Solution Oriented Strategies

by

Sylvia V. Mills, Ph.D.

Habitual negative thoughts have established neurological pathways in the brain like pathways through a forest. The more frequently these pathways are used, the clearer and easier they are to use. Pathways less frequently used, become overgrown and are less easy to travel.

Reducing negative thought patterns is a challenge.

Changing these negative patterns of thinking into patterns of positive thinking is a challenge because every time a frequently used negative thought is triggered, its neurological pathway is activated. Every negative thought equals a negative pathway triggered, so it is easy for the negative pathway to persist. To create a solution, you have to forge a positive pathway and make it clearer and stronger than the negative pathway.

To do this, every negative occurrence has to be the starting block of a replacement positive thought. For instance: you see your credit card statement and think: “I am stupid to be so far in debt.” A positive replacement thought might be: “I can take charge of my finances so I do not get into debt again and leave my credit card at home.” A thought that: “No-one will ever love me,” is replaced by something like: “I have friends who like me.” “My mother loves me.”

When you choose to replace every negative thought with a positive one, you begin to counter the power of negative thoughts. Then the task is how to amplify this balancing effect so that the negative pathways are not as powerful as the positive pathways

One client who was very depressed, had to write a list of her negative thoughts every day on half of a sheet of paper. For each negative, she then had to create a positive alternative and write it on the other half. Last, she had to strike out the negative words until they were obliterated. For four months, she brought seven sheets of paper with thirty two lines to each sheet, to her therapy sessions. On the left side, were the obliterated negative thoughts and on the right were the positive statements about herself, her worth, her value, and her relationships. Then she handed me seven sheets with only the positive column completed and said: “Dr. Mills, I couldn't’t think of anything negative so I just wrote the positive, is that okay?” This technique works. It takes a while for the negative thoughts to diminish but as the new positive thoughts build confidence, optimism and hope, they gain power and preference even at a neurological level.

This is how you do it.

Every time a negative thought occurs you replace it with a positive statement. Examples:
· If you think: ‘I’m stupid,” prompt yourself to say something like: “I’m okay,” or “I made a mistake, I can put that right.”
· If you tell yourself: “I’m hopeless, who’ll ever want me?” a response might be: “I have good friends who like me.” “I can still do my best.”
· Or, “I don’t have any friends to go out with,” may change to, “I am going to join the local tennis club/gym club/volunteer organization and meet new people.”
· “I am too fat/ugly/short” may change to “I will eat nutritious food in reasonable quantities so I feel good about myself /I look okay/I am short and still okay.”

Amplify the positive thought.

A negative thought that triggers a positive thought is not enough. You can really amplify the positive thought by repeating it aloud or by writing it down. When we turn a thought into speech or writing, we activate many areas of the brain. When we decide to speak the positive thought, we activate decision-making in the frontal lobes of our brain. We use Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas of the brain to express and receive understanding of language. We use the motor strip of the brain to produce the muscle contractions that operate our larynx [voice box], chest and lungs [breathing], throat, tongue and lips so tat we can produce sound. Our auditory centers are activated and we hear ourselves. We activate memory function to remember what we have said. If we write down our positive thoughts, we also activate our visual cortex. In other words, saying a thought or writing it down produces a more powerful neurological footprint, that just thinking a thought.

When we cross out and obliterate the negative thoughts, we do something important. We produce a visual message that symbolizes our power to eliminate negatives and create positives. The emotional center of the brain is activated in the direction of our thoughts: negative thoughts feel depressing; positive thoughts feel uplifting. Make your choice!
Gradually, through repetition, the positive pathways become the dominant pathways.

Negative pathways do not just disappear. They remain; ready to be activated, whenever you feel bad about yourself. If the habit of using negatives gets reactivated, do your maintenance: create positive alternatives before those negative pathways once more regain precedence.

Practice Time:

Take a sheet of paper and fold it to make two vertical columns. In the left column, write down any negative thought you have. In the right column, write out an alternative, reasonable, positive thought. Now, obliterate the negative words. Scribble over them until you cannot tell what it was you wrote. It is amazing how good this feels. Clients like the feeling of eliminating the negatives.

Success Strategy:

It’s up to you. If you want to change a pattern of negative thinking you have to employ an effective counter measure until new, neurological pathways are established in your brain. No one can do it for you. You have to take responsibility to produce positive alternatives and speak, think and write them at every opportunity. It feels good. Best of all, it is good: it works. The healthier your self talk, the faster and more effectively you build new pathways to a more reasonable sense of your world and yourself.