“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” -Revelation 21:4

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,” 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (ESV)

We often think stress comes from the outside of us and it’s true, stressful times happen. One primary cause, though, that can be helped, is inside of us. It is distorted, irrational, damaging thinking. A damaging thought process can alter one’s feelings, worldview and entire outlook on life.  It can even cause us to misinterpret our life circumstances. We, as humans, can very often think our way into stress and a host of other issues: worry, fear, anxiety, anger, depression, shame, guilt, and paranoia.

We’re all prone to damaging thinking on occasion, but we CAN change these thought processes! We must first double-check our own thinking by taking into account mental and emotional habits. We’re capable of replacing faulty thoughts with accurate ones. We don’t have to accept automatic thoughts at face value. Rather, we can recognize, examine and question them. When a negative thought pattern is interrupted and broken, hurtful expectations lose their power. We can gain control over our thinking patterns. What we believe and our perception of our circumstances goes into how we interpret the events we experience each and every moment. How we interpret events impacts the level of stress we experience each day.

These interpretations go into creating our emotions (joy or anger, peace or hostility, happiness or depression, serenity or anxiety, courage or fear, confidence or shame/guilt). Has a distorted thinking cycle developed to the point of causing stress in your life?  If so, the negative perceptions will give fuel to the negative emotions and that equals more stress.

Over time, I’ve recognized my own damaging thinking patterns and the importance of continually evaluating my current patterns. I believe this is an area in which we never truly arrive on this side of glory!  Following are just seven common forms of damaging thinking. Of course there are many more.  If these don’t speak to you, perhaps you can ask the Holy Spirit to bring some to mind that He wants you to be aware of.

1. Extremist Thinking

Being prone to extremist or all-or-nothing thinking, one may feel like there are no gray areas. Anything less than your “perfect” is pointless. Perhaps one might think that if something goes wrong, nothing will ever go right. One negative event may foretell a pattern of never-ending defeat.

     2.  Negative Filter Thinking

A single negative detail is dwelled on to the point that perception of reality becomes so darkened that one cannot see    anything positive.

     3.  Paralyzing the Positive

A positive experience is entirely flipped or disabled and turned into a negative one. One who does this may feel they are not deserving of any praise under any circumstance. Positive experiences are rejected or totally discounted.

     4.  Assuming and Believing the Worst

A situation is interpreted negatively even though there are no hard facts that support your conclusion. For example, one might assume and believe they can know that another is thinking poorly of them even though there is no evidence. Or one might feel as if they can tell the future as they expect that a situation will turn out badly to the point of it being an absolute fact.

      5.  Emotional reasoning   

 Assuming that negative feelings or emotions reflect absolute truth.

      6.  Should-Must-Ought Thinking

Motivation comes from shoulds and shouldn’ts. “Musts” and “oughts” are also used. People should do certain things, society should behave a particular way, or circumstances should turn out in an expected way. The more rigid the rules, the greater the person’s disappointment, resentment, anger, and frustration.

     7.  Negative Naming

Instead of describing a mistake, a negative name is attached: “I’m an idiot.” when someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a . . . jerk.”

Unfortunately, most stressed-out people don’t realize that much of their stress can be the result of what is going on inside of them, the damaging thinking. It is a rare person who is able to look within themselves and realize they are causing the stressful feelings in their life.

Let’s be that rare person with the help of Jesus!

Dr. Albert Ellis, a psychologist, came up with what he called the “ABC process” for identifying how thoughts impact our emotions. Follow along here because using the bible is going to be key! This won’t just be pop psychology!

When a thought occurs, this is the activating “A” factor. The event is usually followed by an emotional “consequence,” or “C”. The activating event may be the moment your child had a temper tantrum at church. Feeling embarrassed and angry about what your child did might be the “C” response. In many cases, a distortional or damaging belief occurs between “A” and “C”.  So there is a “B” factor that occurs between what is experienced and what is felt. In the process above, the distortional or damaging thought might be one of these kinds of thoughts below (really—there’s no correlation between the following thoughts and me…it’s just an example!):

• My child embarrasses me at the worst times • This behavioral problem is never going to end • Everyone thinks I’m a horrible parent

The next step is to move past the ABC of this process to step D, which is to “dispute” the damaging thought and replace it with a rational thought. Finally we must add an extra step, E, to this process.  “Exchanging” the distorted damaging thought pattern with a positive and rational thought pattern. For a follower of Christ, we should exchange it with one that has a biblical, gospel-oriented, kingdom-focused world view associated with it. A thought pattern that can lead us to a concrete, specific action focused on helping future activating “A” events. Insert scripture and a biblical world-view here!

Exercise:

As you continue to pray for the Holy Spirit’s help, also take some time this week to slow down and really take a look at your current life. Replay a day in slow motion so that you can recall specific situations and responses. Look at specific relationships. Are you allowing damaging thinking patterns to take place in these experiences? If so, how can you change your response? With practice, we can become an expert at identifying and disputing these thoughts, and exchanging them for rational, biblical thinking. A change in thinking can change your overall mood in life, which can greatly improve the level of stress you experience.

More importantly, it glorifies God and helps us to love Him and others well.

Will you join me in finding at least one experience this week that activates a distorted and damaging belief? This shouldn’t be hard for most of us! I know it won’t be for me! Pray for clarity and the ability to see a pattern of this thinking. Work through the process of disputing the belief and replacing it with a rational and biblical thought or behavior. Go a step further and find relevant truth from scripture that helps dispute the belief.

Following is one of my favorite passages from the bible that God uses to help me move toward exchanging damaging thoughts with right thoughts. Take time to pick out your own verse to help with one of your damaging beliefs.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. ⁵ Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; ⁶ do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.⁸ Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.⁹ What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:4-9

Blessings as you renew your mind!  Get a free coaching course on transforming the mind with God’s Word here:

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