Thinking Skills for Overcoming Past Trauma, Fear, and Failure
Children, teens, and adults with ADD often develop erroneous thought patterns, based on the numerous failures they have experienced in their lives. It often helps to investigate the way an ADD person thinks and then teach them to correct any erroneous thought patterns.
Here are some examples of common negative thoughts:
“I’m a terrible student.”
“I’m always messing things up.”
“No one ever wants to be with me.”
“Anybody could have done that. I’m not so special.”
“The teacher (or boss) doesn’t like me.”
“I will fail at this.”
“I feel you don’t love me.”
“I should do better.”
“I’m so stupid.”
These thoughts severely limit a person’s ability to enjoy his or her life. How people think “moment by moment” has a huge impact on how they feel and how they behave. Negative thoughts often drive difficult behaviors and cause people to have problems with their self-esteem. Hopeful thoughts, on the other hand, influence positive behaviors and lead people to feel good about themselves and be more effective in their day-to-day lives.
Most ADD children, teens, and adults have lots of negative thoughts. These thoughts come from many sources. Some of the negative thoughts come from what other people have told them about themselves (i.e., “You’re no good! Why can’t you ever listen? What’s the matter with you? You make me crazy!”). Other negative thoughts originate from experiences where the person is continually frustrated, either at home, school, or work. They begin to think thoughts such as, “I’m stupid. I can’t ever do anything right. It will never work out for me.”
In many ways, our brain works like a computer. When a person receives negative INPUT about themselves, they STORE it in their subconscious mind, and the input becomes EXPRESSED as negative thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. Unless people are taught how to talk back to these harmful thoughts and messages, they believe them unconditionally. This is a critical point. Most people never challenge the thoughts that go through their heads. They never even think about their own thoughts. They just believe what they think, even though the thoughts may be very irrational. Their behavior is often based on false assumptions or false ideas.
Unfortunately, many ADD children carry these negative thought patterns into adulthood, causing them to have problems with their moods and behavior. These negative thoughts affect their moods and in many children become the seeds of anxiety or depression later on in life. It’s critical to teach people about their thoughts and to teach them to challenge what they think, rather than just accepting blindly the thoughts that go through their heads. Unfortunately, when you’re a child, no one teaches you to think much about your thoughts or to challenge the notions that go through your head, even though your thoughts are always with you. Why do we spend so much time teaching kids about diagramming sentences and so little time teaching them how to think clearly? Most people do not understand how important thoughts are, and leave the development of thought patterns to random chance. Did you know that thoughts have actual weight and mass? They are real! They have significant influence on every cell in your body (more detail on this in a little bit). When a person’s mind is burdened with many negative thoughts, it affects that person’s ability to learn, his or her ability to relate to other people, and his or her physical health. Teaching people with ADD how to control and direct their thoughts in a positive way can be helpful in all areas of their lives.
Here are the actual step-by-step “positive thinking” principles that I use in my psychotherapy practice with children, teens, and adults. When people truly learn these principles, they gain more control over their feelings and their behavior.
Did you know . . . ?
STEP #1: Every time you have a thought your brain releases chemicals. That’s how our brain works:
Thoughts are real and they have a real impact on how you feel and how you behave.
STEP #2: Every time you have a mad thought, an unkind thought, a sad thought, or a cranky thought, your brain releases negative chemicals that make your body feel bad. Whenever you’re upset, imagine that your brain releases bubbles with sad or angry faces, looking to cause problems. Think about the last time you were mad. What did you feel inside your body? When most people are mad, their muscles get tense, their heart beats faster, their hands start to sweat, and they may even begin to feel a little dizzy. Your body reacts to every negative thought you have.
STEP #3: Every time you have a good thought, a happy thought, a hopeful thought, or a kind thought, your brain releases chemicals that make your body feel good. Whenever you’re happy, imagine that your brain releases bubbles with glad or smiling faces, making you feel good. Think about the last time you had a really happy thought (such as when you got a good grade on a test or cuddled a child). What did you feel inside your body? When most people are happy their muscles relax, their heart beats slower, their hands become dry, and they breathe slower. Your body also reacts to your good thoughts.
STEP #4: Your body reacts to every thought you have! We know this from polygraphs or lie detector tests. During a lie detector test, you are hooked up to equipment which measures:
The tester then asks questions, such as, “Did you do that thing?” If you did the bad thing your body is likely to have a “stress” response and it is likely to react in the following ways:
Almost immediately, the body reacts to what you think, whether you say anything or not.
Now the opposite is also true. If you did not do what they are asking you about, it is likely that your body will experience a “relaxation” response and react in the following ways:
Again, almost immediately, your body reacts to what you think. This not only happens when you’re asked about telling the truth; your body reacts to every thought you have, whether it is about school, friends, family, or anything else.
STEP #5: Thoughts are very powerful! They can make your mind and your body feel good or they can make you feel bad! Every cell in your body is affected by every thought you have. When people get emotionally upset, they actually develop physical symptoms, such as headaches or stomachaches. If you can think about good things you will feel better. It worked for Abraham Lincoln. He had periods of bad depression when he was a child and adult. Some days he didn’t even get out of bed. In his later life, however, he learned to treat his bad feelings with laughter. He learned that when he laughed, he felt better.
STEP #6: Unless you think about your thoughts, they are “automatic” or “they just happen.” Since they just happen, they are not always correct. Your thoughts do not always tell you the truth. Sometimes they even lie to you. I once knew a boy who thought he was stupid because he didn’t do well on tests. When we tested his IQ (intelligence level), however, we discovered that he was close to a genius! You don’t have to believe every thought that goes through your head. It’s important to think about your thoughts to see if they help you or they hurt you. Unfortunately, if you never challenge your thoughts, you just “believe them” as if they were true.
STEP #7: You can train your thoughts to be positive and hopeful or you can just allow them to be negative and upset you. Once you learn about your thoughts, you can choose to think good thoughts and feel good, or you can choose to think bad thoughts and feel lousy. That’s right, it’s up to you! You can learn how to change your thoughts and you can learn to change the way you feel.
One way to learn how to change your thoughts is to notice them when they are negative and talk back to them. If you can correct negative thoughts, you take away their power over you. When you just think a negative thought without challenging it, your mind believes it and your body reacts to it.
STEP #8: As I mentioned above, negative thoughts are mostly automatic. They “just happen.” I call these thoughts Automatic Negative Thoughts. If you take the first letter from each of these words, it spells the word “ANT.” Think of these negative thoughts that invade your mind like ants that bother people at a picnic. One negative thought, like one ant at a picnic, is not a big problem. Two or three negative thoughts, like two or three ants at a picnic, and it’s more irritating. Ten or twenty negative thoughts, like ten or twenty ants at a picnic, can cause real problems.
Whenever you notice these automatic negative thoughts (ANTs), you need to crush them or they’ll begin to ruin your whole day. One way to crush these ANTs is to write down the negative thought and talk back to it. For example, if you think, Other kids will laugh at me when I give my speech, write it down and then write down a positive response—something like The other kids will like my speech and find it interesting. When you write down negative thoughts and talk back to them, you take away their power and help yourself feel better.
Some kids tell me they have trouble talking back to these negative thoughts because they feel that they are lying to themselves. Initially they believe that the thoughts that go through their mind are the truth. Remember, thoughts sometimes lie to you. It’s important to check them out before you just believe them!
Here are nine different ways that our thoughts lie to us to make situations out to be worse than they really are. Think of these nine ways as different species or types of ANTs (automatic negative thoughts). When you can identify the type of ANT, you begin to take away the power it has over you. I have labeled some of these ANTs as red, because these ANTs are particularly harmful to you. Notice and exterminate ANTs whenever possible.
ANT #1: “All or nothing” thinking. These thoughts happen when you make something out to be all good or all bad. There’s nothing in between. You see everything in black or white terms. The thought for children, “There’s nothing to do,” is an example of this. When children say “There’s nothing to do” they feel down and upset, bored, and unmotivated to change the situation. But is, There’s nothing to do, a rational thought? Of course not: It’s just a thought. Even on a day when it’s raining outside and children have to stay in, they can probably list twenty things to do if they put their minds to it. But if they never challenge the thought, There’s nothing to do, they just believe it and spend the rest of the day feeling crummy. Other examples of “all or nothing thinking” include thoughts such as, I’m the worst ball player in the city and If I get an A on this test, I’m a great student, but if I do poorly, then I’m no good at all.
ANT #2: “Always” thinking. This happens when you think something that happened will “always” repeat itself. For example, if your wife is irritable and she gets upset, you might think to yourself, She’s always yelling at me, even though she yells only once in a while. But just the thought She’s always yelling at me is so negative that it makes you feel sad and upset. Whenever you think in words like “always,” “never,” “no one,” “everyone,” “every time,” “everything,” these are examples of “always” thinking. There are many examples of “always” thinking: No one ever plays with me. Everyone is always picking on me. You never listen to me. You always give her what she wants. This type of ANT is very common. Watch out for it.
ANT #3 (red ANT): Focusing on the negative. This occurs when your thoughts only see the bad in a situation and ignore any of the good that might happen. For example, if you have to move and you’re sad to leave your friends, you don’t think of the new places you’ll see and the new friends you’ll make. It’s very important, if you want to keep your mind healthy, to focus on the good parts of your life a lot more than the bad parts. I once helped a child who was depressed. In the beginning, he could only think about the bad things that happened to him. He had recently moved and told me that he would never make new friends (even though he already had several). He thought he would do poorly in his new school (even though he got mostly good grades), and that he would never have any fun (even though he lived near a bay and an amusement park). By focusing on the negative in his new situation, he was making it very hard on himself to adjust to his new home. He would have been much better off if he looked at all the positives in the situation rather than the negatives.
ANT #4 (red ANT): Fortune telling. This is where you predict the worst possible outcome to a situation. For example, before you have to give a speech in front of a class or work meeting, you might say to yourself, Other people will laugh at me or think I’m stupid. Just having this thought will make you feel nervous and upset. This is a red ANT because it can do real damage to your chances for feeling good.
I once treated a ten-year-old boy named Kevin who stuttered in class whenever he read out loud. In private he was a wonderful reader, but whenever he started to read in class he thought to himself, I’m a lousy reader; the other kids will laugh at me. Because he had these thoughts, he stopped raising his hand to volunteer to read. In fact, this thought made him so upset that he started getting sick before school, and missed nearly a month of school before his mother brought him to see me. He also stopped answering the telephone at home for fear that he would stutter whenever he said hello. When he told me about his thoughts in class and at home, I understood the problem. When you predict that bad things will happen, your mind then often makes them happen: the classic self-fulfilling prophecy. The treatment for Kevin was to get him to replace those negative thoughts and pictures in his head with the image of him being a wonderful reader in class. Learning breathing techniques (we’ll cover this later) and being the designated person to answer the telephone at home also helped his confidence. Whenever you’re afraid of unreasonable things, such as answering the telephone or reading in class, it is important to face your fears. Otherwise, fears develop power over you. Over the next couple of weeks, Kevin was able to go back to school, and he even volunteered to read. His mother told me that at home he ran to answer the telephone whenever it rang. If you are going to predict anything at all, it is best to predict the best. It will help you feel good and it will help your mind make it happen.
ANT #5 (red ANT): Mind reading. This happens when you believe that you know what another person is thinking when they haven’t even told you. Many people do mind reading, and more often than not it gets them into trouble. It is the major reason why people have trouble in relationships. I tell people, “Please don’t read my mind; I have enough trouble reading it myself!” You know that you are doing mind reading when you have thoughts such as, “Those people are mad at me. They don’t like me. They were talking about me.”
I once treated a teenager, Dave, who had this problem so badly that he would hide in clothes racks at the shopping mall so that other kids wouldn’t see him. He told me, “If they see me, they’ll think I look funny and then they’ll want to tease me.” He became very nervous around other people because he worried about what others thought of him. He finally realized that other teenagers were more worried about themselves and they really spent little time thinking about him. Avoid reading anyone’s mind. You never know what others are thinking.
ANT #6: Thinking with your feelings. This occurs when you believe your negative feelings without ever questioning them. Feelings are very complex, and, as I mentioned above, feelings sometimes lie to you. But many people believe their feelings even though they have no evidence for them. “Thinking with your feelings” thoughts usually start with the words “I feel . . .” For example, “I feel like you don’t love me,” “I feel stupid,” “I feel like a failure,” “I feel nobody will ever trust me.” Whenever you have a strong negative feeling, check it out. Look for the evidence behind the feeling. Do you have real reasons to feel that way? Or are your feelings based on events or things from the past?
Here’s an example: Matt, age ten, had a problem learning and he got expelled from his school for fighting. He felt that he was stupid and that he was a bad boy. When I first met him, I diagnosed ADD and started him on medication. He also went to a new school. He did wonderful! He did so well, in fact, that his old school (which was a better school) was willing to take him back. When his mother told him this good news, he became very upset. He said that he felt that he would fail and have lots of problems. He was letting the “old” feelings from the past mess up his chances for a new start. When he corrected his negative feelings by talking back to them, he was able to return to his old school. He even made the honor roll!
ANT #7: Guilt beatings. Guilt is not a helpful emotion. In fact, guilt often causes you to do those things that you don’t want to do. Guilt beatings happen when you think with words like “should,” “must,” “ought to,” or “have to.” Here are some examples: I should be nice to my younger brother. I must never lie. I ought to call my grandmother. I have to do my homework. Because of human nature, whenever we think that we “must” do something, no matter what it is, we don’t want to do it. Remember the story of Adam and Eve: The only restriction that God put on them when he gave them the Garden of Eden was that they shouldn’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Almost immediately after God told them what they “shouldn’t” do, they started to wonder why they shouldn’t do it. Well, you know the rest of the story. It is better to replace “guilt beatings” with phrases like I want to do this . . . It fits my goals to do that . . . It would be helpful to do this. . . . So in our examples above, it would be helpful to change those phrases to I want to be nice to my younger brother. It’s helpful for me not to lie, because people will trust me. I want to call my grandmother. It’s in my best interest to do my homework.
ANT #8: Labeling. Whenever you attach a negative label to yourself or to someone else, you sabotage your ability to take a clear look at the situation. Some examples of negative labels are “nerd,” “jerk,” “idiot,” “spoiled brat,” and “clown.” Negative labels are very harmful. Whenever you call yourself or someone else a spoiled brat or an idiot, you lump that person in your mind with all of the “spoiled brats” or “idiots” that you’ve ever known and you become unable to deal with them in a reasonable way. You begin to expect the worst of them (or yourself). Stay away from negative labels.
ANT #9 (the most poisonous red ANT): Blame. People who ruin their own lives have a strong tendency to blame other people when things go wrong. They take little responsibility for their problems. When something goes wrong at home, school, or work, they try to find someone to blame. They rarely admit their own problems. Typically, you’ll hear statements from them like, “It wasn’t my fault that . . . ,” “That wouldn’t have happened if you had . . . ,” “How was I supposed to know . . . ,” “It’s your fault that . . .”
The bottom-line statement goes something like this: “If only you had done something differently, then I wouldn’t be in the predicament I’m in. It’s your fault, and I’m not responsible.”
Blaming others starts early. I have three children. When my youngest, Katie, was eighteen months old she would blame her brother, who was eleven, for any trouble she might be in. Her nickname for him was DiDi, and “Didi did it,” even if he wasn’t home. One day she spilled a drink at the table while her mother’s back was turned. When her mother turned around and saw the mess and asked what had happened, Katie told her that “Didi spilled my drink.” When her mother told her that her brother was at a friend’s house, Katie persisted in saying that “Didi did it.”
Whenever you blame someone else for the problems in your life, you become powerless to change anything. Many kids play the “Blame Game,” but it rarely helps them. Stay away from blaming thoughts and take personal responsibility to change the problems you have.
Whenever you notice an ANT entering your mind, train yourself to recognize it and write it down. When you write down automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and talk back to them, you begin to take away their power and gain control over your moods.
Here are some examples of ways to kill these ANTs:
|
ANT |
Species of ANT |
Kill the ANT |
||
|
There’s nothing to do. |
“all or nothing” |
There are probably lots of things to do if I think about it for a little while. |
||
|
No one ever plays with me. |
“always” thinking |
That’s silly. I have played with lots of kids in my life. |
||
|
The boss doesn’t like me. |
mind reading |
I don’t know that. Maybe she’s just having a bad day. Bosses are people too. |
||
|
The whole class will laugh at me. |
fortune telling |
I don’t know that. Maybe they’ll really like my speech. |
||
|
I’m stupid. |
labeling |
Sometimes I do things that aren’t too smart, but I’m not stupid. |
||
|
It’s my wife’s fault. |
blame |
I need to look at my part of the problem and look for ways I can make the situation better. |
Your thoughts and the thoughts of your children matter. Teach them to be positive and it will benefit their mind and their bodies. Take time to teach yourself and your kids how to think positive and feel good.