Chapter 6 Killing The “it”
Report On Assignment
Objective: By the end of this session you will understand and recognize the source of and the harm done by automatic thinking from the past. Each participant will demonstrate their proficiency of using the “Change your thoughts and your life worksheet.”
It was several years ago, from an experience in my own life, that I first came to see and understand these concepts. At about 4:30 a.m. one morning, I lay in bed listening to a familiar voice in my head. That voice was relentless, like a little old man on crack cocaine talking trash. This was not a new experience. I had spent many early mornings suffering as the victim of this little imp’s interference. As far back as I could remember, between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. had been my “witching hour.” During that time, I was savagely reprimanded by this nagging voice which I now have come to identify simply as “it.” “It” would give me a travelogue of my past and remind me of the things I had done and should not have done. “It” then brought up what I didn’t do and should have. “It” always ran on autopilot without invitation.
After months and years of allowing “it” to torment me, I finally recognized that this wasn’t really me thinking. “It” was thinking for me and, yet, by listening to “it” I always ended up anxious, depressed and confused. One morning it occurred to me that “it” was a liar and I didn’t have to listen. The past is in the past and what happened is what happened. “It’s” interpretations of my past were meaningless. ”It” was like a little Mexican Chihuahua dog with an attitude barking behind my neighbor’s fence. Recognizing and making that conscious choice to stop listening to the “it” has set me free of my past.
Your freedom is NOW yours to choose.
We have within us an ever constant stream of incessant, unintentional, involuntary thought, 90% of which is negative. This mindless thought stream is like a tape recorder that plays without our invitation. It produces ideas and images that just pop up in our mind like advertisements on a computer. The thoughts may appear at random or in response to an event in our lives. That thought stream is unremitting and will flow through our minds continually – becoming harmful if we unconsciously get caught in the negative stream and let
the negative emotions lead to our self-defeating behaviors. The source of this stream is the meaning that we assign to the events of our past, opinions we received from others and old situations. These thoughts, unexamined, are the source of all negative emotions, anxiety, depression, and unhappiness. These emotions then give rise to our self-defeating behaviors.
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EVENT (Disagreement with spouse) |
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THOUGHT (No one will ever understand you) |
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EMOTION (Rejection, shame, loneliness, fear) |
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BEHAVIOR (Acting out SDB; anything to cover up negative emotions) |
C. S. Lewis in his brilliant Book The Screwtape Letters3 gives this thought stream an evil or Satanic origin. Screwtape, an elderly retired devil is sending written instruction to Wormwood, a young devil who has just started work on his first ‘patient.’
Paraphrased here it says:
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“My dear Wormwood, You have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’. Encourage him to read nothing and give him the grand idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to pick up is true. It is not your job to teach. It is your job to befuddle.” – Screwtape |
For most of our lives we have assumed that we were our thoughts and that we had to accept those thoughts as true. We are not our thoughts and we don’t have to believe any of these as true. To stay present to those pay attention now to what you are thinking and how you feel. Because of the power of the thoughts going through our brains we cannot afford to allow them to stream through unconsciously unexamined. We must be mindful or what is there and keep a constant watch on our brain activity. In these exercises you challenged and changed the thoughts in the present moment. Instead of allowing the situation to determine your being, you determined your own being and change the outcome of the situation.
Every thought we have is creating our future. Allowing the negative automatic voice to run unchecked creates a negative future. The point of power is always mindfulness in the present moment. This is where change happens. Remember thoughts are only thoughts, and thoughts can be changed. We must release the past and forgive everyone. We must be willing to begin to learn to love ourselves and others as well. Self-approval and self-acceptance in the now are the keys to positive change. When we really love ourselves and others, everything in our life works.
One year while attending the Utah Mental Health conference I participated in a workshop entitled “Voices.” During the workshop each participant was hooked up to a tape recorder with ear phones. Then for 45 minutes we listened to voices that diagnosed schizophrenics listen to in their heads every day. Though the voices were louder and more negative I was surprised at how familiar these voices sound to thoughts that have been showing up in my head for years. We all have a negative voice in our heads, an opposition in all things. That voice doesn’t belong to us. When we were born, we didn’t have the voice. The voice comes after we learn language then the different points of view and all the judgments and lies from the tradition of our past. Even when we first learn to speak we speak only the truth. But little by little we get reprogrammed and the big lie is born. The big lie is, “There is something wrong with you and you had better cover it up. “Hide or God will see your nakedness.” This voice is the voice of shame.
In our addiction recovery groups we use an exercise entitled, “Letter to the addict.” This letter gives us an introduction to a means
of shutting the door to the influence this negative voice had had on me for years. The recovering group member who has lived with his or her addiction for many years knows the voice of the addiction well and can play that role to perfection.
My Letter to the addiction
I know you are there. I know who you are and the power you have had in my life. I may not be able to get you to shut up but I don’t have to listen. I don’t have to listen even when you shout from the house ops. I don’t have to listen when you spek to me in the newspaper or on the TV or the radio. I kno now I am not you. You have polluted my thinking but you arre ot my thinking. I choose o continue to seek another voice. The voice that led me out of the wildness. It did once and it cn do it again. I also know that I am not stonrg enough on my own to get rid of you in my life. I need continuous and constant help. I need a poweree greatr than myself. I need God and that is where I choose to go. Your voice not longer reans supreme in my life. I choose to seek God continually. I am going to expose your voice to everyone I meet. I will neve give up.
With commitment.
Steeven Bunnell
For an in depth interview with the addiction go to “The Voice Of The Addiction” in the appendix.
There are many examples in literature that refer to these dual voices. One voice speaks the truth and the other one or other ones tell us lies.
Colin Wilson, a brilliant and prolific British writer had an individual goal of becoming the next Albert Einstein. Because he came from a relatively poor family, he was forced to drop out of school at the age of 16. While working as a laboratory assistant, he became very despondent and decided to commit suicide by drinking hydrocyanic acid. Just before he was to commit this desperate and final act, he had a flash of insight. There were actually two Colin Wilsons. He felt like there were two people living inside the same body. One was a boy idiot filled with anger and self pity who had a negative view on everything. The other was his real self that saw the truth and told the truth. The boy idiot, he realized, was about to kill them both.
From that moment on, Colin Wilson consciously decided to see himself in a new way. He saw himself as the real Colin Wilson and stopped paying attention to the idiot teenager. He later wrote that from that point, “I glimpsed the marvelous immense richness of reality, extended to distant horizons.”1
Another prominent writer tells of suffering from extreme anxiety up until just prior to his 30th birthday. “I awakened one night,” he says, “like I had for so many nights in complete excruciating anxiety. The noises of the night and the shadows in the room contributed to my feelings of dread and despair. The desire for annihilation had overcome the nature desire to want to go on living. I didn’t want to live this way anymore. The thought that kept going through my mind was, ‘I can’t stand myself anymore.’ Then it occurred to me what an interesting thought this was. ‘Is there one of me or is there two? There must be two, the I and the me who can’t stand me.’ Maybe only one of them is real.”
This author concluded that there was a speaker and a listener. He identified his real self as the listener and an entity other than himself as the speaker. When he stopped listening to the speaker his whole life changed and his depression disappeared.2
The “it” is always irrelevant to who you are today. It treats you as if you were a child and leaves you unable to contact the real You. You could think of the “it’’ as a GPS from the Twilight Zone. When you follow “it’s” directions you spend your life trying to find streets that no longer exist in a city that vanished decades ago.
In the addiction recovery groups I lead, I conduct an exercise called “interviewing the snake.” We can always get the snake or the “it” to speak to us. Until they go through this exercise, the participants have assumed that the voice of the snake was coming from them and have just accepted the thoughts as true. It is refreshing and powerful to learn that these are not our thoughts and we don’t have to believe any of them as valid.
To stay present to your own negative thoughts, read the following exercise and some possible responses and then try it on yourself or do it with a partner with you playing the role of the snake. Pay attention to what you are thinking and what you feel.
In this exercise, we are going to “interview” your inner voice in order to identify your “it” and see “it’s” true identity.
A typical inner-voice conversation might go as follows:
Interviewer: “So Snake, how long have you been an influence in John’s life?”
Snake: “Since he was about age 12.”
Interviewer: “What was going on at that time that allowed you into his life?”
Snake: “It was a lonely time for him. He was being bullied at school and I stepped in to get him through the experience. After that, I just showed up to give him comfort when things got hard.”
Interviewer: “What influence have you had on his relationships with members of his own family?”
Snake: “I convinced him that he didn’t need them. After all, I got him through the hard things. I convinced him that he doesn’t need anything or anyone but me.”
Interviewer: “How have you impacted his school work or his productivity in life?”
Snake: “I constantly distract him from other interests. I am his focus. I am going to be his only focus. I helped him get to the Internet, pornography and other mindless pastimes, anything to keep him bound up inside his own head and away from real-life interactions.”
Interviewer: “So if you were in total control of his life, what would his life be like?”
Snake: “He would admit that he doesn’t need other people or anything outside of me. I am looking for total control.”
Interviewer: “Then you don’t really have John’s best interest at heart, do you?”
Snake: “I don’t understand the question.”
Now, it’s your turn. Go through this exercise yourself or with a partner, with you taking the role of the snake. The key to this exercise is to remember that the voice of the snake or the “it” is not you. It is an entity in and of itself. It isn’t speaking in your behalf or in your best interest. Always question what you consider to be your own thinking.
Now, take a moment to think about the exercise you have just completed. What was this exercise like for you? Please record your response here.
The previous exercise was designed to help you identify your “it.” After having come face to face with “it,” it is time to say goodbye in written form. I’m asking you to write a goodbye letter to your “it.” Now that you see “it” as separate from who you really are, you will find the following exercise powerful and freeing from your negative past. There is no right or wrong way to do this exercise. In thinking about writing the letter, you might consider that the “it” started out as and felt like a trusted friend. “It” helped you get through some tough times in your life by keeping your secrets and giving you a false sense of security and never judging any of your behaviors as bad or wrong. “It” may have stepped in and handled a difficult situation or two for you. With sincere thanks you might express some appreciation just as you would to any friend who has become a part of your life.
The main part of the letter is to look at how destructive “it” has become and what you have lost by letting “it” become such a part of your life. List all the consequences, such as broken trust, destroyed relationships, financial loss, embarrassment, etc. Add these to your letter as you explain to your “it” why it is time for you to say goodbye. At this point in your letter, I encourage you to really feel the emotion of letting go. It is hard to say goodbye to a friend even when the relationship has been more negative than positive. I encourage you to be forceful. You will need to tell “it” in no uncertain terms that this is the end. Most of those who have success with this exercise have really gotten angry with “it” in the end. For help with this, refer to the sample letter to the “it” in the appendix.
For a graphic description as to how individuals of authority can act as the “it” in our lives, refer to “Others as the ‘it,’” in the appendix.
In the next step, we will use an extremely effective tool for disappearing the “it.” This is the “Giving Up the ‘It’ to Gain the Me” worksheet. So you can learn how to use this worksheet, let’s go through one together and see how it works.
Giving Up the “It” to Gain the Me
With every circumstance in your life, you have a choice as to which voice you listen to.
Please list an event from your distant or recent past which created trauma, anxiety or irritation in your life. It can be any event—from a great tragedy down to a small irritation.)
- Event: _I can’t make my house payment.
- Emotions: Fear, frustration anger, etc.
- Thoughts from the “it”: (What does the “it” say about the situation? This is a most important part; it requires the most work and attention. Consciously notice the thoughts flowing through your mind.) “You are never going to make it. The economy is a disaster. There is no way to turn this around. You are going to end up in a bad place.”
- Resulting Behavior: (What behavior do you see coming out of these thoughts and emotions generated by the “it”?) Withdrawal, worry, chaotic thinking, unclear decision-making, worry, fret, anxiety, loss of focus, forgetfulness.
- Thoughts coming from the Me: (What does the ME, your true inner self, say about you?) You are capable. You have survived hard times before. You are creative, strong and energetic. There is always an answer or a solution.
- Which thoughts are true? Whichever ones I choose to declare as a real possibility.
- Which thoughts take me where I want to go, the “it” or the Me? The Me.
We are always in the process of creating possibilities with our thoughts. Natural law states, “Possibilities do not exist in time and space like a physical object. Possibilities exist in language, in the nature of the conversations we have with ourselves and other people. They become real in time and space as we continue to express them and refuse to allow their opposites to enter our minds.”
To create a new possibility in our lives we need to use a special kind of language called a declaration. A declaration is an act of language requiring no evidence which leads to an outcome. A declaration is different than an assertion. An assertion is either true of false. If I say it is raining outside and I got outside and discover the sun to be shining I have made a false assertion because an assertion requires evidence. A declaration, on the other hand, requires no evidence. It is just something I say to create a new outcome. The most famous declaration of all is The Declaration of Independence, the last paragraph of which is listed here.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Feel the power of that statement, while realizing that this statement was created in word without the slightest evidence that it was even possible. As it was stated, read and reread, look at the outcome it took us to. How many times do you think the “it” tried to convince the original framers of this document how foolish they were?
Declaration = An act of language requiring no evidence, that leads to an outcome. Remember, the Declaration of Independence was made in the face of no evidence that what they were declaring was possible.
- State a “Me” thought as a declaration. “The possibility I declare for myself and my life is the possibility of being passionately happy and debt free.”
- Application: Affirm this declaration 20 times a day and, whenever you have a choice or a decision to make, repeat the declaration and do the first thing that comes to your mind. Let’s picture it in your mind right now.
10. What behavior do you now see as a possibility? I see a solution to my problems and an access to power in my life.
Now how does that feel?
Discussion:
- What do you need to do to the negative automatic thoughts popping up in your mind?
- What is the effect of allowing those thought to pass through our minds unquestioned?
- What can we do to combat the negative mind flow?
Assignment:
Continue to use the exercises in the previous sessions (Review.) Use the steps outlined in this worksheet to become aware of your automatic thought process. Fill out a work sheet for those particularly “befuddling” situations or thoughts and bring them to our next session.
Assignment 2:
Tell someone about what you are leaning and invite them to participate in what you are learning and in the next course.
Change Your Thoughts and Your Life Worksheet
You may recognize the following exercise from Session 6: Living in the Now. Living in the “Now” assists you to become aware of and take control of your automatic thoughts. Using the blank lines below, think about a recent time when you felt hurt, angry or upset. Record the event that triggered the automatic thought and then fill in the rest of the blanks.
1. Event: _______________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
2. Emotions: ____________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
3. Automatic Thought: (This is the most important part, it requires the most work and attention. Consciously notice the thoughts flowing through your mind. Ex: “Life is hard”.) _________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
4. Resulting Behavior: (What behavior do you see coming out of these thoughts and emotions? Do you act out your SDB’s? Ex: Withdraw from life?) __________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
A. Are the thoughts true? _____________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
B. What do I get by believing these thoughts?__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
C. What could come into my life if I let these thoughts go?__________________ _________________________________________________________________
5. Logical response: (This comes out of the 4. ABC questions. Ex: “What I am telling myself is not realistic.”) ____________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
6. Challenge statement – (Ex: I am capable and can do hard things.) ________________________________________________________________________
7. New Behavior – (Ex: I get up and get it done.) ________________________________________________________________________The continued and repeated use of this worksheet will change your life and assist you to implement all the tools with have talked about in this program. Notice how being aware of your thoughts in the present moment and redirecting those thoughts allows you to be in control and change your moods, emotions and life.
