Three therapy techniques to free you from troubling thoughts

Ever get a thought in your head that won’t go away and makes you feel terrible?  You and the rest of the world!  Here are quick three techniques that can help:

1. The Switcherooney

This is a very eye opening technique to help you gain clarity and insight on a situation or relationship that you have a complaint about.  First of all put the name of the person you want to address at the top of the paper,  someone you feel has done you wrong or you feel should have behaved differently.  Then, in as much detail as you like, and using as colourful language as you like, address them, listing all their wrongdoings, their faults, and unleashing all the criticism you can muster upon that page – let it rip.

Once it’s all out on the paper, go to the top of the page, cross out their name and add your own.

And then read the page again.  The result may surprise you.

I personally have never failed to be blown away at the accuracy with which the person writing (who a second ago was me), is actually describing my own behaviour. Perhaps not in the exact same circumstance as I was describing originally, but certainly in another very like it, except this time I am the perpetrator and the other person is suffering the consequences that I, only moments ago, claimed to be the victim of myself.

That page basically acts as a mirror, and it helps us to gain insight and begin to accept responsibility for things that we can often see in others but fail to acknowledge in ourselves.  And then as Gandhi put it, our next step is to “….be the change you wish to see in the world.” 

2. The Work – Byron Katie

Another technique comes from a lady called Byron Katie and is called The Work.  Here she provides us with a list of questions to use to examine in detail a thought or a judgement we have about someone or a situation that causes us any degree of distress.

These are:

1. Is it true?(Yes or no. If no, move to 3.)

2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true? (Yes or no.)

3. How do I react, what happens, when I believe that thought?

4. Who would I be without that thought?

The answer to question 4, is normally some version of…. free – free to enjoy life, free to live in the present, free to act out of love and not fear – freedom.

What Byron then recommends is something very similar to the exercise I first described, and she calls it The Turnaround. She asks you to turn the phrase you initially started working with around, and considering the thought in a reversed form.  For example: “My mother should understand me better.” A turnaround would be: “I should understand my mother better.” Or “My mother shouldn’t understand me better.”  This moves us immediately out of the victim mentality into a place of empowerment where we can work on ourselves first before blaming the world for what we feel it has done to us.

3. The Sedona Method

The Sedona method comes in 4 basic steps.Firstly allow yourself to feel the feelings associated with the thought you are having. And then ask yourself these three questions:

Ask yourself: Could I let this feeling go?

Would I? (Am I willing to?)

If no ask: ‘Would I rather have this feeling or would I rather be free/happy/at peace?’

When? The final question is an invitation to simply let it go, a choice we can actually make at any time.

Play around and find which one works best for you.  It may be different ones work better in different situations.  However what they all do is take the emotional sting out of unexamined painful thoughts, thoughts that often we can have repeatedly for years and cause untold distress.

Pulling them apart and reversing them in this way allows us to see reality as much more malleable and flexible than we may have previously thought it to be. Thoughts then lose their gravitas and authority to control how we feel. As a result we ourselves become more flexible and can allow life to flow without demanding people or circumstances are a certain way.

The ultimate aim is to stop fighting what is and to increase our capacity to live in the now without the mental resistance of thinking things should be other than how they are. When we release resistance to what is, we cease to suffer. Then we are much more capable of acting in helpful and loving ways that contribute to our good and the good of others around us.

Ultimately, it comes down to acting out of love rather than fear.

Much love to you all.

Beth
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