How do we make our lives better? Unfortunately, this question cannot be answered in general, but one can improve one’s state of life through personal development.
Some negative thought patterns are particularly persistent because they have been so present since our childhood that we simply do not consider them to be thoughts but reality. In this case we are talking about beliefs, and they have an enormous impact on how we approach our lives.
The idea is based on Transactional Analysis, a theory of the structure of the human personality developed in the 1960s by the US psychiatrist Eric Berne. He assumes that children up to the age of 7 develop a belief system from the messages of their parents and other reference persons, which Berne also calls a script. This script is by definition something negative, because it forces us to act in a certain way and thus restricts our freedom of choice.
The life script consists of two types of stage directions, i.e., inoculations and drivers. Impositions are discouraging prohibitions that are consciously or subconsciously imposed on us as children. They are, for example, “You can’t do this”, “Don’t think”, “Don’t show any anger”, “Don’t show any feelings” or “Don’t come too close to me” and always originate from certain standard family situations. “You can’t do it” is taught to a child when the parents want to protect it from all possible dangers and constantly paint horror scenarios for it. “Don’t climb the tree, you’ll fall down and break your leg”. Over time, this inculcation becomes a doctrine of “I can’t do that anyway”.
The second element of the inner script are the so-called drivers, i.e. instructions that cause stress in the child. There are five concrete instructions: “Be perfect”, “Be pleasing”, “Strengthen yourself”, “Be strong” and “Hurry up”. The most common driver is “Be perfect”. It is imparted when the parents do not praise the child in a B in a class test, but criticize it for not having received an A. The child is not given a B in a class test. It is quite possible that someone fears challenges even as an adult, because everything must always be perfect.
Can I learn through mental training how to ignore negative beliefs?
Yeah, that’s possible. Maybe it doesn’t work properly, but it works. In order to understand how you can transform inculcations and drivers, we briefly change perspective. These inner beliefs are in principle nothing else than prohibitions and commandments. And to abolish them, you only need one thing: permission!
Originally, these prohibitions and commandments came from your parents, but you have internalized them so much that they now come from yourself. So logically, you are the person who can give you permission to do so. But how does that work in concrete terms?
First think about which prohibition or commandment restricts you the most. If, for example, you are frequently rushed, the driver behind it could be “Hurry up! Think about in which situations you become particularly hectic and observe your behaviour in the respective situation. Then formulate a permission that overrides this commandment. It is important that the exact wording feels good and right for you. It could read: “Take as much time as you need” or: “Calm down before you act”.
Then there is thought-play time: Imagine a situation in which you normally get hectic, e.g. when you have to go to the supermarket quickly between office and dinner. The moment your driver starts up and you may even show a physical reaction, you mentally give the previously formulated permission and tell yourself how your feelings and behaviour would change. Maybe you take a few deep breaths in your thoughts and come to the conclusion that it’s half as wild if you eat twenty minutes later today? Play through the situation a few times and vary it. When you’re satisfied, you’re going to have similar situations where the same driver works.
But what if your stress reactions are so strong that even that doesn’t help?
Panic attacks are in most cases a psychological legacy from our ancestors
Sweating, palpitations, shaky fingers, pure stress, from one second to the next. Sure, this has happened to you before, but where do these violent reactions come from? To find out, let’s take a closer look at the developmental history of the human brain and maybe learn more about how do we make our lives better.
Sudden states of stress such as anxiety or panic attacks manifest themselves in different ways. Some people get sick, others have difficulty breathing, others start to sweat a lot. Nevertheless, they all have one thing in common: originally they were vital reactions that are automatically activated in dangerous situations. These stress reactions occur in the amygdala, a part of the limbic system in our brain. It is involved, among other things, in the control of emotions, attention and learning processes and has a decisive advantage over conscious thinking, as it is up to 200 times faster.
In particularly dangerous situations, e.g. during an alligator attack, it quickly releases stress hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol, which activate the body in fractions of a second. These dangerous situations leave traces in the amygdala and ensure that stress will continue to arise in similar situations in the future in order to improve the chances of survival in the event of danger.
So far, so practical. The problem, however, is that our brain cannot distinguish between real and imagined dangers and therefore reacts to both in the same way. When you hear loud squeaking brakes right behind you, you jump to the side very quickly thanks to your amygdala. You are happy to put up with a little heart racing. But unfortunately your brain reacts with the same inner alarm to approaching deadlines or life partners who want to take a break from their relationship – and in these situations outbursts of sweat and hectic are anything but helpful.
Most of the time it just helps to bite your teeth together and hold on. Fortunately, such stress and anxiety attacks are rather rare. However, if you know of a situation where you regularly panic, there is a way to work on it.
You can learn to control internal alarms
Let’s just think of a situation where we panic. Through the Check-Your-Mind method you can solve the fear.
Internal alarms are usually fought with an introvision in the context of a coaching. First you find out which belief triggers this alarm, e.g. “I must not fail under any circumstances”.
In the first step you try to find a “magic sentence” together with your coach. This sentence causes an alarm that is as intense as the alarm in a “real” situation. It causes panic by considering the worst-case scenario as a possibility, i.e. a violation of the prohibition of the doctrine. In our example, the sentence could be “It is possible that I fail”. To control your progress, evaluate the alarm that this phrase triggers in you on a scale of 1 to 10.
To then deactivate your inner alarm, you must trigger it several times, but then not react to it. An alarm that is perceived, but not “lived out”, exhausts itself after a while. This exercise is not easy, and a prerequisite for it is that you are trained in value-free observation. This is necessary in order to convey to the amygdala that there is an alarm, but no one is actually interested in it.
Specifically, it looks like this: When you find yourself in the value-free, purely observant posture, you tell yourself the magic sentence and let it have an effect on you. As soon as you notice that you are losing the observing posture and developing feelings and thoughts, you end the exercise and evaluate the alarm on a scale of 1 to 10. Repeat this several times a day until the intensity of the alarm is reduced to 0 and no longer causes any emotional or physical reaction.
Admittedly, this method is more advanced, but the crucial thing is that no matter how deeply negative thought patterns are anchored in your being, there is always a way to free yourself from them.
Bottom Line
Negative thoughts and beliefs exist on different levels of our personality and affect our lives. They arise in our childhood through repeated messages from our parents that manifest themselves in our psyche. How do we make our lives better? The Check-Your-Mind method and transactional analysis can dissolve blocking thoughts and clear the way for constructive and positive thinking. Even violent stress reactions and our inner alarm system can be moderated by exercises within introvision coaching.
If you want to learn more about mindfulness, have a look at 22 Mindfulness Exercises