Crazy Head Talk
I'm reading (and doing the video study of)The Emotionally Healthy Woman, by Geri Scazzero . In her book, Geri tells us to QUIT eight things, and in doing so, we'll change our lives.
Every chapter so far has hit much like a sledge hammer. Yep, I do that. Yes, that one too. Oh my, that as well.
Number 7, Quit Faulty Thinking was like a 2 x 4 across the forehead.
In her chapter on Faulty Thinking, Geri quotes Mark Twain, who said,
"It isn't what you don't know that hurts you; it's what you know that isn't so."
She goes on to say that we need to stop doing three things: taking things personally (when they likely weren't intended that way - people don't think about us nearly as much as we think they do); thinking things will never change, and overgeneralizing.
The very day I read this chapter, on faulty thinking, I had had an interaction with someone, and when they didn't respond the way I thought they should have, I managed to do all three at once. Trifecta! And of course because this was all a conversation going on in my head, they had no clue.
I'd taken very personally that they'd responded differently that I'd hoped; I thought to myself, 'well, they're just that way, always have been and always will be, so what did I expect?, and I then managed to decide they were like that about everything they did or didn't do.
I spent some time stroking it in my mind, so that the worse they were in my mind, of course the better I was.
Then I read this chapter and immediately saw myself and the situation through it.
I grew up emotionally for a nanosecond, to tell myself a different story; maybe they were busy or didn't think or had something else going on; maybe what they had done had seemed like enough in their eyes, and maybe, just maybe I was being a bit hard on them. Maybe I was taking it personally, stamping them with a 'never change' stamp, and over-generalizing their actions to put them in a bad light.
Because if we're honest, it often feels good to look at others in a bad light. It makes us feel better about ourselves.
I can't recommend this book enough to anyone who wants to finally grow up emotionally. I've never been a big supporter of those 'can't adult today' or 'grow old but not up' t-shirts. I can see what faulty thinking does in my own life, my own relationships, so imagine if each of us grew up just a bit emotionally? What if we became better versions of ourselves? Sort of like marriage counseling - even if one spouse won't go, then the other should, because if YOU change, you fix half the problem.
That may be over-generalizing, but I'm going to stick with it. What if we each work to grow up, fix ourselves, be a better version, drop some of the baggage we grew up with, then attached to our backs with gorilla glue?
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