Emotional Thinking and Anxiety – Hypnotherapy Vlog
In this video, I talk about emotional thinking and anxiety. In the light of recent political events in the UK regarding Dominic Cummings, there has been constant ‘black and white’ or ‘all or nothing’ thinking. And with anxiety (and other mental health issues) emotional thinking can lead to catastrophising and imagining worst case scenarios. There are two aspects to any successful anxiety treatment programme that you need to make sure are addressed to put you back in control over how you think and feel and I talk about these in this video. Click on the image and have a watch here:
Emotional Thinking & Anxiety:
Hello, it’s Dan here. I hope you’re good today. Today I just want to tell you a bit about emotional thinking and some of the challenges and issues that go with that. Certainly the news over the past few days , as I record this, has been all about Dominic Cummings – the trips he’s supposed to have taken, whether he broke the rules, them and us, all those kind of things. It’s been in the media, it’s on the telly, it’s in the news, on social media, and certainly a lot of issues around peoples’ opinions come down to emotional thinking and being emotionally invested on one side or the other.
With emotional thinking we tend to get, and certainly it’s true in this case, and obviously I don’t know when you watch this what the latest news will be, but certainly it’s true that everything becomes very black and white. So in this regard either you’re right or you’re wrong, and a lot of nastiness can go with that, a lot of anger, frustration – people say horrible stuff about other people, people refusing to be peoples’ friends, cutting them off, blocking them, trying to distract from it, invalidating their opinions because you don’t agree with them, which is, as an aside, a weird form of democracy that says let’s all have freedom of speech as long as you agree with me. That’s not what I’m here to talk about but it’s one thing to think about.
But what happens with emotional thinking is, like I say, it all becomes black and white, there are no shades of grey, there’s no possibility for agreement or compromise or recognising that the other person is entitled to their opinion and that it’s okay that they don’t agree with you. It all becomes, like I said, I’m right, you’re wrong, or this is definitely the case and no other opinions are valid.
And the reason I mention that is because there are strong links to mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, stress and so forth. So if we take anxiety, those anxious emotions, those anxious feelings lead to emotional thinking, you start thinking about what might happen, it’s either going to be perfect or a disaster. Either it has to go brilliantly or it’s going to be terrible, you’re not going to be able to cope with it, things are going to go badly in some way, it’s going to be awful in some way, worst case scenario, it’s catastrophising, things going wrong, all those kind of thoughts that are driven by anxiety, emotions and feelings.
And people with anxiety often say that these thoughts aren’t rational, they’re not logical and yet still I find myself thinking about these things and driving up and ramping up all those anxious thoughts and feelings by getting stuck in that loop of feeling anxious, thinking anxious thoughts, thinking more of it, even more of the feelings and so on and it very much creates it’s own kind of momentum which can leave you feeling worse and worse unfortunately.
So in order to tackle that, there are two aspects to dealing with anxiety and emotional thinking. First of all is, you need to have ways to calm down the emotions. The emotions drive the thoughts which is why you can find anxious thoughts just go from one thing to another. If one thing is over, if one thing is no longer a thing, that anxiety will lead you to thinking worst case scenarios, catastrophising about something else, and the whole cycle becomes more and more habitual and just keeps being fuelled by the anxious emotions.
So you need to have ways to calm that down. Whether you do breathing techniques, meditation, my hypnosis downloads, all those things, and certainly we know from research that hypnosis and hypnotherapy is a great option in terms of reducing anxiety symptoms. If you don’t calm these anxious emotions down those thoughts, those feelings, tend to just continue and, not only that it’s very difficult to break out of that cycle, it’s very difficult to think logically and rationally, and to be in control of your thoughts and feelings if you’re being swamped by all that anxiety.
Combined with that are ways to deal with the emotional thinking aspect of it, so you want to have ways to interrupt those ways of thinking, to direct it, is certainly part of this kind of stuff. And partly, in general life, when you look at external stuff, like what’s going on in politics, at how the government has handled stuff, what Dominic Cummings did or didn’t do, what other people say and think and, certainly, in terms of orchestrating your own thoughts, you want to have ways where you can challenge that stuff, interrupt that stuff, and just hold those thoughts up almost and say is this actually a thing, or is it only a thing because I think it’s a thing and I’ve invested in it.
Having ways to challenge those things, dispute thoughts if necessary are really useful so questions like, is what I’m thinking here, is what I’m perceiving, is that a fact or is it just perception, is there evidence for this, how true do I think this is, could I be wrong about other perspectives. So certainly being open, I think, to the possibility that the stuff you’re thinking, whether it’s your opinions, whether it’s what you think about something that’s going on, being open to the fact that other people might have alternative views, that there might be other things that might happen in the future, things might go badly, they might also go well, they might just be okay. There are certainly lots of options in that way, what evidence is there that that person is going to think badly of you, or that thing you’re not going to be able to deal with it.
You want to be able to challenge those things, to sort the fact, to be able to think logically, to dispute it, to look at other perspectives, to hold it up and go is this actually a thing or, like I say, is it just a perception, is it just an anxious thought, is it just something that’s popped into my head and I’ve found myself thinking about it, is it fact, is it perception, would other people be thinking this, would a scientist think this, would a doctor think this, would my best friend be thinking in this way. Would someone else in this situation be having these kind of thoughts, in that anxious way, about the stuff that’s going on, or that might be going on, but certainly combined with that you want to be able to calm the emotions down so that you can think clearly, so that you can uphold these thoughts, you can dispute them or consider them.
They may well be valid, you may stick to those things but there are things you can do about those things, even if you think something might not go well, there are things you are in control of, the kind of techniques you use, the strategies, your mindset, but very much, as the current Dominic Cummings thing has shown us, very much emotional thinking is black or white, you are either right or you’re wrong but certainly, in most areas of life, there are shades of grey and the more you can calm those emotions, using things like hypnosis, use the free downloads on my site if you want a starter, and having techniques where you can hold your thoughts up, interrupt them, redirect them, and be in control of the kind of stuff that’s going on inside your head.
Certainly I think the happier you’re going to be, the more wellbeing you’ll experience, the less anxiety you’ll experience, and the more mentally healthy you’re going to enjoy life. So please do take action on those things, consider those things, put things in place around that, and I wish you all the best, and I will speak to you very soon. You take care now.
Dan Regan
29th May 2020
Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket
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