The world we experience begins in our minds.
Our thoughts and expectations form our dispositions and beliefs about ourselves. Ultimately, this affects how we see the world and the people we encounter. Have you ever tried giving people—even yourself— the benefit of the doubt and just couldn’t? People proved you right too many times for you to even be surprised when they hurt you how you expected them to? A large part of that is due to the events the brain records and holds onto as a reference point, reminding us that this person or situation hurt us in the past. The purpose of the brain is to ensure our safety and survival, therefore, when the brain brings up old, negative thoughts, it is trying to do its job. Unfortunately, the brain can be a bit intrusive and overbearing.
Being a person who has wrestled with attachment-related anxiety, it is quite easy to get caught in a web of negative thinking about yourself based on what has happened to you. It is also quite easy to expect the worst from others and the experiences encountered. A challenge for those of us who have wrestled with holding negative thoughts is to change our perspective on the things that happen to us. How can we do this? Through a process called mentalizing. Mentalizing can be seen as a reflective process that allows for one to consider the psychological reasons for personal and other people’s behaviors.
Mentalizing is about reshaping the negative occurrences in our lives and shifting our position to a positive one. The goal is to give insight into the following things:
- The causes of distress
- The impact of growing up in your “family of origin” (your mother, father, siblings) on your relationship
- The impact of other experiences on your relationship
- The obstacles to a healthier, more intimate relationship
- The reasons you become unreasonably upset at times
Due to the various attachment styles, mentalizing looks different for different people. For instance, I have a preoccupied attachment style and for me, my greatest fears are rejection and betrayal. When one or both of these happen, or I assume they are happening, it is not difficult to begin fault-finding, isolation, and giving in to negative thoughts about myself. Yet, despite how varied our attachment styles and approaches to mentalizing, it helps to be considerate of people’s thoughts, behaviors, and feelings.
Exercise: Developing a Culture of Curiosity
Mentalizing is all about expanding our view on the world. Many times we become upset because things did not go as we thought they should because we were fixated on one outcome. In order to strengthen our ability to mentalizing, we have to consider multiple outcomes and possibilities. This is accomplished by becoming more curious about who we are and why we do what we do. Here is an exercise that can help develop a bit more curiosity about ourselves:
1. Choose a situation. Pick some behavior or interaction—positive or negative—to focus on that you have questions about, or that you could be wrong about.
2. Check in with what you are feeling and thinking. Do a thorough job of this. This can be done doing a body scan and labeling thoughts and emotions.
3. Consider possible explanations. Once you can connect with and identify your emotions and thoughts, consider the possible reasons why the incident happened, using what you know about yourself and your partner.
4. Find out the truth. For the purposes of this exercise, this last step is not necessarily very important—that is, what’s essential here is not that you guess correctly about the motivations of your partner. Instead, the purpose of this exercise is to open yourself up to considering possibilities as you remain connected with how you feel. That said, once you are more open, you might find an answer that is supported by the evidence around you and that resonates inside you as accurate, even if it is not comfortable.”
Until next time, continue to stay guided by grace,
Tra
Guided by Grace 