Recognising Your Thoughts

What Are Thoughts?

Thoughts are phrases we tell ourselves. They are inner speech that keeps on flowing. There can be several different thoughts in our heads simultaneously, some of them conscious and some unconscious. Thoughts are always with us as a part of our inner world. Our thoughts affect all our actions and our mood. We react and act not only according to our temperament, but also our thoughts in different situations. We can think about almost anything.

Our thoughts enable us to:

• state things
• motivate ourselves
• ignore things
• discourage ourselves
• plan ahead
• worry about the past
• structure things
• daydream

Remember that we all are responsible for your own thoughts. They are ours and others can’t see them as such. Others don’t know what we’re thinking unless we share our thoughts, and the clearer we are in our expression, the more likely we are understood.

Thoughts Are a Part of Our Inner Reality

It’s good to learn how to tell apart our inner reality from the measurable, tangible outside reality. Both are real and important. They constantly interact with each other. Outside, objective reality is something measurable and tangible, like the physical environment in which we live: the things we own or the things we do.

Even though the outside reality seems unchanged, this is not always the case. You can affect and change the outside reality. For instance, you can choose how to spend your time and which things to buy. Therefore, you can choose things that promote your wellbeing, such as enjoying your friends’ company or spend time outdoors.

Our inner, subjective reality is a landscape of the mind which only you can grasp. Our inner reality consists of our thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations and ways of understanding. You can take responsibility for your inner reality by listening to your thoughts and focusing on areas you wish to change. You can try to change your disadvantageous thought patterns and challenge your beliefs. It’s also possible to evaluate whether your hopes and goals are your own or if they express what you want as a person.

The changes you make in your outside reality have an effect on your inner reality. Changing something in your outside reality might affect your beliefs and expectations. Also changing your subjective reality might change your everyday life in the outside reality. You need to accept the fact that it might not be possible to control nor separate the outside and inner realities completely.

Recognise Your Thoughts

Different ideas are constantly floating around in our brains, often intertwined. When you can recognise your thoughts, you can better tell apart the truth from your own interpretations. Sometimes we might take some thoughts for granted which are not actually true in the outside reality.

Neutral thoughts
Neutral thoughts are facts: ”I have an exam today.”

Positive and negative thoughts
Positive thinking makes us feel better: “Even though things are going wrong now, I can try to make a difference.” Negative thinking makes us feel worse: “There’s no point in trying.”

Constructive and destructive thoughts
Constructive thoughts heal, motivate, excite and are permissive: “Even though I messed up this time, it’s a good lesson for the future.”. Destructive thoughts are discouraging: “I am no good” or “I can’t do anything right”.

Useful and useless thoughts
Useful thoughts help you realise necessary matters ”I should bring fruit for snack.”
Useless thoughts change nothing, regardless of your wishes: ”Why is it always raining in Finland!”

Positive, constructive, and useful thoughts raise our spirits and spur us into action. We see more possibilities around us, and obstacles don’t seem overwhelming. We are not doomed to fail nor is there anything fundamentally wrong with us. We are good enough, worthy of love and look to the future with an open mind. Negative, destructive, and useless thoughts make us often feel lousy and bring us down.

If we give too much space and value to our harmful thoughts, they can start controlling our lives. Harmful thoughts often keep us from taking action and fulfilling all our potential and abilities. They discourage us and become self-fulfilling prophecies. Our normal behaviour might become overwhelming, and we might stop pursuing our goals.

When Harmful Thoughts Become Harmful Thought Patterns

Single harmful thoughts might start becoming harmful thought patterns in your everyday life. Harmful thought patterns can stop you from acting as you would like, lower your self-esteem and your mood and make you generally discontent. They might activate automatically, and it’s possible that you don’t even notice how they turn on and affect your personality, or how you act and make observations and choices.

Harmful thought patterns can form insidiously as years go by. Single comments or negative feedback might haunt us and blow out of proportion in our minds. Childhood experiences and the actions of our friends and family can play a significant role when some harmful thought patterns form. Sometimes our own failures or multiple interpretations cause harmful pitfalls in our thinking.

Examples of the Most Common Harmful Thought Patterns

Negative inner speech
• You have negative thoughts about yourself, things and other people in relation to yourself.
• You critisise, put down, belittle. An example: ”Every one of my peers is better at this than me.”

Generalisation
• You generalise negatively.
• You use expressions like always, everyone, all the time, never, ever, each time, nothing. An example: “No one likes me.”

Either–or thoughts  
• You only believe in extreme alternatives.
• Your thoughts are black and white, ”all or nothing”. An example: good–bad, dumb–smart, perfect–complete failure.

Negative predictions
• You assume you can tell the future and it looks bad.
• You believe that genetics or upbringing predict future events. An example: “Everyone in my family is like this, there’s no way I could succeed.”

Reading thoughts
• You believe you know what others think of you.
• You assume others know what your wishes, needs or expectations are. An example: “They must think I can’t do this.”

Ought to–should
• You tell yourself that you ought to or should do or be something you’re not.
• This might make you feel guilty and inefficient or controlled and annoyed. An example: ”I should pass all my courses excellently, even though I have trouble coping.”

Exaggerating
• You exaggerate problems and the damage they cause.
• You belittle your problem-solving skills. An example: “I will never graduate nor get a job in my field.”

Labelling
• You label somebody instead of seeing them as they actually are.
• You can put labels on yourself, someone else or something.
• Labels easily become self-fulfilling prophecies. An example: The label “You are helpful” can turn into someone being too focused on others and neglecting their own wellbeing. Or the label “You are an overbearing person” can lead to having an unrealistic self-image.

Ignoring the good
• You only notice the negative occurrences.
• You filter out the positive.

Blaming yourself
• You think that the bad and negative things are entirely your fault.

Not giving yourself credit
• You think that positive things happen only by good chance or due to someone else, never because you have made them happen.

Do you recognise some of these thought patterns as your own? Even though harmful thought patterns can steer our actions strongly, fortunately we have power over them. The next chapter is about Working with our thoughts.

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