Source: Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash
If you’ve contacted a therapist, chances are you are dissatisfied with your life. Things didn’t turn out the way you hoped; you may feel angry, misunderstood, hurt. Together with your therapist, you pick through your history, examine your friendships, scrutinize your family, spouse, or society.
In the early stages of therapy, intense feelings are likely to pour out of you, emotions such as rage, hurt, sadness, or despair. Unburdening yourself of these feelings brings a satisfying sense of relief. Someone is finally listening and understanding you; you feel validated.
After relieving yourself of all these pent-up feelings — then what?
Searching for Clues to a Toxic Mindset
Therapists are skilled listeners. They nod quietly, ask questions, and offer you a tissue when you cry. But beneath their calm exteriors, they are studying your every move. How you sit in the chair, the tone of your voice, the way you avoid eye contact or transmit anxiety by tapping your foot or shifting in your seat.
Since most therapists are empaths by nature, they study their own emotional reactions to you as well. They notice the feelings that you induced in them. For example, do they feel anxious, threatened, or depressed when they come into contact with you? These empathic inductions are important to study because they often reflect how people in the world experience you.
Unearthing Toxic Mindset Patterns
After collecting all this data, your therapist now has a collection of emotional puzzle pieces to fit together. Soon patterns start to come into focus. Repetitive experiences, expressions, or emotional tics appear. Power life-shaping toxic mindsets begin to emerge, such as:
- “I’m always an outsider.”
- “I have trouble trusting people."
- “Everyone abandons me.”
When phrases such as these take root, they can become a toxic mindset that undermines your life. For example:
- “I’m always an outsider.” You anticipate rejection in social situations.
- “I have trouble trusting people.” You hold yourself at a distance from others, avoid intimacy, or isolate yourself.
- “Everyone always abandons me.” You see the potential for hurt in every relationship. Getting close to others will always end badly, so why do it?
Each toxic mindset perpetuates the same unhappy outcome, a phenomenon Sigmond Freud called the “repetition compulsion.” In other words, you repeat what is familiar, even if it is unhealthy.
As Buddhist peace advocate and poet, Daisaku Ikeda writes in his book, The Wisdom For Creating Happiness and Peace: “When we allow ourselves to be ruled by such negative attitudes, we are like a plane that has lost its direction in a heavy fog. We can see nothing clearly.”
But here’s the good news: What drives that harmful compulsion? The wish to resolve the unhealthy pattern. This wish contains enormous energy for change. A skilled therapist will harness that energy, challenge your toxic mindset, and direct you toward making new choices that will produce different outcomes and end the repetition compulsion cycle.
THE BASICS
Individual or Group Therapy?
Though there are dozens of kinds of therapy, the two most common are individual or group therapy. For extreme mood problems, such as overwhelming depression or anxiety, individual therapy is an ideal choice. To learn how to build healthy relationships or overcome struggles with addiction or impulsive behaviors, you can't beat the power of weekly group therapy.
Still struggling? These articles may help:
