Are Your Unproductive Thought Patterns Leading to Distress

In this episode we are tackling the pervasive issue of negative thought patterns with special guest Lindsay Carnick, owner of Onward Psychological Services. 

Discover why our brains are hardwired for unhelpful thinking, how these thoughts impact our mental and physical well-being, and practical tips for breaking free from the cycle of worry and rumination. Tune in to learn how to identify and manage these thoughts, leading to a healthier, more productive mindset.

00:00 Introduction to the 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast

00:30 Exploring Negative Thought Patterns

02:50 Introducing Expert Lindsay Carnick

04:10 Understanding Unproductive Thoughts

06:00 The Dreadmill of Unhelpful Thinking

10:01 Common Unhelpful Thinking Patterns

18:16 The Impact of Imaginary Narratives

24:22 Understanding the Impact of Mindset on Physiology

24:50 Recognizing and Managing Stress

25:41 Practical Tips to Combat Negative Thoughts

26:33 The Importance of Awareness in Reducing Tension

29:11 Challenging Unhelpful Thinking Patterns

30:54 Creating Mental Space and Relief

32:14 Simple Strategies for Daily Awareness

33:41 Avoiding Judgment and Embracing Helpfulness

36:15 Final Thoughts and Practical Advice

40:09 Conclusion and Contact Information

You can learn more about Lindsay at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsey-carnick-therapist/
https://www.instagram.com/onwardpsychservices/

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My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

🌟 🌟 🌟 You can learn more about ME- the host at https://www.aeshatahir.com

Follow me on IG and LI to learn more

https://www.instagram.com/tone_and_strengthen/

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Transcript

 Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast,  a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement.  I'm your host, Aesha Tahir. 

 Hello, and welcome to this episode of the 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast.  Today, we are going to talk about negative thought patterns. And I don't know about you, but I tend to have these spiraling negative thoughts about certain situations. Sometimes it's about certain people I met and worked with,  and  That leads to a lot of distress.

That's what I have felt personally. And sometimes, you know what, I'm actually like,  doing the dishes or checking emails or even, especially when I'm driving, a lot of those thoughts are like playing in my head and  I don't like that, you know, I, I like to call myself like an optimist and I like to have like a more positive outlook on life.

So when those thoughts creep in. It makes me very uncomfortable. And, sometimes those are just like background noise, right?  It's like, okay, as I'm doing chores, Oh, I don't know why my son did this. Right. And it's just background noise. I think about it and then I let it go. But a lot of times it  completely hijacks my focus. 

I feel scattered and overwhelmed if I keep on thinking about that. So this is something I've been wanting to explore on the show with an expert. When I met our guest, who is Lindsay Carnick, and I'm going to introduce you to her soon,  she mentioned this topic and I was like, Oh my gosh, yes, I've been looking for someone who can actually discuss the impact of unproductive thinking patterns on our mental and emotional wellbeing.

And also I wanted to explore. Some strategies for managing and redirecting these thoughts to a more like healthier and more productive mindset. So that's what we're going to talk about on the show today. And if you've ever found yourself trapped in a cycle of over analysis, Just like I told you, like I often do, and, that leads to a lot of worry and a lot of distress during the day or, you know, throughout the week.

Well, then this episode is for you, and I'm going to be learning alongside you, um, and in order to do that, I want to introduce you to our special guest, Lindsey Karnick, who is the owner of Onward Psychological Services, a Colorado based private practice providing psychotherapy to adult individuals and couples. 

Lindsey specializes in anxiety and stress management, and in addition to depression, anger, life stage changes, and relational issues, Lindsey presents workshops nationally at Onward Psychological Services. Conventions, retreats, and other public and private events on practical and tactical stress management and other concerns.

Which impact professionals such as related to stress, work life balance, effective communication, and, other topics. All of these topics are awesome, by the way, Lindsay, and I want to share like a very, like fun fact about Lindsay. She's an avid reader, writer, runner, and lover of serial straight out of the box.

How can you not like her right already? Right. And love spending time with her family and friends. Welcome to the podcast, Lindsay. 

Thank you so much for having me. It's my absolute pleasure to be here. 

Thank you so much for finding time in your busy schedule and joining us.  So I want to dive right in to unproductive thinking pattern and unproductive thoughts. 

How do we define unproductive thoughts? Are there different types of unproductive thought patterns that we look for? And I want to know, like, your, , thoughts based on your work experience with,  clients.

Unproductive thoughts are so interesting because everybody have them, right? And we all have this experience, we might even use the word unhelpful. Versus unproductive because productivity is kind of an interesting benchmark, right? Some things can be productive and yet not helpful. Some things can be productive and you can produce something, but even be harmed in the process.

Right? And then we have an interesting question of, well, was it worth it? Could there have been another way? Could I have gotten to this level of productivity, whatever that means to you? without having such a miserable experience. And so one of the things I think is interesting to think about is the idea of helpful versus unhelpful.

Are these thinking patterns is this mental process that I'm going through helpful?  Or unhelpful to me and we could define helpful and unhelpful in a lot of different ways. We could say, well, helpful is something that gets me closer to a solution to a problem. Helpful is something that makes me feel better.

Whatever better might be unhelpful might be getting further from a solution or might make me feel worse.  And in a two by two matrix of feel better, not feel better, and get closer, get further. There's also one of those squares is get further and feel worse. Right? And, and that's the one I like to refer to as the dreadmill.

And coach, you're a runner, so you know, you know exactly how this works. A treadmill as. You probably all know, but may not have thought about is something that you get on and you get exhausted by, but you've gone nowhere. Yes, two by two matrix of unhelpful and unproductive. This corner is the dreadmill in which we're running over the same territory mentally again and again and again And we're getting exhausted And possibly sore and possibly hurt and not getting any closer to having covered any meaningful territory in terms of the problem that we think we're trying to solve or the resolution that we think we're trying to seek.

And so I think most of us  have the biggest struggle with the dreadmill. quadrant, which is the unhelpful and unproductive. And yet it's marvelously addicting to be there because when we're frustrated, we feel like at least we're doing something. We're thinking we're ruminating, right? We're grinding on it again and again and again, just like when you're running on a treadmill, at least you're running even if you're not getting anywhere.

And I think that's very interesting because many of us, when we're frustrated, default to this very uncomfortable, unproductive place that yet somehow, um, is strangely attractive because it feels better than doing nothing. 

 I like how you just switched the terminology for me to, from unproductive to unhelpful because that makes more sense.

Although the matrix  makes a lot of sense too, but I'm going to, okay, I'm going to just switch the terminology to unhelpful because that makes more, more sense.  Those thoughts are not helping you now, are they leading to productivity or,  non productivity? That's relative, right? So there, you know, there are so many theories as to why human beings  are so hyper focused on, Negative aspects of just existence in general.

If you think about it, like our culture and media glorifies,  struggle and conflict,  our evolutionary makeup is based on a need to fight and survive. And even today, like as modern human beings, like  history in many ways is a tale of like, unhelpful  events,  is that why we are fixated on negative thoughts around, and, you know, is that why they keep coming to us?

 Because  you said, oh, they occur to everyone. Like, you know, we all have. Negative thoughts, or we all have unproductive thoughts.  And I thought that some people were just totally immune to it. I, it was only me  like, okay, so what is the main cause? Like what's going on with us, with our human brain?

Why are we thinking,  negative thoughts and unhelpful thoughts? Right. There may be 

people who don't have that. I've never met them, but that doesn't mean there aren't. They could be out there. Please let us know if you're in that category. We have questions for you. We have many questions for you, and you never have those, and you never have that experience. 

You know, the human brain is a little bit like a very old Piece of hardware that's running very new software and some things don't quite line up Which is what happens when you try and run new software on old hardware and to your point about human history You know the the early humans who made it into the gene pool were not being optimistic About what tomorrow held.

Those who survived were very, very nervous about pretty much everything. And they were constantly scanning the horizon for what might go wrong next. You know, the critters who heard a rustle in the bushes and assumed it was a bunny instead of a predator didn't make it to dinner. They got eaten for the most part.

And if you assume everything's a predator, you're probably going to last longer. In a certain environment,  that equipment for us has not changed one iota. And so when we look at the unhelpful thinking patterns, and there are really about eight distinct unhelpful thinking patterns that have been identified that people experience.

I'll give you a couple examples. One is catastrophizing, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's when we  Come up with the most catastrophic version of what might happen and latch on to that as what is going to happen One is called emotional reasoning Emotional reasoning is the equivalent of it feels true So it must be true and we experience that a tremendous amount in our inner personal relationships causes us tremendous duress I feel like that person is mad at me or annoyed with me or I offended them very quickly becomes they are mad at me because I feel that way.

The evidence in my chest is all the evidence I need for that to become a capital T truth. Uh, another unhelpful thinking pattern is all or nothing thinking. When we get very polarized and we're not able to see sort of some gray middle ground on an issue, but all of these thinking patterns, and if you're curious, you can Google unhelpful thinking patterns and you'll come up with a really neat little sheet that has eight unhelpful thinking patterns.

And they've got cool little graphics that are very descriptive. It was put out years ago.  Unhelpful thinking patterns are all a reflection of our desire to avoid bad outcomes.  Across the board. It's all sort of defensive. It's the best offense is a good defense and we are constantly on guard against things that might hurt us and hurt.

Of course, in modern times is relative to what it was when we were, you know, out in the open being chased by predators. And certainly there's a continuum for everybody about what the actual threats in the environment are, depending on where you are in the world and depending on where you live and what conditions you're operating under.

But our tendency to look around for threats and be hyper focused on what might threaten us, whether that's emotional or literal, is exactly unchanged. From the earliest moment when we were squinting into the bushes trying to determine if something was a cute bunny, Or a predator. And so for me, the preponderance of the evidence is, is that most of us struggle with unhelpful thinking patterns because it feels like a safety mechanism as unpleasant as it is, and as much trouble as it gives us.

And we say, ah, I hate being up at night, worrying and stomachache and all the other things, lockjaw that we get from, from ruminating about what might go wrong. It is also sort of happening on the cellular level for us, where we are defending. Against what might go wrong because there was a time when that really, really mattered  much more materially than it does now, and our brains don't know that old part of the brain doesn't know that we're living in a different set of conditions.

Where the material threats aren't quite exactly the same as they were at a certain other point in human development and the unhelpful thinking patterns. If you have time to look at a description of unhelpful thinking patterns. It's so interesting because most people can look at that and go. Oh, my gosh, I do 70 percent of these 30 percent of the time and 30 percent of these 100 percent of the time.

We're doing all of them all of the time, just in different proportions. Personally, I'm an emotional reasoner of the highest order. When something feels true in my chest, it becomes true in my head. Interestingly, that's also true for good things for me. So, once in a while, I like to buy a scratch ticket and every time I buy a scratch ticket, it's a good thing.

Feels like a winner to the depths of my soul. It seems like a winner now that hasn't been true one time.  It doesn't change anything about how true that feels when it's happening. And similarly, my, my friendships, I'm a person, my friendships mean a lot to me. And when I have the sense that something is wrong, or what if I've, uh, offended one of my friends or put someone off, it feels true.

And it's very easy for me to go down a rabbit hole of, because I feel like I did something to hurt someone's feelings. It must be true that I did something to hurt someone's feelings even though what actually happened was my friend rushed off the phone because a client walked into her office or, you know, this has nothing to do with me.

It could not be further from me and yet my unhelpful thinking pattern translates that for me from a feeling into a thinking. And the thinking resonates is true. 

 I love your personal example for sure, and I can relate with you on so many levels here. It's so true. I feel like I might be an emotional reasoner too. And on top of that,  I, I will fit into probably every category, but we all 

do. You are not alone.  Oh, no. I thought, 

I thought I was special, Lindsay. 

You are just not in this way. Like just not in the realm of unhelpful thinking style.  

 What I'm understanding though, is that the harmful patterns,  of thinking that we have,  they can lead to untrue. And unrealistic conclusions many times. Right. Um, and you're kind of almost  distorting the reality itself, but that's our reality that we are creating a reality for ourselves, which has nothing to do with the actual reality.

Just like you give the example of your friend who might be going to attend,  her next, appointment with the client.  She didn't pick up the phone or she hung up too soon. And now you're thinking, Oh,  was it something I said? 

Yes. I translated this, this one data point. My friend was a little abrupt. I've translated that data point into an entire storyline about how things are.

And now I'm responding to the storyline. As opposed to the data point, right? And you're, you're exactly right. It becomes our imaginations are so powerful and our ability to abstract about what that one data point might be, right? Because let's take this example. Okay. My friend is a little abrupt getting off the phone or more abrupt than usual.

You know, however we want to put it, you and I could generate a list right now of 25 reasons why that might be phone died. Somebody walked into her office, which turned out to be the case, as it, right, husband called, animals are sick, you know, something went down outside her window, uh, there, there are a million things that could explain that, that have nothing to do with me, but our tendency as we look for threats, right, as we look for something that might hurt us or, or be a problem for us is to go, you know,  What if that does have something to do with me?

She was a little abrupt. What if I offended her? I got to get on that. I got to problem solve that. I got to troubleshoot that before that becomes a thing, right? And so it's very easy for us to start responding to these imaginary narratives and they're not based in nothing, right? I mean, it is in this case based in a single data point.

Called my friend was a little abrupt hanging up the phone. I didn't make that part up, but I did extrapolate it into this whole other narrative about what that means that I'm now responding to. And of course, ironically, I have to tell you the tail end of the story, or at least the middle part, which is I then can't get ahold of her.

Because, in fact, someone did walk into her office. She's an attorney and somebody walked in and like had a thing that needed to be addressed that took a long time. I now can't get a hold of her for hours and I am in panic city. This is confirming to me, right? This has become additional confirmation data that I have said something so out of pocket that she won't answer my phone calls and she won't answer my texts.

As it turns out, she's put her phone in her desk because she's doing something else pressing. She's not ignoring me. This has nothing to do with anything. But by the time I hear from her X number of hours later, I'm like,  I'm, I'm absolutely in a cold sweat, right? I've, I'm, I've gone so far down this road of what this all means and you're right, it's imaginary.

It's a story that I came up with through a certain kind of thinking pattern. In fact, in that case, we would call it a mental filter. I filtered out a bunch of data and hyper focused on one singular point and made that The storyline, and now I've created a whole problem for myself called my friend is mad at me, and I don't know why that now I'm trying to solve, so I've created imaginary problem for which I'm trying to come up with imaginary solutions, which, of course, don't exist because the problem is imaginary in the first place, and that is a lot of time out of my life. 

And I think most of us give up a lot of time and space in our lives to solving imaginary problems that we've created out of singular data points through unhelpful thinking pattern. 



Yeah. I want to just underscore what you said that we have created  unhelpful, thought patterns  And possibilities, which they do not exist, they are not realistic, but our brain has this ability to do that because we are always looking out for that saber tooth tiger, even now, although we are not.

Living in the wild, right? We have these big houses and we are completely like for the most part, much safer than much before, you know, but we, but our brain is still looking for those things. And,  And it's an error in our  thinking, right? It's an error in our thinking. Like what are we,  , what we are thinking is,  it has nothing to do with the reality itself.

We just don't know it, right? We are not aware of the reality, but, but what the brain is constructing is not. The reality either.  And I like to call it like insecure thinking sometimes and I do it, I do it myself. So that's why I'm like, Oh my gosh, Aisha, why are you doing this? Like, why are you thinking this way?

It's really pointing to your insecurity. And, , I think that leads.  A lot of us to hold harmful beliefs about ourselves, then  I do that. It leads to self doubt for me a lot.  I live in the world of self doubt a lot of times and, and I don't like that. So, I can totally see like with your example, like how it can lead to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, of course, that this whole thought pattern that you explain is, you know, in short, anxiety, right?

 You make a really good point about what happens when we start living up there in that story that's not actually happening, because think about a movie, think about being in a movie theater, right? I don't watch horror movies, but I don't even watch suspense.

Movies work because we respond to the imaginary. Right? Like, when you and I are sitting in a movie theater, and we see, you know, something, uh, dramatic happen, or something tense happen, we go, That's why movies are fun! Because they make you do that, whatever you like, whether you like horror, or you like adventure, or you like action, We like, uh, the feeling of going, Oh!

Oh! You know, the jump, or the scare, or the excitement, or the drama. Now, you and I both know if you and I are sitting in a movie theater drinking diet Coke and eating popcorn and raisinets,  part of us knows that this is not real because nobody calmly watches somebody fall out of a helicopter while they're eating popcorn and raisinets, right?

That's not a thing. If somebody's actually falling out of a helicopter, you don't have popcorn and raisinets. These are these things do not go together in reality, right? So we have this consciousness, as you point out, that this is not real.  But the body doesn't know that because if it did, you wouldn't go in a movie theater when Tom Cruise falls out of a helicopter, right?

The body is like, it feels real. That feels real. And in the same way that we respond to Tom Cruise falling out of a helicopter in a movie theater, when we are watching these movies in our minds, our bodies are going  and having all of those same reactions. To all of these same mind movies as our bodies have two movies in the movie theater.

And that's where we start to turn the corner in a way into these more chronic experiences. Whether we're calling that chronic stress or anxiety or depression. Where the body is now also caught up physiologically in its completely natural responses to the mind movie. Because the body doesn't know. The body doesn't know that Tom Cruise is not actually falling out of a helicopter.

Sure. And that you're eating popcorn and raisinets. All the body knows is somebody fell out of a helicopter. Real unreal is not a thing, right? And that's the same thing with these movies in our minds. When I imagine this movie in my mind where my dear friend is upset with me, and so she's hung up on me, my body goes,  and I get flooded with all the same chemicals that would happen if my friend was actually upset to me.

The actual versus imaginary makes zero difference to my physiological experience. That's why movies work.  

 I love the analogy of watching a movie and it's amazing, right? How just a movie, which is imaginary, nothing. Has nothing to do, to do with reality. It stirs up emotions and then physical responses.

And, and I talk about it a lot as an exercise physiologist, like, you know, that your physiology changes with your thinking, what, with what you're thinking, with the kind of thoughts you have. And that's our mind body connection, which is, which is a real thing. The way you have your mindset and. What you're thinking is going to impact your, you physiologically.

Like people literally would break out in sweat, right? Just by a negative thought or an unhelpful thought that they're having. Your heart rate would increase and your blood pressure rises, like you might not be aware of these physiological symptoms that are in the background a lot of times, but they are there. 

So you, that's why,  stress and anxiety and in extreme cases, of course, depression can lead to a lot of chronic health issues like. heart disease and a lot of pulmonary diseases as well because our breathing rate doubles up our heart rate increases. You are literally in a state of fight or flight for a very long time and, and that's what we want to avoid.

There's good stress for our bodies and that is like, okay, we take on a challenge, we conquer it, and then we go back to our, uh, neutral. Or we go back into a relaxation mode, but with this, uh, unhelpful thinking process, a lot of times we are staying there, you know, for hours and that's not helping us. So, okay.

I want to talk about how we can get out of it. What give us some practical tips. Like two or three practical tips that we can apply when we start like ruminating and when we start spiraling into these, negative thoughts.  The basis 

of any practical way to get out of spiraling is to establish a difference between what's happening and what's not, because that's the difference between getting caught up in the mind movie.

And not getting caught up in the mind movie. Right. And, you know, to your point about, you know, in exercise fizz, you know, you know, um, a little bit of healthy stress, we call that weightlifting and adaptation, right? Just enough weight to force the muscles to adapt a little bit of a challenge, right? Too much weight.

You're going to get hurt. Yeah. Healthy stress, unhealthy stress. Right. And to your point about not even noticing, you know, one of my favorite questions to ask people is if you were to stop right now and just take stock, Where is your tongue in your mouth?  Because for most people it's jammed up against the roof of their mouth and they don't know it.

They're not paying any attention to that. But if you stop most people and give them no heads up and just say, think fast, where's your tongue right now? And they go, first, they go, what? Cause that's a strange question to pop on people. But secondly, everybody's tongue is jammed up against the roof of their mouth and nobody knows it.

Nobody's aware of it. Right. They're like, I don't, I don't actually even know what that question means. Where's my tongue? Of course it's in my mouth. Yes. Agree. Okay. Good. We got that all the way. Excellent. Where, right? And then they say to you, well, like, what even is the alternative? I don't even know. I don't know what you mean.

I say like, okay, see if you can take the tip of your tongue and use it to touch the back of your bottom teeth.  Oh, that's the bottom of your mouth. It's the opposite of when your tongue is jammed up against the roof of your mouth. And people go, Holy cow, I didn't even know there was a second place in my mouth for my tongue because I've never thought about it.

Right. But we walk around with these physiological signs of tension that we're not even aware of, like our tongues being jammed up against the roof of our mouth pretty much 24 seven.  And  just like recognizing,  That you have that going on in your body. And lots of people have lots of other things they don't notice, right?

Many people don't realize that their shoulders could be two inches lower. Most of the time, most of us are wearing our shoulders like a pair of earrings, like a pair of dangly chandelier earrings,  right? Or we'll be doing something. And this is something else. I encourage people to try  when you don't feel particularly tense.

You're driving. Let's say traffic's not bad. It's just normal and you're not in a hurry. You're on time Ask yourself all of a sudden  Where are my shoulders and you will find that your shoulders could probably be two to three inches lower And you didn't even realize that they were up here in some manner, right?

We don't even pay attention. So recognizing  Is the first key  to unsticking from any of these sort of experiences, recognizing that it's happening, establishing that, oh, my shoulders are here in space and they could be here in space. My tongue is jammed up against the roof of my mouth, and as it turns out, there's a lot of other real estate  that my tongue could be taking up in my mouth.

And similarly, with the unhelpful thinking patterns, it goes an incredibly long way to just realize that that's what's happening. Because when you realize that's what's happening, and you can point to it as a process, that's what's happening. As opposed to the capital T truth, you can go, Oh,  that is one way of thinking about reality, which is different than reality itself. 

And what happens when we get caught up in those mind movies or unhelpful thinking patterns, is we cease to see a distinction between how we're thinking and what is true. We just go, how I'm thinking is what is true. This is what is happening. My friend is angry at me. Not, golly, I had the thought, one of many, that my friend might be angry with me.

No, no, it's gospel truth. She's mad. That's what's happening.  Right? And so as soon as we can say to ourselves,  is that what's happening, bar none,  or is that one of the possibilities? about what's happening. We've already created some distance, some space between ourselves and the way of thinking.  Uh, ACT, ACT therapists, the ACT philosophy calls this, uh, diffusion, cognitive diffusion.

When we're able to defuse our cognitions  about the world from our experience of the world itself,  in and of itself, that simple recognition goes incredible.  Because as soon as I can say, Oh, I came up with that idea that she is mad at me. Other ideas are this, this, this, this, this, and this, and this. By just creating that space for myself to entertain other possibilities about the capital T truth, the way things are, I experienced a tremendous amount of relief. 

And what I love about this is it's not about positive thinking or somehow spinning things and saying like, Oh, I'm sure she's not mad. I'm sure it's totally fine because I don't know that that's true, right? I'm not trying to convince myself of something that's not true or that's as dubious as the story I came up with because there's no guarantee that she's not mad at me.

It could have happened. We just don't know. No, we don't have the certainty and the unhelpful thinking patterns land us in this place of certainty. about the way things are. That's what causes us so much distress. And if we can have just a little bit of space, Oh, maybe her phone died. Oh, maybe a car drove through the lobby of her office.

God forbid. I don't know, but there are a million things that could have explained this other than I did something wrong. We're automatically just going to experience the relief of space. Of mental space from this conclusion that we've fused with that is so daunting and dark and overwhelming. So the first thing I like to tell people to do, and I really like simple.

I really like simple. I like it for myself and I like it for everybody else.  I suggest that people print off a sheet that has unhelpful thinking patterns on it. You can literally Google one,  print it off, make yourself 10 copies. It's a very simple sheet.  Put one on your bathroom mirror, put one on the back of the bathroom door, put one on the back of the front door of your house, put one on your refrigerator and just let yourself go through your day and bump into that.

And at any given moment, when you bump into a sheet that sort of prompts you to go, Oh, what am I thinking about right now? And how did I get to that conclusion? You will find that it simply creates a little system of like, Hey, Hey, Hey, that interrupts these thinking patterns and makes you aware that you're engaging in a thinking pattern as opposed to this fused idea of like, I'm just wrestling with the truth of how things are, you know, like, Oh, uh, actually that's a big statement that that's the truth.

That's one of many things. And we can sort of challenge ourselves to just cultivate an awareness that we default to these patterns.  And one of the reasons I think it's so constructive that the.  Field refers to these as unhelpful.  Is it simply pointing out the essence that they are unhelpful?  They're not good or bad.

This is not a judgment. They're just unhelpful. Because if we get into the realm of good or bad, then we've created another problem. And the problem is, I'm doing something bad, which makes us feel additionally terrible, right? Oh, I shouldn't think that way. That's a bad way to think that I need a different therapy.

I need a different therapist. If I, if I am having this thinking pattern, then clearly there's something going wrong with me and I haven't figured stuff out and I better get on this. No, no, no, it's not a problem. It's not a bad thing. It's just an unhelpful thing, and we can just make choices about things that are more helpful without judging what we are doing as bad, which creates an additional level of distress for most of us.

I don't know about you. I don't like it when I feel like I've done something bad, not a good feeling. It doesn't inspire me to move forward. It just makes me want to curl up into a ball. So unhelpful is a really nonjudgmental and I think honest way of assessing. These patterns that we all sort of fall into in a very human, understandable way. 

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love how you just said that, don't label like feelings or don't label your thoughts as good or bad. I try not to label anything as good or bad, or even people as like good or bad. And you would know this better than me, like people are not good or bad.

It's the actions. Right. And even then I'm like, Oh, was that action like harmful? Was that productive? Like now you are, you can add some adjective to it, but. it's not necessarily a good or bad category ever. , I come from sports nutrition background too. So that was one of the first things like I learned, right?

No good or bad foods, like food is food. Just label it food. Just like that. Thoughts are thoughts. Just label them as thoughts.  Are they helping you? To reach to your goal or are they helping you to be the best version of yourself, right? Your thoughts and same thing goes with the food. Just so you know, are they helping you?

If they're not, well, they're unhelpful, and I love this idea of like unhelpful, like not helpful, right? If they're not helping you, they're unhelpful. So change your script. That's it.  Change the script,  in a nutshell, what Lindsay is suggesting is like, change the script. Because what we often tell ourselves is an unhelpful story.

And 

I would like to add on to your practical tips here that I love the idea of like printing all the categories and having it handy. You know, probably on your, um, vanity mirror in the morning, you can take a look or at your, uh, uh, office space on the wall, you can put it. But I also like to say to my clients when they are going through this negative thinking pattern, is that pause.

First thing you want to do is just  pause, like stop. Just like, I'm like, okay, you should have like a stop sign.  Print it somewhere and put it on your desk because just stop,  take a minute, take a few deep breaths.  And then  once you have oxygenated your brain and your body and your muscles. I want you to

 Think about the facts.  Did that actually happen?  That has helped me personally a lot. And it has helped my clients because,  I give a lot of workshops. I give a lot of presentations. If  I didn't nail the. Presentation like last week or last night, this negative thought pattern just keeps on going on in my brain.

Oh, you could have done this better. This, you couldn't connect with this person. The organizer didn't look happy at the end of it. What did you do wrong? Like, you know, all of those things are just like playing in my head nonstop the next day and the next week.  I fail to understand at that point that what happened has no bearing on what will happen in the future, because then I'm like, okay,  next time I go out to give this workshop, like, you know, I have to do this, this, this, this, like, and I have like a hundred items on my list, which honestly don't need to be there because the thinking process that I've created, the story that I'm telling myself. 

is not based on reality. The organizer didn't come and say to me anything, right? The, the participant who I'm thinking I couldn't connect well with, she might just not be having a good day on her end. It has nothing to do with me and my workshop, right? And she didn't come and say anything to me. She might just be quiet.

 So there are so many things that can happen. So I like to just pause. And take deep breaths and think of other possibilities, or just let go of the thinking process itself and say, Hey, you gave your best  in that moment, what you had available to you, you gave your best, and you're gonna continue to do your best  In future, if you get some feedback, an actual feedback, which is based on facts  from someone, then improve and move on. 

So that is how I take it. And I think it has a lot of like parallels to what you have suggested too. So thank you so much for diving deep into this topic. Honestly, , I could go on with you, about this topic forever because I'm loving it. We all have so many unhelpful thoughts and we do this all the time to us.

Like we, we are not nice to ourselves. So it's true. 

A lot of hard time. We give that person named I the hardest time of anybody. Right? 

Yes. Maybe we can do like I'm going to have to do a part two of this 

because my computer's battery is dying. Well, that's a good 

way. That's a real fact right there.

Because I'm speaking right now. I'm looking at the battery. I was like, Oh my gosh, don't, don't show me the notification. So thank you, Lindsay. Where can people find you?  

I can be found on the web at onward psych services. com. My company is called onward psychological services. I'm on Instagram. Every Wednesday I put out a practical tactical video of a coping skill.

I really love hearing from people about those. I have a phone number. You can pick up the phone and call me at a 720 362 8164. I love that thing makes calls. Isn't that crazy? Like it it actually you have a phone on that thing? Are you telling me you have a phone? Like what? Okay. I don't have one of these, but I'm telling you the square thing I have no, I know.

I actually pulled up to my face sometimes. I know . I'm kidding. Now I want an actual phone now that you said that. I like want a phone with a totally cord, like the old school, like the ring dial  . Yes, yes. That would be 

awesome.  .  Hey,  thank you so much and hey, thank you.  for our listeners and viewers, reach out to Lindsay.

I think she is a wealth of knowledge. I learned a lot from our conversation today and I'd love to have you back for a part two. That's like a serious offer. 

My absolute pleasure. It's been an absolute pleasure. 

 Same here. And Everyone on LinkedIn and,  listening to us on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today.

I can't wait to connect with you guys next week.  Bye.  

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