“They’re family, so I have to spend my free time with them, right?”
Do any of these beliefs sound familiar? Have any of them popped up in the last few weeks as you thought about what your goals and plans for 2018 include?
If you haven’t had these thoughts exactly, you likely have your own version of them: Sneaky, intrusive thoughts that pop up and seem to scold you out of pursuing what it is you want or shame and blame you into “more realistic” goals and dreams.
In other words, lies your brain tells you.
Almost ALL of us have thoughts like this — ways we shut ourselves down, or talk ourselves out of going after what it is we want in life.
It’s normal and natural to have beliefs like this.
We likely learned these beliefs at some point in our lives and, perhaps, they may have even served to keep us safe at some point (or we thought we were keeping ourselves safe), but now these beliefs are getting in our way and possibly contributing to our emotional distress.
These beliefs have become maladaptive thoughts. And they need to be addressed.
So today I want to explore the concept of maladaptive thoughts with you, provide some prompts to help you recognize your own maladaptive thoughts, and provide further exercises you can use to challenge these maladaptive thoughts and come up with more functional, healthier patterns of thinking.
My hope is that this will support you not only in going after your goals in 2018. But in every way in all your days this year.
What’s a maladaptive thought?
Maladaptive thoughts are firmly established patterns of thinking that are often intrusive, negatively biased, rigid, distorted, and inaccurate.
They don’t have to be just one single thought. (e.g.: “He won’t go for a woman who looks like me!”) They can be entire schemas – patterns or core beliefs of thought (e.g.: “I’m unloveable.”).
Maladaptive thoughts form in much the same way any of our beliefs about the world form. We form in relationship to the relationships around us. So in other words, we absorb the messaging and beliefs we receive implicitly and explicitly from our early relationships. From our parents and caregivers, our siblings, our school peers, even our church and local communities.
Some of the beliefs we absorb may be functional and helpful. (“Don’t get into a van with a strange man!”) Others may be less helpful. Such as when you grow up with a narcissist for a parent who gives you the message (through their actions and perhaps words) that you are fundamentally unlovable.
Maladaptive, by its definition, means that these particular beliefs fail to help us adjust adequately or appropriately to the environment and situations that we are in.
