Noticing Beliefs

Noticing beliefs may be harder than we expect sometimes. Our brains are designed to do a lot of things very quickly, so a lot of our thoughts go unnoticed. A lot of decisions happen while driving, while singing, while talking to friends, while cooking, while scrolling on our phones, and doing anything else that feels like a habit, and we just don’t notice it all, which is why we are often able to accomplish familiar tasks, while thinking about other things. This makes us more efficient and can be really helpful sometimes, but there are downsides. Here is a video of an astronaut dropping a cup and pen on accident https://youtu.be/PVxaL8CAO4M?si=r4I-zb0TKS3rdAPL. He knows that he’s on Earth, but recently he’s been somewhere else with much less gravity, so the part of his brain that makes decisions very quickly thinks that if he lets go of an object while it’s in the air, then the object will stay where he put it. It doesn’t, and instead it falls on the ground. After he drops the pen you can see him realize it’s gone and for a second he actually looks up in the air before he looks at the ground, because that’s the direction it would have fallen in, if he was in space.

Sometimes we think that things are going to happen without noticing we think them. We go on auto pilot and we do one thing while thinking of something else or doing a second task, but we wouldn’t be able to do that if our brains weren’t having thoughts and decisions related to both tasks. We also have a lot of thoughts or beliefs about situations without noticing them. Oftentimes we will decide to trust or mistrust someone, without really thinking about it. Especially when experiencing heightened emotions. Scammers try to prey on this fact using the names of institutions we trust and time limits to convince us to give them information we normally wouldn’t without a minimum of research and fact checking. We have immediate gut reactions to a lot of situations, which is a fantastic adaptation because that’s what we need in an emergency situation. 

It’s not always helpful though. There is a part of our brains that thinks getting dumped, getting a bad grade on a test, getting in an argument with your spouse, being given a bad performance review at work, and any other stressful events, are emergencies that we have to make snap decisions about, because that’s what our stress response is designed to handle. The type of thoughts you have, in these stressful moments, are dependent on the type of thoughts that you’ve had in similar situations, when you’ve felt the same way. If you often engage in negative self talk, it becomes automatic, and you might be doing it without noticing it. Things that feel true in a stressful moment get reinforced, and become beliefs. Those beliefs become an intrinsic part of how we handle stressful situations, and we will think them every time we experience that emotion.

Astronauts get used to living on earth with gravity again. It takes time, but they realize they dropped something and it fell on the floor, they pause, slow down, pick up the cup, put some thought into it and set it somewhere sensible. Practicing putting things down on a flat surface on purpose, eventually becomes a habit they can do again without thinking. We can do the same with our thoughts. The indication is a bit more difficult, because it’s happening inside our heads, but it’s still doable. When we feel awful, that’s kind of like the cup dropping on the floor. We might not notice it at first, but when we do notice it, we can ask ourselves, “How am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way?” The first answer might be “Because something bad happened,” which is true, but not the whole story. We have to also ask ourselves “What does this negative event mean about me? What am I telling myself about this situation?” Sometimes this process is surprising, sometimes it is difficult, sometimes it is slightly embarrassing. We might find thoughts like “This means I am bad,” or “This means something bad is going to happen,” and then we have to ask “Is that really true just based on this information?” and oftentimes it isn’t. Once we realize that we had that negative thought pattern we can build new ones. We need to slow down our thoughts so we can notice them consciously, focus on the situation, and assess it honestly. That doesn’t mean false positivity, just thinking more carefully. Most stressful situations don’t mean something inherently negative about ourselves or the world at large. Remembering that consciously, and practicing reminding yourself, will eventually help you believe it and treat yourself more kindly. 

While this is something you can do on your own, the process may go faster if you involve someone else, like a friend, family member, partner, or a therapist. The next few blog posts on this site will be about different therapeutic techniques that can help change negative beliefs.