Tweet
Do you know thought diversion techniques?
As soon as you recognise that you're going into the groove that 19 years of abuse patterned into your brain, start consciously working on one of the diversion techniques.
(The below is based on my personal experience)
At first, you may need to speak them aloud. Eventually, you'll be able to do them mentally.
At first, you'll be well into the groove before you recognise that you're there. You'll get better and better at recognising it, and the act of diverting your thoughts will get easier and easier.
At first, you'll have both tracks simultaneously. The unhelpful thoughts and the diversion thoughts. As time passes, the unhelpful thoughts will get quieter and the diversion thoughts will get louder.
I'm told that eventually the unhelpful thought becomes too quiet to 'hear'. That hasn't happened to me yet, but it is quiet enough to completely ignore - most of the time.
Now to some info.
Your unhelpful thoughts were probably a coping mechanism, back in the day. Noone ever intentionally makes 'the worst' decision: people try to do what will work best in their given situation.
However, the coping mechanism that was helpful then is not helpful in your current environment.
As an example, I know a woman who was a child in Poland during WWII. She was from a family of Jewish heritage, but could pass as Aryan if she were blonde. So her parents dyed her hair (and her twin sister's).
Both she and her twin obsessively dye their hair blonde to this day.
In WWII it was a survival mechanism. It's no longer needed. Fortunately this particular obsession is not actually harming either of them.
You have similar issues: things that were survival mechanisms in your past, but which are no longer needed. Unfortunately, they're now harming you.
The brain develops pathways. You can analogise it to rain gullies in a muddy, slightly sloping field. (It's actually nerve connections in the gray matter, but the types of pathways that form are similar.)
Every time you follow a particular thought, the 'rain gully' becomes a little bit deeper. So your survival mechanisms are 19 years deep, plus the time you've spent since when still using them. This sounds discouraging at first, but even the deepest gully can be changed.
(Heck, the Hoover Dam has redirected the Colorado River, and that's the deepest river gully on the planet!)
You're going to make the water (the thought) go down a gully YOU consciously, intentionally choose. You do this by creating the new thought gully, and by linking it to the old one you no longer want with a diversion gully.
Rehearsing your new thought will deepen the new thought pathway.
Every time you recognise that you're in your old thought gully and then think the new thought, that strengthens the diversion gully.
Every time you build the diversion gully, you also add a tiny smidge of 'concrete' to a 'dam wall' on the old thought.
POSSIBLE NEW THOUGHTS
'helpful thinking' (and a whole range of other techniques that are vaguely similar)
Instead of 'this happened and therefore disaster', you think 'this happened and therefore <something good>'
For instance, 'it's alright if people are mean to you because you're nothing but trash' (and so on), you can go with 'it's alright if people are mean to me because they don't know me and aren't people whose opinion matters to me. The only people whose opinions matter are Seshat and DGoddess and puddytat and ....'.
(If you do choose that particular one, be VERY careful of who you choose to have as 'people whose opinions matter'. I chose Toth and Bast. With regard to opinions about my weight, I added my doctor. My CURRENT doctor, not J. Random MedicalDude.)
There are a lot of variations on helpful thinking: please please either google, or mention in this thread that this sounds like an interesting technique and you want to learn more patient-to-patient info about it.
complete diversion
In this one, you just do something totally unrelated.
This is the 'count to 10' or 'count to 10 backwards' or 'spot five things in your immediate area that are blue' or red or green or circular or triangular or whatever.
Because of using this technique, I can recite the alphabet forwards AND backwards, can recite the military/international alphabet (alpha bravo charlie ... zulu), and am currently using the fibionacci sequence. Anna suggested I memorise pi next, as far as I need to.
As you can tell, once a particular unrelated-thing becomes too easy, I (not everyone, but certainly me) need to find a new one.
monomaniacal focus
That's not what the psychologists call it. They call it distraction. But if you have even a smidge of autism, this is DAMNED effective against both mental and physical pain.
Divert all your attention to something, whether it be quilting (yes, I chose that deliberately) or playing a computer game or studying the mating habits of the pobblebonk frog.
Your problems are the result of a sane reaction to an insane situation.
Never forget that.
You had limited resources for your survival at the time - both mental and physical survival. You shielded your 'self' (your core personality) from damage, and took damage to the 'outer shell' of yourself as a result.
Now the weaknesses in that outer shell are showing, and we need to do a patch job. Well, you're a quilter: you can make patches that are amazing, and in some cases even better than the base fabric.
We happen to think your core personality is damned fantastic. And if we can help with the patch job, say so.
As soon as you recognise that you're going into the groove that 19 years of abuse patterned into your brain, start consciously working on one of the diversion techniques.
(The below is based on my personal experience)
At first, you may need to speak them aloud. Eventually, you'll be able to do them mentally.
At first, you'll be well into the groove before you recognise that you're there. You'll get better and better at recognising it, and the act of diverting your thoughts will get easier and easier.
At first, you'll have both tracks simultaneously. The unhelpful thoughts and the diversion thoughts. As time passes, the unhelpful thoughts will get quieter and the diversion thoughts will get louder.
I'm told that eventually the unhelpful thought becomes too quiet to 'hear'. That hasn't happened to me yet, but it is quiet enough to completely ignore - most of the time.
Now to some info.
Your unhelpful thoughts were probably a coping mechanism, back in the day. Noone ever intentionally makes 'the worst' decision: people try to do what will work best in their given situation.
However, the coping mechanism that was helpful then is not helpful in your current environment.
As an example, I know a woman who was a child in Poland during WWII. She was from a family of Jewish heritage, but could pass as Aryan if she were blonde. So her parents dyed her hair (and her twin sister's).
Both she and her twin obsessively dye their hair blonde to this day.
In WWII it was a survival mechanism. It's no longer needed. Fortunately this particular obsession is not actually harming either of them.
You have similar issues: things that were survival mechanisms in your past, but which are no longer needed. Unfortunately, they're now harming you.
The brain develops pathways. You can analogise it to rain gullies in a muddy, slightly sloping field. (It's actually nerve connections in the gray matter, but the types of pathways that form are similar.)
Every time you follow a particular thought, the 'rain gully' becomes a little bit deeper. So your survival mechanisms are 19 years deep, plus the time you've spent since when still using them. This sounds discouraging at first, but even the deepest gully can be changed.
(Heck, the Hoover Dam has redirected the Colorado River, and that's the deepest river gully on the planet!)
You're going to make the water (the thought) go down a gully YOU consciously, intentionally choose. You do this by creating the new thought gully, and by linking it to the old one you no longer want with a diversion gully.
Rehearsing your new thought will deepen the new thought pathway.
Every time you recognise that you're in your old thought gully and then think the new thought, that strengthens the diversion gully.
Every time you build the diversion gully, you also add a tiny smidge of 'concrete' to a 'dam wall' on the old thought.
POSSIBLE NEW THOUGHTS
'helpful thinking' (and a whole range of other techniques that are vaguely similar)
Instead of 'this happened and therefore disaster', you think 'this happened and therefore <something good>'
For instance, 'it's alright if people are mean to you because you're nothing but trash' (and so on), you can go with 'it's alright if people are mean to me because they don't know me and aren't people whose opinion matters to me. The only people whose opinions matter are Seshat and DGoddess and puddytat and ....'.
(If you do choose that particular one, be VERY careful of who you choose to have as 'people whose opinions matter'. I chose Toth and Bast. With regard to opinions about my weight, I added my doctor. My CURRENT doctor, not J. Random MedicalDude.)
There are a lot of variations on helpful thinking: please please either google, or mention in this thread that this sounds like an interesting technique and you want to learn more patient-to-patient info about it.
complete diversion
In this one, you just do something totally unrelated.
This is the 'count to 10' or 'count to 10 backwards' or 'spot five things in your immediate area that are blue' or red or green or circular or triangular or whatever.
Because of using this technique, I can recite the alphabet forwards AND backwards, can recite the military/international alphabet (alpha bravo charlie ... zulu), and am currently using the fibionacci sequence. Anna suggested I memorise pi next, as far as I need to.
As you can tell, once a particular unrelated-thing becomes too easy, I (not everyone, but certainly me) need to find a new one.
monomaniacal focus
That's not what the psychologists call it. They call it distraction. But if you have even a smidge of autism, this is DAMNED effective against both mental and physical pain.
Divert all your attention to something, whether it be quilting (yes, I chose that deliberately) or playing a computer game or studying the mating habits of the pobblebonk frog.
Your problems are the result of a sane reaction to an insane situation.
Never forget that.
You had limited resources for your survival at the time - both mental and physical survival. You shielded your 'self' (your core personality) from damage, and took damage to the 'outer shell' of yourself as a result.
Now the weaknesses in that outer shell are showing, and we need to do a patch job. Well, you're a quilter: you can make patches that are amazing, and in some cases even better than the base fabric.
We happen to think your core personality is damned fantastic. And if we can help with the patch job, say so.
to go with it.
And mine!
Comment