5 effective exercises to help you stop believing your unwanted automatic thoughts

5 effective exercises to help you stop believing your unwanted automatic thoughts

Steven Hayes

It’s time to get up. No, it isn’t; it’s only 6:00. That’s seven hours of sleep. I need eight — that’s the goal. I feel fat. Well, birthday cake, duh. I have to eat cake on my son’s birthday. Maybe, but not such a big piece. I bet I’m up to 196 lbs. Shoot … by the time I run the Halloween candy/Turkey Day gauntlet I’ll be back over 200. But maybe not. Maybe more like 193. Maybe exercise more. Anything would be “more.” I’ve gotta focus. I have a chapter to write. I’m falling behind … and I’m getting fat again. Noticing the voices and letting them run might be a good start to the chapter. Better to go back to sleep. But maybe it could work. It was sweet of Jacque to suggest it. She’s up early. Maybe it’s her cold. Maybe I should get out of bed and see if she is OK. It’s only 6:15. I need my eight hours. It’s close now to seven and a half hours. Still not eight.

Not only are these thoughts remarkably circuitous, but most of them are about rules and punishment. Many of them are also contradictions of prior thoughts. This kind of mental to-and-fro is probably familiar to you.

This kind of arguing with ourselves comes naturally to most of us. In fact, the old cartoon device of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is understood even by small children. When we are deeply focused on a mental task, our minds enter into a state of flow, in which our thoughts, emotions and actions are all temporarily in sync. But our more usual state is one of mind wandering, which is often characterized by a good deal of mental disagreement and disengagement.