evoke a kind of hope and optimism that I will no longer preemptively reject everyone just to avoid experiencing that pain again. Because that thought had been there for years and I wasn't aware of it at all until I stopped and listened to what it is I believe I caught it.

Does the pain remind me of something perhaps and what? I can't find any memories, but it hurts unbelievably. In that case, it must be something from early childhood, when we don't have cognitive memories yet, but the body remembers the abandonment (as a little 6-month-old baby, I stayed in the hospital for 3 weeks without my mother). And so I give myself love and embrace my inner child who was once abandoned and I will give her as much love as she needs. I will not run away from that pain because running away does not lead to healing.

Negative thoughts, unless we question where they come from and why we think them, can hold us back for years and prevent us from living a happier and more fulfilled life. They prevent us, because of the fear that often surrounds them, from taking the steps where we get over ourselves and try again what we are so afraid might happen again. But just by healing that old pain and curing it, it won't happen again because we've already healed it and what we heal and what we learn to be untrue, life won't send it to us anymore because the lesson has been learned.

Mirka