MENTAL HEALTH

Days 2 -3

Identifying Your Mind's Stories

The Mind Is a Great Storyteller

This morning I held a fresh lemon in my hands. I ran my fingers over the bright yellow skin, noting all the little dimples. I lifted it to my nose and inhaled the delicious aroma. Then I placed it on a cutting board and sliced it in half. Picking up one of the pieces, I opened my mouth and squeezed a drop of fresh lemon juice onto the tip of my tongue.

What happened as you read about that lemon? Perhaps you ‘saw’ its shape and colour. Or maybe you ‘felt’ the texture of the skin. You may have ‘smelled’ the fresh, lemony scent. You may even have found your mouth watering. However, there was no lemon in front of you, only words about a lemon.

Yet once those words entered your head, you reacted to them almost as you would to a real lemon. The same thing happens when you read a great thriller. All you have in front of you are words. But once those words enter your mind, interesting things start to happen. You may ‘see’ or ‘hear’ the characters and experience powerful emotions. When those words describe a character in a dangerous situation, you react as if someone really were in danger: your muscles tense, your heartbeat speeds up, your adrenaline rises. (That’s why they’re called thrillers!) And yet, all you are dealing with in reality are little black marks on a page. Fascinating things, words! But what exactly are they?

Words and Thoughts

Humans rely heavily on words. Other animals use physical gestures and facial expressions and a variety of sounds to communicate—and so do we—but we are the only animal that uses words. Words are basically a complex system of symbols. (And a ‘symbol’ means something that stands for or refers to something else.) So, for example, the word ‘dog’ in English refers to a certain type of animal. In French, chien refers to the same animal, as does cane in Italian. Three different symbols, all referring to the same thing.

Anything that we can sense, feel, think about, observe, imagine or interact with can be symbolised by words: time, space, life, death, heaven, hell, people who died thousands of years ago, places that never existed, current events and so on. And if you know what a word refers to, then you know its meaning and you can understand it. But if you don’t know what a word refers to, then you don’t understand it. For example, ‘axillary hyperhidrosis’ is a medical term that most of us don’t understand. It means ‘sweaty armpits’. And now that you know what ‘axillary hyperhidrosis’ refers to, you understand the words.

We use words in two different settings: in public, when we’re talking, listening or writing; and in private, when we’re thinking. Words on a page, we call ‘text’; words spoken out loud, we call ‘speech’; and words inside our head, we call ‘thoughts’. It’s important not to confuse thoughts with the mental pictures or physical feelings that often accompany them. To clarify the difference, here’s a little experiment. Take a few moments to think about what you’re going to fix for breakfast tomorrow morning. Then, as you’re thinking about it, close your eyes and observe your thoughts as they happen. Notice what form they take. Close your eyes and do this for about half a minute.

Okay, what did you notice? You may have noticed ‘pictures’ in your mind; you ‘saw’ yourself cooking or eating, as on a television screen. We’ll call these mental pictures ‘images’. Images are not thoughts, although they often occur together. You may also have noticed feelings or sensations in your body, almost as if you were actually preparing or eating breakfast. These, too, are not thoughts; they are sensations. You also probably noticed some words passing through your head, almost like a talking voice. Those words may have described what you intend to eat: ‘I’ll have toast with peanut butter.’ Or they may have said something like, ‘I don’t know what I’ll have.’ These words in our heads are what we call ‘thoughts’.

Humans rely a lot on their thoughts. Thoughts tell us about our life and how to live it. They tell us how we are and how we should be, what to do and what to avoid. And yet, they are nothing more than words—which is why in many therapies, thoughts are often referred to as stories. Sometimes they are true stories (called ‘facts’) and sometimes they are false. But most of our thoughts are neither true nor false. Most of them are either stories about how we see life (called ‘opinions’, ‘attitudes’, ‘judgements’, ‘ideals’, ‘beliefs’, ‘theories’ and ‘morals’) or about what we want to do with it (called ‘plans’, ‘strategies’, ‘goals’, ‘wishes’ and ‘values’). Our main interest in a thought is not whether it’s true or false, but whether it’s helpful; that is, does it help us create the life we want?

The Story Is Not the Event

Imagine that a police officer catches an armed bank robber in a dramatic shootout. The next day we read about it in the newspapers. One particular newspaper may give a totally accurate account of what happened. It may have all the facts correct: the name of the police officer, the location of the bank, maybe even the precise number of shots fired. Another newspaper may give a less accurate account of what happened. It may exaggerate some of the details for the sake of drama or just get the facts wrong. But whether the story is totally accurate or false and misleading, it’s still just a story. And when we read that story, we aren’t actually present at the event. There is no shooting actually taking place before our eyes; all we have in front of us are words. The only people who can truly experience this event are those who are present when it happens: the ‘eyewitnesses’. Only an eyewitness actually hears the sound of the shots or sees the officer tackle the robber. No matter how much detail there is in the description, the story is not the event (and vice versa).

Of course, we know that newspaper stories are biased. They don’t give us the absolute truth; they give us an angle on what happened, which reflects the editorial viewpoint and attitude of the newspaper. (And let’s face it, some newspapers are far more sensationalistic than others.) We also know that at any point we wish, we can stop reading. If we’re not getting anything useful out of the story, we can put down the newspaper and walk outside.

Now, this may be obvious when it comes to stories in newspapers, but it’s not nearly so obvious when it comes to the stories in our minds. All too often we react to our thoughts as if they are the absolute truth, or as if we must give them all our attention.

We All Tell Ourselves Stories

The mind loves telling stories; in fact, it never stops. All day, every day, it tells you stories about who you are, what you’re like, what you should be doing with your life, what other people think of you, what’s wrong with the world, what will happen in the future, what went wrong in the past, and so on. It’s like a radio that never stops broadcasting.

Unfortunately, a lot of these stories are really negative—stories such as, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m stupid’, ‘I’m so fat’, ‘I hate my thighs’, ‘My life is terrible’, ‘There’s no hope for the future’, ‘Nobody likes me’, ‘This relationship is doomed’, ‘I can’t cope’, ‘I will never be happy’, and so on.

There’s nothing abnormal in this. As mentioned earlier, research shows that about 80 percent of our thoughts have some degree of negative content. But you can see how these stories, if taken as the absolute truth, can readily feed into anxiety, depression, anger, low self-esteem, self-doubt, and insecurity.

Most psychological approaches regard negative stories as a major problem and make a big fuss about trying to eliminate them. Such approaches will advise you to try to:

• make the story more accurate by checking the facts and correcting any errors

• rewrite the story, making it more positive

• get rid of the story by repeatedly telling yourself a better one

• distract yourself from the story

• push the story away

• argue with the story, and debate whether it’s true or not.

But haven’t you already tried methods like these? The reality is, such control strategies simply will not work in the long run.

In this course, negative stories are not seen as a problem in their own right. It’s only when we ‘fuse’ with them, when we react as if they were the truth and give them our full attention, that they become problematic.

Since childhood you’ve heard, ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’ When we read about celebrities in the tabloids, we know that many of the stories are false or misleading. Some are exaggerated for effect, others are made up entirely. Now some celebrities take this in their stride; they accept it as part of being famous and don’t let it get to them. When they notice ridiculous stories about themselves, they just shrug it off. They certainly don’t waste their time reading, analysing, and discussing them! Other celebrities, though, get very upset about these stories. They read them and dwell on them, rant and complain, and lodge lawsuits (which are stressful and eat up a lot of time, energy, and money).

Defusion allows us to be like the first set of celebrities: the stories are there, but we don’t take them seriously. We don’t pay them much attention, and we certainly don’t waste our time and energy trying to fight them. We don’t try to change, avoid or get rid of the story. We know how ineffective that is. Instead, we simply acknowledge: ‘This is a story.’

Naming Your Stories

Identify your mind’s favourite stories, then give them names, such as the ‘loser!’ story, or the ‘my life sucks!’ story, or the ‘I can’t do it!’ story. Often there will be several variations on a theme. For example, the ‘nobody likes me’ story may show up as ‘I’m boring’, the ‘I’m undesirable’ story as ‘I’m fat’, and the ‘I’m inadequate’ story as ‘I’m stupid’. When your stories show up, acknowledge them by name. For example, you could say to yourself, ‘Ah yes. I recognise this. That old favourite, the “I’m a failure” story.’ Or ‘Aha! Here comes the “I can’t cope” story.’ Once you’ve acknowledged a story, that’s it—just let it be. You don’t have to challenge it or push it away, nor do you have to give it much attention. Simply let it come and go as it pleases, while you channel your energy into doing something you value.

Thoughts Are Just Stories

We examined the concept that thoughts are basically just ‘stories’—a bunch of words strung together to tell us something. But if thoughts are just stories, then how do we know which ones to believe? There are three parts to this answer. First, be wary of holding on to any belief too tightly. We all have beliefs, but the more tightly we hold on to them, the more inflexible we become in our attitudes and behaviours. If you’ve ever tried having an argument with someone who absolutely believes they are right, then you know how pointless it is—they will never see any point of view other than their own. We describe them as being inflexible, rigid, narrow-minded, or ‘stuck in their ways’.

Also, if you reflect on your own experience, you’ll recognise that your beliefs change over time; that is, the beliefs that you once held tightly, you may now find laughable. For instance, at some point you probably used to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy or dragons, goblins and vampires. And almost everyone changes some of their beliefs about religion, politics, money, family or health at some point, as they grow older. So by all means, have your beliefs—but hold them lightly. Keep in mind that all beliefs are stories, whether or not they’re ‘true’. Second, if a thought helps you to create a rich, full and meaningful life, then use it. Pay attention to it, and use it for guidance and motivation— and at the same time remember that it is still just a story; a bit of human language. So use it, but don’t clutch it too tightly.

The fact is, we don’t choose most of the thoughts in our head. We do choose a small number of them, when we’re actively planning or mentally rehearsing or being creative, but most of the thoughts in our head just ‘show up’ of their own accord. We have many thousands of useless or unhelpful thoughts every day. And no matter how harsh, cruel, silly, vindictive, critical, frightening or downright weird they may be, we can’t prevent them from popping up. But just because they appear doesn’t mean we have to take them seriously.

The Stories Never Stop

The mind never stops telling stories—not even when we’re asleep. It is constantly comparing, judging, evaluating, criticising, planning, pontificating and fantasising. And many of the stories it tells are real attention grabbers. Time and time again we get lost in these stories—a process for which we have many different expressions. We speak of ‘indulging a thought’, ‘entertaining a thought’, ‘struggling with a thought’, ‘flirting with a thought’, ‘buying into a thought’, ‘being wrapped up in thoughts’, ‘lost in thought’ and being ‘carried away by thoughts’ to name but a few.

All these expressions point to how thoughts occupy our time, energy and attention. Most of the time we tend to take our thoughts far too seriously and give them far too much attention which can lead us down a rabbit hole of worry, rumination, and anxiety.

From: The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris (Chapters 4 & 5)

Homework

Take some quiet time for reflection over the next two days. Notice the recurring negative stories that play out in your mind – are there themes of self-doubt and inadequacy? Throughout the day, pay attention to these stories. When do they pop up? What thoughts accompany them? Jot the thoughts down in a notebook along with the situations that trigger them. Remember, this is a journey of self-discovery, not self-judgment. Be kind to yourself as you embark on this process. Your reflections will be important as you learn how to respond to these negative stories and thoughts in the next part.

Optional Creative Activity

Rewriting the Narrative

Supplies Needed: Paper, coloured pencils, markers, or crayons.

After jotting down some recurring negative thoughts, choose one that stands out. On a piece of paper, write this thought in the center. Around it, creatively alter, challenge, or reframe it—use colours, doodles, symbols, or alternative phrases that shift its tone. Can you turn it into a statement of resilience or self-compassion? For example, if your thought is "I'm not good enough," you might surround it with affirmations like "I'm learning and growing," or "I don’t have to be perfect to be worthy." Use imagery, colours, and symbols that feel empowering and uplifting. This visual reworking can be a first step in loosening the grip of negative self-talk, helping you see your thoughts in a new light.