Many clients approach the practice for help through “CBT” or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, which has often been recommended by a GP or another health professional.  It is a popular form of treatment because it can help individuals understand more about the ways their thinking patterns can affect feelings and how both of these tend to influence lived behaviour.  In other words, how a negative mindset can impact mental health, especially anxiety, depression, low mood, feeling demotivated or lonely, for example.  Have you ever wondered about the link between your personal thinking patterns, feelings and behaviour and how these may be affecting the quality of your life?

Let’s think about the brain and mind and how they are connected to human behaviour.

BRAIN

The brain is like an extremely powerful computer that has incredible capacity although by the age of about 35, most of us have created the majority of patterns that we will then use for the rest of our lives.  We can refer to these as our individual habits that are stored away inside the mind.  So sadly, this means that people tend to underuse brain power because they rely on these habits automatically – even though they don’t actually realise they are doing so!  Bruce Lipton, best selling author of The Biology of Belief, talks about the power of the conscious and subconscious mind and how by the age of about 35yrs, people have generally started switching into “automatic pilot gear” or in other words, repeating old patterns.  This means that our subconscious mind will automatically react according to the behaviour patterns we have stored from lived experience to date.

MIND

This can be confusing because it isn’t an organic part of us like the brain.  Yet the thoughts we have can be all consuming and more or less control how we live because they can trigger the patterns we have stored in the unconscious part of our mind over time.  They also lead to feelings that we sense as an emotional state like sadness or worry as well as positive states like happiness.  In this way thoughts give rise to feelings and then the actions we take.  Our innate wellness coach George, who has recently joined the practice, explains mind in the following way:

Imagine you are getting into a glass fronted elevator and going up to the first floor in a tall building.  You won’t be able to see that much because you’re not very high up.  George describes our conscious mind with this analogy in that because we tend to be low consciousness (as mentioned above), we are not very aware of very much outside of the automatic patterns or habits we live by.  You might be curious about all the possible options inside “mind” that you are currently not accessing because you literally are not aware enough most of the time. So therapy and coaching invite clients to expand their understanding of consciousness and how this can help to promote a healthier and happier lifestyle.  George describes how as you ascend to higher floors in the “elevator”, you can naturally see so much more of what is available!  On level 1 your conscious mind is more than half asleep and triggering habits without barely needing to life a finger but as higher floors are reached, the conscious mind wakes up more and more, noticing more choices and options and making different decisions about where to focus attention or in other words, think!  Can you see how being able to metaphorically travel up the elevator is going to increase a person’s awareness of themselves in their lives with others, way beyond level’s repetitive and limited vista.

What does this look like in reality?  Let me share an example:

(i) Ginola – mum of 3 boys under 10 and part-time GP who feels guilty most mornings coming into work, as she struggles to fit everything in and so is generally late.  She feels that her work colleagues are annoyed with her time-keeping and so she always tries to stay on later than needed even though this often leads to her being late for nursery or school pick-up.  She is feeling pretty miserable about her life, and in between the professional front she manages for patients and teachers, she is unhappy and exhausted.  Worse still, her low mood often causes arguments with her husband and she worries that her children are being affected by their home environment.

So how did CBT help Ginola?

First of all her therapist encourages her to be curious about the feeling of “guilt” that she carries around daily and together they explore the roots of her thinking which they reveal as: “people will tell me off/be cross/judge me badly if I am late”.  This core belief was formed during Ginola’s childhood because she was often late for school as her mother insisted on doing a lot of chores in the mornings.  As a result, Ginola was often confronted by an angry or patronising form teacher who highlighted her punctuality regularly in front of the class.  Not surprisingly, Ginola dreaded every school morning and even though her parents were generally nice and kind people, as an 8 year old, she didn’t yet have the verbal skills to explain how anxious she felt about being late for school.  You might be thinking “well that was years ago in the past, so why is Ginola feeling so guilty as an adult showing up late sometimes?”  And here you have the power of the subconscious mind in action!  Inside of Ginola there is a core belief that being late will lead to judgement/annoyance/possible embarrassment – but this is NOT in her conscious awareness so she won’t be joining the dots unless she is guided in doing so.  Instead, she will simply be triggered into worry and guilt feelings automatically by the thought that she is late – as if she were still going to school!!  Clearly, she is only ever going up to the first floor!!

Ginola’s therapist was able to challenge her core belief about being late and explained to Ginola that she wanted her to start collecting “evidence or proof” that this core belief was actually true.  Therefore they created a small challenge for Ginola to try out during the following week.  This was to:

• Arrange a meeting with the practice manager to discuss getting to work on time and to find out whether Ginola’s lateness is creating any difficulty.
  The outcome was really surprising to Ginola.  The practice manager reassured her that all the staff admired her capacity to carry on working around her young children and that nobody ever commented on the time she arrived.  She also said that patient feedback was very positive and that they were happy to have her on the team.  The practice manager urged her to avoid being late for school pick-up by staying later than she could afford to, and to work on catching up with paperwork at another time.

Ginola was quite shocked by the feedback but began to accept that her biggest problem was in her “old thinking behaviour”.  So she was willing to continue to challenge these old patterns and automatic reactions over a few more weeks and gradually started to relax and realise how much more control she potentially had over her own mindset.  In elevator speak, she was open to trying a higher level and becoming more conscious or aware.

And so can you.  Once you start paying attention to what you actually focus on in your daily life, you may be utterly amazed at the amount of negative thoughts you have in a single day.  Further more, you will begin to appreciate that each thought probably causes a cascade of other thoughts and associated feelings that can easily influence the type of day you have.  On level 1, this is a bit like “ground hog day”!

When I share this idea with clients, a few feel excited at the prospect of starting this personal experiment of observing thoughts, feelings and behaviours but many feel doubtful, sceptical, confused, unsure and even afraid.  Given their current difficult life situation, they rarely feel inclined towards the idea of challenging their mindset.  Did you know that whatever negative mindset a person is in, that this can become so familiar as if an integral part, which can lead to “help”being very hard to access.  This idea seems bonkers, right! however it’s worth considering that a new mindset being fairly unknown to a person, could for this very reason be fear inducing.  At an extreme level we can see this in addicts who come out of rehab into new shiny clean lives that can seem so unknown and difficult to navigate that it is not long before they relapse back into their addiction.

It is for this reason that I personally test out all the skills and strategies that I offer my clients and for this reason I can honestly say they work because they work for me.  Whilst I am not the expert on which particular skill will be best for any client, I have learnt that change is possible with the right approach.  Patience is essential as well as stamina because in order to change we also need to grow new patterns and these simply take “time”.  Without enough time/practise/attention/commitment/effort/etc….. the new patterns cannot form.  Just like other new patterns developed in life such as learning to play a musical instrument or a foreign language or driving a car.  These skills take regular focus and attention but after this the results tend to be long lasting.  For example, after “learning to drive a car”, regardless of the time you might spend not driving, you generally don’t “unlearn how to drive a car”!  So back to the job in hand of change, it’s all about being persistent and committed and personally I would add, everyday for the rest of your life!  If some small approach becomes something that helps you to feel happier in your life, why would you ever not?

If you’re feeling even remotely tempted to find out more, we’d love to hear from you.