Internal Saboteurs
As a psychiatrist in downtown San Francisco I often encounter toxic negative thoughts as a barrier to improved mental health. While medication can sometimes make them quieter, they often spring back to life due to how we as individuals react to our thoughts. We often go through life believing our thoughts and feelings are valid and important because we rely on them to make sense of the world and to manage our lives. But when we make negative thoughts too important and we react to them, we often create an even bigger problem. Why isn’t this person calling me back? It must be because of my fat thighs. If I had even the slightest bit of self-control people might actually give me the time of day. I’m the worst. If we continue with these thought spirals we can end up in the depths of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or addiction. One way to combat these chain of thoughts is to identify the thought pattern before they spiral out of control. Below are some common forms of negative thought patterns (by no means comprehensive) that I encounter in my practice which I have tried to characterize using familiar terms.
The Terrorist
Oftentimes, anxiety starts with a terrorist thought. My heart is beating fast. That’s weird. What if something is wrong with me? What if I’m having a heart attack? Oh no, that would be terrible! Now it’s beating faster. There is for sure something wrong with me. How do I make this stop? This is a common line of thought right before a panic attack. The thought demands our attention because it is threatening something precious to us: our sense of well-being. How could we possibly ignore this? In fact, it is so precious we must pay attention and make the thought important. However, these thoughts cause fear, and fear causes our heartbeats to speed up, which leads to more similar thoughts. What started as a seemingly valid thought (“What if something is wrong with me?”) leads us into full blown panic. I call these terrorist thoughts because they command our attention as if there is a high price to pay if we don’t make them important.
The Troll
Some of the most hateful and vile thoughts sound very much like internet trolls. The only difference is that you can’t shut off the comments section of your brain like you can on the internet. One common manifestation of the troll is in body image distortions. You glance at yourself in the mirror and immediately think, I look like a stuffed sausage. There is no outfit that can hide this hideous form I call a body. I am disgusting and everyone knows it. Pretty soon you feel like crap and barely want to leave the house. Forget making it to an exercise class with more mirrors. Just like on the internet, we must learn not to feed these trolls.
The Liar
Some thoughts outright lie to you to make you feel like garbage and demotivate you. When a depressed person considers getting out of bed, the lying thoughts start. What’s the point? Nobody will even care if I don’t show up. They will realize they are better off without me. I’m probably just a burden to my friends. I’m better off just going back to bed. This thought depresses you further, making the thoughts even stronger. Again, these thoughts pull you into negative emotion and perpetuate a cycle of toxicity.
The Parasite
Addiction thoughts can be viewed as parasites of the mind that inject rationalizing thoughts into the mindstream in order to feed the addiction. I’ve been really good. I deserve to reward myself. It’s just one drink. This time will be different. I can control myself. The parasite lodged in the brain is so strong it can actually turn off the countering thoughts from the prefontal cortex where good judgement comes from. A formidable saboteur indeed. Even with a hangover every morning, amongst other problematic consequences, you just can’t understand how you continue to persist in such destructive behavior. To complicate things, the parasite can often go hand in hand with the liar, creating an even more formidable foe.
Taking back the power
Recognizing these thoughts for what they are is the first and most important step in stripping them of their power. When you start to pay attention to your thoughts, you notice that the saboteur thoughts come faster than meaningful thoughts and have a certain nature to them, perhaps like the ones described above. Once you can identify and label them as saboteur thoughts, you can make a conscious choice to bring your attention away from them and not make them important. Your observing mind steps out of the mindstream to let the treacherous waters go by. You can focus on the breath or refocus on more helpful thoughts such as I am good enough, everything is fine in this moment, people care about me, I do matter, and my commitments to myself today matter. This may not work the first time, but after many times of pulling your attention away from these thoughts they will begin to lose power over you. The sooner you identify and move away from these thoughts, the less powerful they become and the less able they are to drag you into thought spirals of negative emotion or distress. Now that we’ve examined these saboteur thoughts I invite you all to investigate the nature of your own thoughts and see what forms they take.
