Prov. 4:23, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life
Your brain is wired to produce change, a constant in the brain, as it is in life.
Change involves learning, and all learning generates change in the brain. When you seek to replace a behavior, such as a toxic thinking pattern, your actions produce neurochemical and molecular changes in cells known as neurons.
This vast and complex network manages the flow of information that, quite literally, shapes your behaviors and in many ways your life. These electrical impulses, you may say, consist of molecules of emotion that are designed to “control” the overall direction of your life,
Thoughts spark emotion-driven action.
Your thoughts create inner standards or rules that spark neurochemical dynamic processes, which selectively govern your choices and actions with precision.
It takes a thought to spark an emotion, or drive a decision to take an action or to take no action at all. And emotions give meaning to thoughts; they are the spark.
Toxic thinking is self-perpetuating. It not only stimulates the body’s reward or learning centers with pseudo feel-good feelings, it also activates the body’s fear response, which further increases the likelihood that the defensive behaviors it triggers will be repeated.
In other words, if you do not have the life and relationships that you want, you likely do not have the thinking patterns you need to create the optimal emotional states, and thus actions, that would sustain your momentum in the overall direction of your aspirations.
Some of its most useful action signals (you’re probably not going to like this…) are in the form of painful emotions, however.
Most often than not, human beings only change when the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing. (It doesn’t have to be this way, however!)
Toxic thinking causes unhealthy levels of anxiety. Based on anxious thoughts (which are mostly a misinterpretation of what poses a threat or danger to you),
Toxic beliefs, in one way or another, cause you to hate, run away from or demean the part of you (or others) that feels emotions of vulnerability. This produces reactive behaviors designed to avoid, numb or eliminate painful emotions.
Naturally, this won’t work.
You are wired to struggle with your fears and vulnerabilities. It’s how you grow your courage, which you need in order to stretch to love yourself and life, and others, with your whole heart.
•The brain has incredible plasticity from what the latest findings tell us, capable of changing and healing, restructuring and reorganizing faster than ever imagined
•The brain not only generates experience, every experience changes the structure of your brain. Thus, your day-to-day life experience wires and re-wires your brain.
healthy relationship patterns are potentially healing in nature, literally, ones that allow the brain to rewire itself for more flexibility, permitting new associations of neural networks, the growth of new neurons, the expansion of existing ones, changes in existing connections, and so on.
Empathy the ability to identify with and understand somebody else's feelings or difficulties
Prov. 4:23, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life
“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). Every one of us must seek to answer the all-important and practical question, “How do I renew my mind?”
Let’s use a hilltop as an illustration. When rain falls on a hill, the water drains off. How does it drain off? In rivulets or grooves in the ground. Initially, they are just small rivulets, but each time rain falls, the rivulets/grooves cut deeper and deeper. They can become deep chasms.
Now let’s compare these rivulets/grooves with thought patterns in our minds. The longer we think along any given line, the stronger that thought pattern becomes. Every time we react in a certain way, we reinforce that thought pattern. This is how habits are formed.
If we want to get rid of rivulets on a hill, we could take a bulldozer and cover them up. We could also build a little dam where the rivulet/groove begins so that the next time it rains the rivulets will change some. While we can’t cover up our thoughts with mental bulldozers, we can build a dam in our minds when certain thoughts begin. We can refuse to think them. We can say, “I will not allow myself to think that.”
Building a dam in the mind, however, is not enough. That is, saying “no” is not sufficient by itself. We also need to provide a new course for our thinking. We should not just suppress thoughts! We should redirect them. We should change negative thought patterns into positive thought patterns.
We find a good illustration of this in Paul’s words, “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28). How does a thief stop being a thief? Is it just by not stealing anymore? Not quite. Certainly that is part of it. That’s saying “no” to a negative, destructive habit. It’s building the “dam.” But it’s not enough. In order to change, the thief is told to get a job and earn money honestly. Then he is to give to others in need so that perhaps they won’t be tempted to steal. Now the process is complete. The negative habit has been dealt with by an act of the will which chooses to stop it. But the will must also choose to replace that with the corresponding constructive action in order that the change in thought patterns may be completed.
We need to realize that this takes place by an act of the will, not by wishful thinking and not solely by devotional meditation and prayer. Meditation and prayer are necessary, but we must move beyond that to an act of the will.
Paul gives us some helpful thoughts on the subject, “Set your minds on things above” (Col. 3:2) a declarative statement that involves an act of the will. You set your mind. “Put to death … whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires” (vs. 5), “You must rid yourselves” (vs. 8), “Put on” (vs. 12). Changing thought patterns is not just “putting away” by building dams, but also “putting on” by building new patterns. It is not just suppressing, but redirecting our thoughts into healthy, positive ways of thinking.
What does “put to death” (vs. 5) mean? The old thought patterns do not just die naturally; it would be great if they did and we never again had this desire or that temptation. But because “the heart is more deceitful … and is desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9), and because the flesh/sin nature is the flesh/sin nature and lusts against the Spirit, these battles go on continually. Therefore, the statement “put to death” requires a continual action. We must put old thought patterns to death every time they rear their heads. We cannot just put immorality to death, and then no longer have immoral thoughts. They will continue to come up and every time they do, we have to stop them right at the headwaters with the dam. Every time! The more times we put those wrong thoughts to death and put on the new ones, the less our thoughts tend to flow in the wrong direction.
Paul commands us to develop healthy, positive, spiritual ways of thinking (Col. 3:12). We are to “put on” certain positive thought patterns as we “put off” the wrong ones. These two steps are essential if there is to be genuine change. We have looked at the illustration of the changed thief (Eph. 4:28). In the same passage Paul gives another helpful illustration of “putting off” and “putting on.” He states that the liar is to stop (put off) lying, but immediately reminds us that he must speak (put on) the truth (4:25). Not only does the liar stop lying, but he begins telling the truth. The two steps are clear – “put off” and “put on.”
I prophesied as I was commanded
But would we tell a person who had just been run over by a car to “Let go, and let God?” Would we tell a person trapped in a burning building to “Go to church more?” Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Often we are like the well-meaning, but ineffective doctor who prescribes a wonderful medicine for the wrong condition.
Changing Toxic Thought Patterns
by Hamilton Beazley, Ph.D.
It’s been said that we are what we eat. It’s even more true that we are what we think. Toxic thought patterns lead to various forms of self destructive behavior, including the creation and retention of regrets that burden us. Letting go of our regrets and overcoming the anger, pain and guilt they feed requires us to identify the toxic thought patterns that support them. Journaling, spoken or written affirmations, creative visualizations, prayer, meditation, thought analysis and sharing with others are among the spiritual and psychological tools we can use to counter toxic thought patterns. Some of the most common toxic thought patterns that support regrets and other counterproductive behavior include the following:
1. Perfectionism. These people are driven to be perfect and suffer terribly when they are not. Although perfectionists acknowledge intellectually that perfection is impossible, they behave as if it were. To be less than perfect is to fail. Perfectionism keeps us from reaching our full potential and even robs us of learning from failure. Perfectionism makes our regrets more regrettable and self-forgiveness more unlikely.
2. Exaggerated Control. When we have an exaggerated sense of control over other people and the events of our lives, we take responsibility for results we did not create and for which we should not be held accountable. We can influence some people and some events, but we have no real control over anyone but ourselves. While an unrealistic sense of control pleases our ego and may reassure us, it also makes us feel guilty in situations where no guilt was warranted.
3. Foreseeing the Future: If we could foresee events, we could eliminate costly mistakes, avoid serious pain and guarantee extraordinary success. But we cannot predict the future. In our regrets, we may blame ourselves for not having predicted future events and acted to prevent them or take advantage of them in some way. John says, “If I had only married Sue in college, I would be happy now.” But John can’t possibly know that he would be happy, because he cannot predict what his life with Sue would have been like. Such an imagined outcome is pure speculation.
4. Personalizing Events. “It’s all about me.” That’s the assumption we make when we erroneously assume that whatever happens to us is primarily about us and not about the other person. This ego-centric thought pattern puts us at the center of things when we don’t belong there. Another person’s actions toward us are assumed to be in response to what we said or did rather than in response to the other person’s needs, feelings and desires.
5. Incomplete Comparisons. The comparisons we make between ourselves and others inevitably lead to regret when we find our own lives lacking. Yet all such incomplete comparisons are invalid because we can’t really know what the lives of other people are like. We have compared our “insides” to their “outsides.” We see only their facades, not their truth.
6. Extreme Thinking. Extreme thinking is an all-or-nothing, black-and white thought pattern. With extreme thinking, it’s everything or nothing. There is no second, third, or fourth place and no second, third, or fourth chance---only first place or failure. With extreme thinking, our failure is total when we make a mistake. With no second chance, we have no way to correct the error, no way out of the problem it created. “I’ll never find another job!” “I’ll never follow my dream.” Extreme thinking removes us from the reality of a complex world with many different opportunities and reduces our experience of life to a simplistic world filled with high drama and continuous disasters.
Fortunately, toxic thoughts can be counteracted by applying thought analysis whenever they crop up and by utilizing other spiritual and psychological tools. By becoming aware of your thought patterns and then taking time to really analyze them, you can:
1. Listen critically to the thoughts you have about your regrets, whether the regrets are new or enduring.
2. Determine whether these thoughts arise from toxic thought patterns.
3. Review the validity of the thought by asking yourself such questions as, “Is this statement true? Is it realistic?”
4. Reject the thought if it is untrue, unfair, or unrealistic.
The use of thought analysis and the other spiritual and psychological tools to counter toxic thought patterns is a process that requires continuous effort. The thought habits of a lifetime are not quickly changed, but they can be countered, neutralized and gradually altered though persistent work. Gradual transformation, not complete inalterable perfection, is the goal.
