What Your Thoughts May Be Telling You
Posted: Tuesday, July 19, 2011
by Amanda J Mirza
http://www.forthewholewoman.com
Thinking brings up a powerful body-mind response. Whether you are thinking about the past or the future, what you are seeing in your mind's eye is imaginary. Yet your body is responding as if the event is happening in real time. Let's do a quick experiment: Close your eyes and breathe in and out deeply, clearing your mind. Now, think about some freshly baked bread. Can you smell it? Now, imagine you feel an insect crawling up your arm. Your body may have reacted by cringing or your heart rate may have increased slightly. These body-mind responses to what you are visualizing cause reactions, both physical and emotional, even though the event occurred only in your mind.
Let's look at some of these thought patterns individually.
Imagining possibilities
Your imaginary interactions with a certain situation or person can illustrate your underlying feelings, including highlighting your dissatisfaction with a present situation. For example, in a previous relationship, I used to fight with a boyfriend in my head all the way home from work. When I arrived home I was in a foul mood and angry at my boyfriend. The results of these imaginary fights were disastrous because I wasn't able to separate the imaginary from the real. In my head, my boyfriend and I were having heated arguments. In real life, I was treating my boyfriend as if the argument had actually happened, thus negatively affecting our relationship. Underlying this was my desire to end what I knew was an unhealthy relationship.
Your daydreams hold clues to your underlying mindset. On the surface, you may see negative or positive themes, but if you look deeper you can see what you are 'telling' yourself. Constantly fighting with someone may be showing issues that need to be addressed in the relationship. Consistently imagining things going wrong at work may show you are unhappy with your current job and it might be time to move on; although, perhaps you are just bored and need to ask for more responsibility or a new project, for example.
Examine even positive interactions. Imagining you are on a wonderful holiday trip may be telling you it's high time you got a break. Or you might be imagining everything as hunky-dory, but the underlying passive behaviour of your imaginary interaction tells a different story.
It is key to remember that while you are imagining these things, your mind doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. Controlled by your mind, your body is responding as if the situation actually occurred. Hence, paying attention to your daydreams and addressing problem areas will help bring you health in mind, body, and spirit.
It is also important to note that daydreaming isn’t necessarily unhealthy! What we are focusing on here is the hidden messages we send ourselves through our daydreams.
Here is an example of how daydreams may contain subtle messages for you to decode:
Suppose you find yourself daydreaming about a scenario of being attacked, maybe on the street. In the scenario, you may or may not be successful fending off the attackers, or a 'hero' could come in and save you. What could you be telling yourself? Some possibilities include: You might be afraid of the future. Or perhaps you feel threatened in some way, by a situation or a person you interact with. Alternatively, you could be playing out a victim mindset by literally casting yourself as a victim. Do you victimize yourself in your every day speech by saying classic lines such as, “Why does this always happen to me?”
Or perhaps you are the person who saves another being attacked. In this case, you might have a 'hero complex'. While it is valiant to help others, in these scenarios you might be searching for more self-worth, which you artificially get when you 'save' the imaginary person. I've noticed that sometimes such scenarios pop up in my head when I am nervous or scared about doing something. Then I run through how I've prepared, take a deep breath, and keep going.
This section wouldn't be complete without talking about how we sometimes project our anticipation and/or fear of future outcomes onto present situations, such as job interviews, presentations, meeting someone for the first time, or how our mate will respond to a suggestion. Do you see yourself getting the job? Are people applauding you and accepting your proposal? Or do you see yourself getting negative reactions from the people you interact with? This can tell you about subtle underlying insecurities, or your confidence in handling the proposed situation.
There is an important point I'd like to bring up here: Can visualizing a positive outcome help you achieve it? An old high school teacher told me that students who visualized themselves doing well on a test before entering the exam hall performed better than students who crammed right up to the last moment. Almost every successful person I've heard speak also discussed the importance of visualizing the outcomes they desired in great detail. Visualizing is another form of brainwashing. So, are you programming yourself with positive or negative outcomes?
Retro-active thinking
Past hurts can have the potential to become juicy bones that we hoard and gnaw on. As the character Vivi in the movie Divine secrets of the Ya-Ya sisterhood said, “You know me, I take a problem and chew on it until all the flavour's gone, and then I stick it in my hair.” Whatever past issue you find your mind replaying and focusing on, it’s telling you what you are still 'carrying' from the past. There may be several things in layers or just one.
If you find yourself in such a situation, ask yourself what past hurts you are brooding over. Do you need to forgive someone? Even yourself? Are you still angry at someone from ten years ago? Perhaps you need to accept that you did your best in a situation and start focusing on what you learned from it, instead of what went wrong? Is the fear of a past situation still gripping you? How are those emotions making their way into your everyday interactions?
If you are calling up past fights alongside having new imaginary fights with someone, then you might be telling yourself you need to have a good long heart-to-heart with that person (and yes, they are not usually easy or very comfortable to do). Alternatively, you might be rehashing a situation and imagining how you would have preferred it to have turned out; there are emotions there that need to be dealt with so you can let the situation go.
If for some reason you can't have a face to face talk, then you can try using meditative visualization to have a heart-to-heart talk in your head. To do this, sit quietly for a few minutes and breath deeply and slowly. Imagine your are somewhere peaceful, like a meadow. Call the person into your mind and once you see them arrive and sit in front of you, begin the conversation. Express clearly how you feel about what they did, what happened, or say the things you never got the chance to. Just like talking in person, use “I feel” statements and leave any judgements at the door. Allow the person time to respond—listen to your intuition to judge whether you are hearing that person's responses or merely putting words into their imaginary mouth. At the end, thank them for coming, ask them to leave and imagine them going off into another lovely meadow. This handy practice may initially take a little practice, but once you get good at visualization, it can work wonders to help you let go of unhealthy past issues.
If you deal with one scenario of a past situation and let it go, sometimes another layer may surface. Just like layers of sediment in the soil, your unresolved past experiences build up one on top of the other. Be patient with yourself as you work to clear away all the dirt.
Emotional addiction
As you start examining what you are thinking about, one thing to be aware of is the possibility of emotional addiction. Emotional addiction is just as it sounds, getting addicted to having a certain emotional reaction and thus pursuing situations where you will get it. This is a topic worthy of its own discussion, so we'll save it for another issue.
I hope this essay helped increase your awareness of how recurrent thoughts, daydreams and recollections from the past may be affecting you. As you move forward, begin to analyze what you are daydreaming about and/or recalling from the past. Look for any hidden messages you may be telling yourself about situations or people. Once you have a message figured out, you now have something concrete to work on clearing out. This is the first step to resolving underlying issues.
Now that you know the power of being aware of your thoughts, improving your concentration will help you to monitor what you are thinking more closely. Get the complimentary e-book "The Power of Concentration" from http://www.forthewholewoman.com now, and start changing your mind - literally.
Amanda J Mirza publishes the weekly self improvement newsletter For The Whole Woman available at http://www.forthewholewoman.com.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Wow. What an article. More whole women need to discover you on these pages. Oh, well. I know I am a fan!
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