1. Are you Stuck on thoughts or stuck with thoughts.

Sometimes when I work I think, I should write that idea down, maybe it would be helpful for another patient, or maybe I could use that in supervision or teaching.  Given that it is not thinking about something that moves you anywhere I thought I would take action and write some of the things I do here. These ideas are just ideas and are in no way a substitute for seeing a real live person to get the help you need.

I was working with a patient of mine who we can call Mary because it isn't her name.We were looking at what was making it hard to move forward in building a "bigger life" including working, compassion and giving to others rather than a "smaller life" of weight control and counting calories.

We ended up with this picture (it goes without saying that I once got kicked out of a high school art class for being an abomination to the art world - harsh but fair btw).

There are actually a lot of different concepts in this picture.  I thought that maybe I would break it down over a couple of posts.  

This one is about getting stuck on thoughts rather than stuck with thoughts.

Mary had a mind full of thoughts.  Her thoughts would both maintain the eating disorder (I cant cope, you dont need it) and more change oriented thoughts (your body is collapsing, it dosen't matter).  She could see that these thoughts would just swirl around in her head creating chaos and confusion.  She tried to challenge these thoughts but these seemed to get her more paralysed by thoughts.  Eventually she would get "stuck on" thoughts - she would act as if they were commands that had to be followed.  In the previous week she had been stuck on her eating disordered thoughts and followed them automatically.  She had followed them thoughtlessly (without thinking about them) or "mindlessly" (without being that aware that she was following thoughts).

We then drew another picture to indicate another way of 'relating' to thinking.

This represents developing a "helicopter stance" to our thoughts (sometimes called an observing mind).  We can learn to look at our thoughts, almost as if they were external to us, and see them as thoughts.  We discussed how (at least for the present moments) we are "stuck with" these thoughts.  We don't get to choose our thoughts we have in our heads, our minds just produce them. We can't not think, we can't choose to not have certain thoughts.  These thoughts are coming with us wherever we go. They are our constant companions, at least for the time being.  

The good news is that from this helicopter stance we can have a choice in where we go, rather than just following thoughts we are "stuck on".

I have found that helping people develop a helicopter stance to their thoughts be a really helpful step in moving towards creating a more meaningful life irrespective of what their head is telling them.

We can talk about the "how" to do this later.