The Anxiety Series: Thoughts Are Not Facts

Anxiety can spiral if we get into the habit of believing everything we think. The anxious mind can create all sorts of storylines based on fear that simply are not true. This talk is all about gaining perspective on your thoughts and seeing how the monkey mind cannot always be believed. Learning how to fact-check your thoughts can help your thinking become more balanced going forward.

Transcript

Welcome back into this series on anxiety.

This is where I am sharing with you so many different tips,

Tools and ways of seeing things that relate to anxiety to ultimately help with your healing.

If you don't know who I am already,

I'm Scarlet,

I'm a qualified therapist and I'm really here to share with you everything I know from my personal experiences but also with my clients too.

So today we are going to be talking about when we make the mistake of believing that our thoughts are facts.

Now if you have a tendency to do this,

This can really get us into some sticky situations because our thoughts are not fact-based.

So they're not,

Let's say they're not always fact-based.

Now for many people who struggle with anxiety,

They can really struggle with kind of getting this and seeing this and understanding this and this could possibly be you.

So as you come into this talk,

I want you to just check in with what your perhaps initial reaction is to me saying that.

So your initial reaction to me saying,

You know,

Your thoughts aren't actually facts,

What does that bring up for you?

Are you there saying,

Well,

Hold on a minute,

Of course my thoughts are real,

They're true.

Are you there saying,

Okay,

I see where she's going with this,

Yeah,

You know,

There's been a lot of things that I've thought that aren't necessarily necessarily fact-based.

Just see how that feels for you to begin with.

So as I'm imagining you've probably been practicing and developing on your meditation practice in this platform,

You may be familiar with that term,

The monkey mind or effectively the mind that likes to bounce around and tell us so many different things.

And when the mind is sort of left to its own devices,

It can really get carried away.

I know for myself,

My mind can absolutely do this,

Regardless of everything I know,

Regardless of teaching meditation myself,

If I leave it unattended,

I forget to almost have some boundaries with it,

Or I forget to do all of my practices that I do,

Then that monkey mind comes straight back in.

And it can just be chatting away,

Chatting away,

Chatting away,

Telling you all sorts of stuff.

And because you've almost not taken that time to step away,

To observe and to see it as that monkey mind,

You may get caught in believing anything the monkey says.

And so the monkey can tell us a variety of things.

So it could tell us things that aren't true and they're just neutral.

So it could say,

Oh,

We remembered to get toilet roll in our grocery shop and it turns out you didn't,

You forgot to.

It can tell us that there is a certain thing that shop that we want to shop in hasn't on sale and we've just got that wrong.

And they're maybe not the best examples,

But you see what I mean?

They're kind of neutral.

They're not really high risk.

It's just kind of is what it is.

We maybe got it wrong or we got it right.

But our mind,

The point is our mind maybe told us something that wasn't quite true.

Now,

A lot of the time that our minds can actually,

Especially when anxiety goes up,

Tell us things that we then believe are factual,

That are more negative than they actually are.

So this is when we catastrophize.

This is when we do that all or nothing thinking.

So I'll talk to you about just a few of those that my mind's done in these last sort of few days.

So I had on Saturday,

I was away at the beach,

Which is probably about two hours away from where I live in London.

And I had that horrible thought of,

Oh my gosh,

I've left the gas on.

I've left my hob on,

You know,

Cooking breakfast.

And I was doing it again,

All my practices.

I really don't think you did.

I'm sure it's going to be okay.

But that sort of negative,

No,

I think,

You know,

I really think you did this sort of,

This is a fact because I've thought it.

It popped into my mind.

I don't know where it came from.

It popped into my mind.

And it was almost,

I could feel myself if I wasn't aware of this,

If I wasn't aware of what I'm teaching you right now,

That your thoughts are not facts,

I really could have gone down a whole rabbit hole with that.

And I must say,

In all honesty,

Again,

Despite me teaching everything I do,

It wasn't quite until I got home and I did see,

Yeah,

I did an all is well,

That,

That full relaxation did come over me.

But I really,

Really made sure in that moment,

I just stopped and I paused and I said,

Hey,

This is a thought that's coming in.

And it's probably because you're stressed today.

There's a lot going on.

You've been traveling.

And I said to myself,

Okay,

This is not a fact,

Because it's coming to your mind.

It doesn't necessarily have to mean anything.

Now I had another thought earlier today that I don't have enough time to get my work done.

I really wanted to sit down and I wanted to record this that I'm recording right now.

But I had other things to do.

And so I got myself a little bit stressed earlier of,

I've not got time,

I've not got time.

And again,

That wasn't true.

That was a thought that came into my mind that turned out it wasn't actually a fact because here I am,

I've got plenty of time.

I was actually absolutely fine.

Another thing that happened was yesterday,

I had a situation with a friend where she was supposed to be coming to stay with me.

And I'd actually mixed up the dates.

I got them wrong.

I thought she was just staying with me on the Monday evening,

But it turns out she'd asked to stay Sunday and Monday.

And I completely got it wrong.

And there was some sort of miscommunication.

And I thought she was just asking to stay on the Monday night.

Anyway,

Cut a long story short.

My thoughts went to,

Oh no,

I feel so bad.

She's going to be really annoyed at me or disappointed,

Or that's going to be really stressful for her.

And so,

Again,

There was this thought coming into my mind that wasn't actually fact based,

But there was a sense of because I've thought it,

Because I've just pictured my friend in my mind being annoyed at me,

Being angry at me,

This somehow must be a fact.

Just like because I pictured in my mind that I'd left the cooker on when I was cooking,

Because I'd seen it,

I'd visualised it.

It was this feeling of,

Well,

I can see it.

My mind's telling me this must be a fact.

And anyway,

She texts me later on and she said,

I'm so sorry,

By the way.

She said,

I'm so sorry.

I really hope I didn't stress you out.

I really felt like I've put too much on you there.

I'm asking to stay with you anyway.

And I just want to say I'm really sorry.

So there she was thinking that she was the one that annoyed me.

And there I was thinking I was the one that upset her.

And of course,

We were probably both doing this thing of imagining that we'd upset the other one.

So again,

A really good example of how just because I thought it,

It really definitely did not mean that it was a fact.

Now,

Of course,

This could happen in the opposite way and it could happen in the way where we think something,

I guess,

Is really positive or good.

And maybe that's a fact too.

So we do need to acknowledge that.

So that could be that you go on a date with someone and you think,

Wow,

That went so well.

I really think they're into me.

And,

You know,

Of course,

That could turn out that actually the person says,

Hey,

Do you know what?

It wasn't really,

I wasn't really feeling it.

And so that can be really disappointing,

Right?

And that can be difficult if we do think that something's been positive,

But it turns out not to be factual.

But either way,

What we're getting into today is just starting to see that separation.

Just starting to make sure we're not believing everything our mind says.

It's a bit like how,

You know,

How we hear a lot nowadays of there being like fake news and we can't believe every article we see online.

We even are at a point where we can't believe every video or photograph that we see because it could be AI.

It's like there is so much there about is this,

Is this fake news?

Is this real?

Is this a fake picture?

Is this real?

And it's hard,

I guess,

Not to go down that spiral of,

Gosh,

I can't trust anything then.

And of course,

The wider practice here is how we come back into a much,

Much deeper part of ourselves that is far beyond the mind,

A deeper,

More grounded,

Perhaps even more soul-based,

Intuitive-based,

Trusted part of ourselves.

And so in a way,

I want to encourage you to see if you can at times see your mind like this in a way where if you see an article online,

You might need to almost,

I guess,

Run it through a bit of a fact checker.

This is what we can do with the mind when our mind's doing this.

So to use those examples,

I might say to myself,

Right,

I'm having this thought that my friend's really annoyed at me because I said she couldn't stay at my house tonight.

I was unavailable.

I might notice that thought come in,

Notice all the emotions that it's coming with.

And then I might take a pause,

Take a breather,

Do all of my nervous system regulation stuff,

Because that's just going to help us to be even be able to be in a place where we can begin to rationalize again.

On a side note,

If you don't know how to do that,

Check out my course on breaking through anxiety,

Your nervous system regulation.

They're really important to know how to do.

Then we can bring in this stuff of,

Is this a fact?

And so anything,

Basically anything that lies outside of absolute fact,

We perhaps just need to go,

OK,

This isn't a fact.

I don't know what I'm necessarily going to do with that,

But I can't.

What I can't do is I can't just believe this thought that's coming.

I can't just believe the monkey mind.

This isn't about getting paranoid.

This isn't about going,

Oh God,

I can't believe anything I say,

Anyone else says.

It's just about saying,

Is this a thought or is this a fact?

So,

For example,

If we're feeling stressed about work,

But then we actually get an email where our boss actually says,

Look,

I've got some issues with stuff that's going on with your work right now.

I think we need to chat about it.

That's an example of,

You've actually got some evidence.

This is actually more of that fact-based thought.

It's not just a thought that's coming out of nowhere without anything actually backing it up.

Whereas if your boss messages you saying,

Hey,

You're around for a chat tomorrow,

Do you see how there's no evidence there that that's something you need to worry about?

So,

Yes,

Of course,

We have to team this,

As I say,

With making sure our nervous system is continually getting as regulated as possible.

Because peak moments of stress,

Like I said that day,

I traveled to the beach,

I was a bit stressed,

There was a lot going on.

I was struggling to kind of do that whole rationalization of,

Hey,

That thought just popped into your mind,

But there's no fact here.

So when our nervous system feels a bit dysregulated,

This is harder to do.

But either way,

I really hope you can take something from this today of beginning to fact check your thoughts.

And what you'll notice is,

Really,

There's not a lot of thoughts that are always fact-based,

Especially from that monkey mind place.

So yes,

I'm looking around my room right now.

And yes,

It's a fact that I can see photographs hanging on my wall,

I can see my plant,

Like these are fact-based thoughts that might coming in and out of my mind.

But everything else that monkey mind that,

Oh,

What's going to happen later?

Oh,

Is this going to go right?

Oh,

Is this going to go wrong?

That's when we start getting into,

Hmm,

This isn't actually a fact.

So we pause and we run it through our own internal fact checker.

We begin to become the observer again.

And we draw upon all those wonderful practices we're learning in a space like this,

In terms of meditation,

In terms of all the mindfulness that I'm sure you're building on.

I will leave you in with that.

And I hope you can join me for another one in this series,

Or come and join me for some of my courses and my other tracks.