Think Happy Thoughts

We have hundreds of messages and thoughts that run through our head on any given day. But for most of us, we just let them run unchecked in our heads, it’s not until we stop and take stock of them that we even notice they are happening. Sometimes we may even say some of them out loud to people in our lives and give them a voice. 

But if we listen to them, we will notice that we hear the same ones over and over, especially in stressful situations. In stress, we tend to hear more negative statements about ourselves. Statements like, “I’m not good enough, no one cares about me, I don’t fit in, I’m stupid, etc.” If you pay attention to them, you will start to notice a theme or that the same thoughts are recurring over and over. Paying attention to them is the hard part!  We inherently don’t pay attention to them and ignore them on the regular. Why? Because they seem overwhelming and we don’t understand why they matter or how they are affecting our lives. Sometimes choose to stay in that painful place or distract ourselves from acknowledging it, simply because it feels more comfortable than doing something about it. 

Why Do Our Thoughts Matter?

The truth is, these negative statements we are hearing are directly causing more stress in already stressful situations in our lives.  They are causing us to get more easily overwhelmed, to lose sight of what is really going on in specific situations, and attach things to people that they are not actually thinking or feeling about us or the situation.  Ultimately, they cause of pain and hurt and affect our relationships in negative ways.  

The negative statements got imprinted on us at some point in our lives.  Our memories and past experienced are all stored away. They tend to come from previous situations in childhood where our brains were not fully developed, our ability to assess the situation accurately was not within our capacity. But they get imprinted in such a way that they don’t go away and they continue to trip us up today.  They can even be more at a sub-conscious level and we may be doing and saying these things almost on autopilot, without even thinking about it. We call them imprints because they actually get imprinted into our subconscious minds.

How Can EMDR Help?

EMDR therapy helps undo these messages.  The therapy targets the childhood incidents where the messages were continuously reinforced and helps you reprocess the situation in a more accurate and helpful way.  This enables the negative messages to stop recurring in your current thought patterns and life situations, enabling you to experience less pain and significant healing.