The Habit of Stinkin’ Thinkin

by Gwen Schrank

Think about something that took you a really long time to learn, such as how to talk. Your first efforts to learn involved you as a toddler mimicking the sounds that were around you; paying attention to the way your parents lips moved as they communicated with you. You noticed the way they held you and smiled at you when you responded to them. You probably don’t remember that because you were so young, but it is the process that everyone goes through to learn how to speak. We all learned to talk by watching, listening, and practicing what others were doing around us. It turns out that habits are formed the same way we learn to talk, but it is called a “habit loop.” It’s a psychological pattern in which a cue or trigger tells your brain to go into automatic mode and allows the behavior to unfold. That process then creates a routine which becomes the behavior. Then a reward manifests which helps the brain remember the habit loop for the future. Back to talking, the more that we practiced the better we could speak. It became easier, up to the point to where we required very little thought to talking and responding to others. And like talking, this habit loop makes certain behaviors become automatic. Studies have shown that people will perform automatic behaviors the same way every single time if they’re in the same environment. But if their environment changes, it’s likely that behavior will change. Let’s take a look at a different life habit. Most people spend a lot of time “stinkin’ thinkin’” about negative experiences, fears, and failures. We don’t often think back to where or when we started to form those thought habits because somewhere along the way, we practiced doing it over and over until it became an automatic habit loop. Most mental health professionals don’t believe that people want to purposely bring themselves down by thinking negative thoughts, but it’s the center from which all of our actions stem, making it an important topic to unpack.

Where did our thoughts begin to take hold and capture us?

Did it start when you were a child and were told that you were a bad kid because you enjoyed creating beautiful murals of flowers and trees—that looked just like the garden that you passed by on your way to school—on the walls with your crayons? Was it that time you left the meatloaf in the oven too long as a teenager? The house filled with smoke and smelled toxic, all because you were trying to get your homework done. And you were told that you could never do anything right? Maybe it was that time that you were trying to break up a fight between two friends and ended up being suspended, handcuffed, and taken to the police station from school for being involved in a violent school incident? Or perhaps it was that time you found your significant other embracing someone else as you entered your favorite Italian restaurant, so you concluded that you just weren’t good enough? Do you think it could have been that time you were passed up for a promotion for spending too much time creating infographics for the presentation? You were told that you didn’t have what it took to do the job well because you didn’t have the drive to be ahead of the curve? Your thought patterns began somewhere, and that moment triggered something inside of your mind that sounded familiar. It was something that you heard before. It created a feeling deep inside of you called an emotion. Those emotions include shame, guilt, hurt, pain, worry, and feeling unloved, which produces particular behaviors. These behaviors come out in many different forms such as anger, aggression, addictions, and control, to name a few.

You’re probably thinking, “Where is the reward in that?” For many, the reward is allowing them to blame others for their problems. As long as you can put the why on someone else, you don’t have to own it yourself. You tell yourself that you don’t have to deal with it. Oftentimes, it makes a way for you to empower yourself and shut people out of your life. It gives you some sense of control. Please take note that those are all false narratives on what is really going on. If you continue to allow false narratives to control your behaviors, you will only find yourself going through the same problems over and over again, but with different people and situations. Sometimes our thought habits and patterns run so deep within us that we have a hard time letting them go. We’ve allowed them to own a place in our brain. The good news is that just as we learn bad habits, we can also learn good habits. Just because we don’t always recognize or remember where the habit came from, like learning to talk, we can change through awareness, gathering information, mimicking, and practicing new habits. When we learned to talk, we started gathering information long before anything ever came out of our mouths. We paid attention to smiles, eye gazes, and other cues that our parents were providing. Before we start changing our negative thoughts, it’s a good idea to take note about where you are in life and what problems you find yourself repeating. Sometimes the awareness of conversations that you have with loved ones and coworkers make you feel a certain way. If you are the type of person who journals, go back and read some of the things that you have written over the years to see if you can find a pattern of experiences that don’t bring you joy. In changing our habits of negative thoughts, we want to start gathering as much information as possible, and, according to cognitive behavioral therapist studies on selfconfidence and changing bad habits, we want to start with our emotions. They are triggers and cues that help us start the process of changing our habits. Ask yourself whether it’s anxiety, worry, sadness, or frustration that you’re feeling. Then you can verbalize that emotion to hold it captive rather than succumb to its urge to act.

Every emotion comes with a mental rundown of what’s happening. This is your opportunity to identify various thoughts.

What are you thinking that is causing you to feel these emotions? Strangely enough, even if the meaning you give a situation is painful but corroborates your mental framework, you will still feel a bittersweet sensation. The mind is in a state of believing in its emotions such as fear, rejection, or feeling unlovable. It initiates the release of the pleasure hormone dopamine. This is your brain wanting to protect you. Dopamine stimulates you to seek out pleasurable activities. This could come in the forms of food, sex, or drugs, to name a few. By being aware of what your triggers are—how you feel and your urge to seek out activities that may not be best for your mind, body, or soul—you are put in a positive place to become a wise protector of your mental space. Instead of letting your internal commentator have a heyday, you can throw it off by coming up with the opposite reaction to what it’s throwing at you. Change your mental environment by choosing to focus your thoughts on the opposite of what triggered your negative thoughts. Be bold and courageous in cancelling out those negative thoughts in your head and replacing them with what is true, right, noble, and pure. The more you think about these positive, opposite thoughts, the more they sink into your long-term memory and subtly change those negative mental reruns. You will want to practice every time that you are triggered and become aware. Remember, decision-making makes you feel in control, and that’s exactly what your brain needs when it’s churning through those same old negative thoughts over and over. So go ahead and take positive action, then feel proud for having done so. Your brain will thank you for it.