Why We Think Painful Thoughts
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.
- version of Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer
Having the courage to change the things we can change is especially applicable to our thoughts. It can be difficult to prevent some thoughts all together, but we can train ourselves to stop painful thoughts and to focus on something else instead. First, we have to recognize what exactly we are doing by holding onto painful thoughts.
When you have to deal with a situation you do not want to, or you have to deal with people who you find difficult, how much worse are those experiences when you spend your time away from the situation or the person thinking about it or them? Generally, the thoughts are painful. And the thoughts are especially unnecessary when you aren’t currently in the situation or with the person involved.
What benefit do we get from thinking painful thoughts? There has to be some sort of payoff(s) for continuously thinking about what is not happening in the moment. There has to be some sort of payoff(s) for feeling the emotional pain of the thoughts we are choosing. Here are some possible payoffs for thinking painful thoughts:
Keeping the pain alive gives us a sense of attachment to the people involved, so we don’t have to face our loneliness.
Being attached to and re-living the situation in our minds gives us illusion of controlling and managing over that which we feel very little control.
Thinking the thoughts can make us feel like we aren’t naive or ignorant to what is happening, thus we can’t be fooled.
We feel like we can punish the other person(s) with our thoughts.
(“Holding onto anger or resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”)We punish ourselves, hoping that we will knock some sense into ourselves.
Thinking the thoughts gives us the legitimacy of being a victim in order to avoid responsibility for our feelings and choices.
We use the painful thoughts as a form of protection, as a constant reminder to ensure we don’t get too close or become too vulnerable.
The reminder of the pain could serve as a way to try to ensure we don’t repeat the same mistakes with new situations and people.
Be very honest with yourself as to why you keep thinking painful thoughts. Please write in the comments if you have additional payoffs to add to the list above.
Warmly,