The Cure for Loneliness by Dr. Bill Howatt

Author:Dr. Bill Howatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781774580561
Publisher: PageTwo
Published: 2021-02-19T00:20:25+00:00

Framing to Unlock

Your Mental Trap

At the core of unlocking the mental trap is self-control. Self-control facilitates goals such as losing weight and intentionally building more social connections. On the journey to achieving goals, it’s common to experience setbacks and failures that can deplete your confidence and inner strength. When hit by a challenging moment, people tend to slip back to old, comfortable patterns. That’s why building a framework first is important.

Two systems in the brain influence your degree of self-control and drive toward a desired goal. The behavioural activation system (BAS) supports you in moving toward a goal and the behavioural inhibition system (BIS) cautions you against moving toward a goal.1 Think of these as the gas and brake pedals in a car. Building resiliency and motivation is important to keep your BAS activated and engaged.

“We often think ourselves into problems. To get out of them requires us to keep thinking”: this is a go-to line I’ve used many times in my counselling career. It’s meant to set the stage and to normalize that we often—without realizing it—think in a way that’s not in our best interest. Many of my clients are surprised to discover that their negative thoughts are coming from within, and no one on the outside is making them have those thoughts; it’s how they’re processing their experience. In these conversations, the client gets to witness how their emotional and psychological pain comes from their mind, and it’s their negative thinking that’s contributing to this misery.

If your mental trap is stopping, inhibiting, or distracting you, the first goal is to increase self-awareness, followed by a desire and readiness to take charge of thinking. Unlocking mental traps is about learning how to stop unwanted, negative thoughts and then replace them with more positive and empowering ones. Knowledge is power, and once you have insights that can positively change your thinking, you’ll be one step closer to unlocking your mental trap.

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