“I love this analogy so helpful… over the last few years it has changed EVERYTHING for me.” ~ Julie, UK
In yesterday's Daily Reminder, we looked at how particularly hurtful, repetitive thoughts and feelings can be understood, and alleviated, by thinking about how clocks work. 🕙
It's a metaphor that came to mind while I was working with a client, who was experiencing a really sticky thought like this themselves. And while it really landed for them, it did lead to a question (a common one):
“How? How do I ignore thoughts like that?”
Now, putting aside the fact that this is exactly how you would expect a mind—that genuinely believes it's in charge and feels it has to do something—to respond, let's look at another helpful metaphor.
A practical one.
‘Trains of thought’
It's a saying we're all familiar with, isn't it? It signifies a succession of connected thoughts (and appeared in literature a full 100 years before trains were even a thing)! 😯
At the risk of mixing my metaphors here, one of my mentors describes thoughts like rabbits – put a couple of them together and before you know it, you've got loads! And this is what a negative train of thought can be like. There's a whole string of carriages connected. 🚂🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋
We have a thought, maybe one we're quite familiar with, and before we know it, we're busy thinking about our thinking,
“Oh no, not again! Aaargh, what's wrong with me? Oh I'm sick of this. What should I do? Should I read something? Speak to someone about it? I need to get a handle on this don't I? Or some help. No, maybe I'll watch some TV/have a glass of wine/eat something…”
…and on it goes.
A train of thought.
But what if we saw that literally as being on a train? Might that help?
It could look something like this: