Automatic Thoughts: The Key To Letting Go?

    Let me let you in on a little secret.  I ruminate. In other words I am "in my head" a decent amount of the time, over analyzing and worrying about things.  Everyone worries about things and experiences anxiety from time to time.  That's normal.  But what I do is a roadblock to my emotional health.  So, to help me in my quest to be the best person I can be, and achieve a goal of being more emotionally healthy, I have begun a workbook called Mind Over Mood. by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky.

   The gist of the book is to recognize when we have strong moods and to try and get at the thoughts behind them.  To differentiate between moods and thoughts.  A lot of the time the strong moods are triggered by what the authors call "automatic thoughts."  That is thoughts that just seem to run through our heads without us consciously thinking them.  I know from past reading and experience that we do have control over our thoughts and actions.  But, when a person has spent at least 30 of their 36 years thinking and acting a certain way, it seems that these thoughts and behaviors are automatic.  However, as family members and friends have reminded me, I am in control of my thoughts and actions.

    It is helpful to be able to identify first what the strong mood or feeling is, and then what thoughts did I have right before I felt the mood.  Behind these automatic thoughts are certain beliefs that we have about life, things and other people.  So a diagram could go mood <-------- thought <--------- belief.  These beliefs about ourselves and life are both a product of our background as well as our upbringing.  So from reading this, I have come to believe that the key to being able to have a more balanced focus in life IE focusing on the positive aspects of a situation as opposed to the negatives are to get at these negative thoughts and beliefs, examine them and if necessary adjust them. 

    When we go into a situation with a healthy self esteem and a more balanced view of ourselves and lives, a situation occurs, if I have a thought, but if I have a positive belief about myself this thought doesn't trigger a bad mood and I am able to see the negative thoughts for what they are.  It will take years to root out and change these negative beliefs, but I know with the help of God, friends and family I am becoming the person that I want and was meant to be.