Becoming more positive
It's Friday, and I've been cleaning the house for most of the day so far. Clean house, clean mind, or so they say. I like to start the weekend knowing that the dull stuff is done, and I can dedicate my time to more fun!
There are literally millions of articles and posts about the power of postive thinking out there, and I've spent my whole career helping people identify their damaging thoughts, or high risk thoughts, and helping them to work out ways of challenging these or replacing them with new ones. I remember a group session in prison once, where a prisoner on the group, a particularly 'resistant' individual who will forever be etched in my memory, stood up in his grey tracksuit and chucked a plastic cup of coffee at the wall, shouting "all this fu**ing positive thinking is doing my head in." A few other group members laughed and seemed to agree. So I thought fare enough, and we took a break. I handed a large wod of blue roll paper to the guy who chucked the coffee and left him to clean it up, while I headed back to the office and slammed the door, fuming. I think I even cried! I went back on to the wing after 10 minutes of staring at my computer screen in rage, and wrote the guy up for his 'abusive and threatening behaviour'. I asked an officer to announce over the intercom that the group members should return to the group room, and I went back in and sat down as they shuffled in.
First back was coffee thrower, who sat down like a petulant child, who refused to look at me and had this look on his face that I could imagine was just the same as when he committed his particularly violent offense. To be honest, all positive thinking was gone from my head too, and I sat there as every one else came in feeling genuinely scared of how the rest of this session was going to play out. I turned round to grab my session notes and coffee thrower said "excuse me miss, can I say something?". I said "of course", and 6ft something violent baldy stood up in his prison issue trainers and said "I'm sorry". He went on for about 15 minutes, explaining how he'd never thought he had a conscience, and had never felt bad about doing anything wrong previously, but that he'd learned that if he stopped thinking he was going to fail at everything he could actually be better off, and wanted to learn how to do this. He came up with some of the most inspiring and genuine positive thoughts I'd ever heard in any group, and he went on to keep it up during and following the programme, being recommended for progression to a lower security prison. I never saw him after that, and received no updates, but it was lightbulb moments like this that changed people's lives in there.
My point is, if violent baldy man on a long prison stretch after a lifetime of violent offending can do it, we all can. Here are a few tips!
1. Make sure your positive thoughts are genuine and you believe them. Positive thinking is not about kidding yourself, but about believing what you think. So thinking "Everything will be perfect", or "I'm completely fine" or "one day I'll be a millionaire" probably aren't realistic, and you won't genuinely believe them so they won't work. Instead try more realistic positivity like "It will be hard but I will cope" or "it's Ok to struggle sometimes, just don't give up". If you believe it, they will work.
2. Identify patterns in your unhelpful thinking. Do you find yourself frequently blowing things out of proportion in your mind? Are you an 'over generaliser' where you tar everything with the same brush? Do you see things in 'black and white', thinking things are either all good or all bad, with nothing in between? Are you a self abuser, frequently putting yourself down or believing you're useless? Or perhaps you're what we used to call an 'awfuliser', always expecting the worst and imagining catastrophe at all times. There are lots of different patterns we find ourselves in, and if we notice the pattern, we can start to challenge them.
3. Control your emotions first. It's freakin hard thinking more positively if you're raging! Try the old classic of counting to 10, or taking some time out to yourself away from a heated situation, and give yourself a break before you start calling on your more helpful thoughts.
4. Identify one or two emergency stand-by thoughts that you can recite to yourself at any given moment. Keep them short and simple and believable. It can help to write these down so you see them and remember them. I've got a few, but here are my two favourites.
The old classic, "This too shall pass" and "I've coped with worse". Those two simple thoughts have helped me get through some pretty hairy times and they only get more believable as time goes on because I have learned that they are true.
Tomorrow's blog is dedicated to a visualisation technique that can help you battle against the critic in your head and find some self esteem. Happy weekend everybody.
