THE WORRY FREE LIFE
Preface
As a cognitive psychologist, I (Dr. Terry Sandbek) have spent about thirty years helping people change their negative, worrisome thoughts. This concentration on thought-changing is crucial for life changes because our emotions are driven by our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, expectations and all other manner of brain activity. In turn, our behavior is highly influenced by our emotional state. Humans are capable of changing their beliefs through many different avenues. Sometimes we can make drastic changes just through talking aloud what we are thinking about. Having someone just listen to us nonjudgmentally can be an effective catalyst for mental change. Sometimes we can change our thinking patterns by quiet meditation and rumination. Psychologists also know there are instances where change occurs immediately and quickly, as may happen when a person says, "That’s it. I am going to stop smoking," throws out his or her cigarettes, and never smokes again. One of the major focuses of education is to change our magical thinking of childhood to the rational thought processes of adulthood.
Development of Psychotherapy
When the profession of psychotherapy began, therapists used basic methods such as listening empathically, encouraging self-reflection, and strengthening resolve to help their clients. Since these are ways that people have demonstrated change in the outside world, most of these strategies were also effective inside the therapy office. Around the middle of the twentieth century, psychology began to become a science more than an art. The process of therapy was studied to find out what parts of it were the most effective for change. We eventually learned that although mere insight into why a person struggled with life was sometimes effective, for very many people, it wasn’t effective at all. When it was effective, the procedure was time consuming and costly. The first truly scientific approach to developing change strategies focused on external behavior and ignored, for the most part, internal processes such as emotions and thoughts. This approach brought about stunning results with problems such as fears, compulsions, and undesirable habits. Eventually, research psychologists began to apply the same scientific methodology to thoughts and emotions, referring to them as internal behaviors. Out of this line of research came cognitive therapy — technically called cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT). Of the many therapies that exist in mental health (there are over five hundred), cognitive therapy has exploded to the top of the recommended therapy list. Its popularity is not due to a majority vote by psychologists but because of the overwhelming amount of research that confirms its effectiveness in helping to change people’s lives.
Development of the Method Used in this Book
When I finished graduate school, CBT was in its infancy and was one of several different choices I had to use with my clients. I found that the more I used it, the more effective I became as a therapist. I also found that most, but all, of my clients did not want to just talk. They wanted me to show them how to gain more control over their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. My initial clientele were people with panic disorder and people who had eating disorders (I eventually wrote a self-help book for people with eating disorders called, The Deadly Diet). Today, I use CBT with almost any problem people bring to my office.
One day, twenty years ago, a client of mine asked, “Let me get this right. You are trying to get me to change my mind—which is filled with negative thoughts—to get rid of all the negative thoughts in my mind?” I was taken aback because it appeared as if I were teaching this person how to make progress by running in a circle.
Within the same week, another client said to me in a fit of frustration, “Dr. Sandbek, there is a voice in my head talking to me.” She immediately was afraid she had stepped over the line. She feared that if she was hearing voices, she would now be deemed crazy. Instead, the two situations sparked an idea in my head that I might use with other clients. After considerable thought, I began to introduce the idea to other clients.
I found that putting the worry and negative thinking outside of oneself appeared to have several advantages. The first would be to put “distance” between the client and the mental negativity. We know that babies’ brains are not capable of worry in the way adults experience it. Nobody wants to worry. Many people see worry as one of the most debilitating of all human experiences. Putting the worry outside let my clients give up taking “responsibility” for hosting the negativity and worry inside their heads. Instead, they could take responsibility for doing something about it. By attributing the worry to something outside of themselves, my clients could avoid self-condemnation, judgment, and labels. We assigned ownership of this negativity to an outside source— a source we called the Voice.
As the years went by, I found that this strategy became a powerful therapeutic tool. I developed “Voice Awareness Training” to help people identify, analyze, and change the influence of the Voice in their lives. Along the way, many religious people asked if the Voice could really be Satan. Others said the Voice sounded very much like an emotionally abusive parent. For still others, a boss or a former girlfriend or boyfriend was identified as the source from which the Voice derived. Some people drew pictures of the Voice and gave it a name.
Within our church classes we (Pat and Terry) have found that calling the Voice the “Enemy” has been quite successful because many churches use that terminology to describe the darker side of human nature. In this book, we use the generic term “Voice” but urge you to substitute your own language if you find that to be easier and more convincing. Other names that people have suggested are: the Spoiler, the Nasty One, the Accuser, and the Adversary. If you would rather use one of these or some other name for what we call the “Voice,” please feel free to do so. Whatever name you choose, your progress in learning these skills will be amplified by making the Voice as “real” as possible, even though it is simply a metaphor for that side of us that we would do better without.
One Method at a Glance
You may wonder why we even introduce this concept of the Voice. As described above, cognitive psychology has convincingly shown that our thoughts and beliefs have a powerful effect on our emotions and behavior—whether for good or ill. By externalizing our unrealistic thoughts, we can more easily identify and change these destructive thought patterns.
Metaphors as Aids to Understanding
In the Introduction and chapter 1, we lay the groundwork by telling the story behind the book and describe how the material will be presented through the use of metaphors. We begin by speaking of your life as a journey and as a metaphorical garden over which you have stewardship. The Voice wants you to carry heavy old baggage on your journey (Metaphor 1). And the Voice also wants to enter your garden (Metaphor 2) in the form of pests and vermin in order to destroy your walk with God. A third metaphor, dominoes will also be introduced in chapter 2.
Two Kinds of Happiness
Jesus has told us he has left his peace for us to experience as his followers (John 14:27). This peace is a special kind of happiness that we talk about in chapter 2. Many people spend a large part of their lives trying to find happiness and inner peace. In chapter 2, we help you to make a distinction between transitory happiness and the type of happiness that lasts forever.
Understanding Emotions
Emotions can be enjoyable or personally destructive. If you wonder about the difference between healthy emotional pain and unhealthy emotional pain, then chapter 3 will help you to discover the difference. Knowing this difference is crucial to personal well-being because you need to use different tools to manage them. We spell this out in chapter 3.
Destructive Thinking Styles: Bugs in the Garden
Psychologists have developed an extensive catalog of destructive thinking styles that keep us from living life fully. These thoughts (often called “worry”) can prevent us from reaching our personal spiritual goals. In chapter 4, we list twenty-one different thinking patterns (we call them “bugs” in your garden) which can lead us down the wrong path. They are often so common that we do not realize their existence. This chapter will help you become more aware of these thoughts so that you can use the tools in the following chapters to exterminate the bugs.
Identifying the Greatest Sources of Damage and Destruction
Far more troublesome than garden bugs are the vermin the Voice sends into your garden. These destructive varmints are the source of guilt, resentment, irrational fear, helplessness, worthlessness (depression) and unhealthy anxiety. Chapter 6 will help you to identify these vermin in the many nooks and crannies of your mind. You will learn a shortcut method for finding them (Keywords) and why they are so deadly.
Cognitive Restructuring: Special Tools for Fighting Back
When you have completed these chapters you will be ready to exterminate the bugs and vermin from your garden because you will learn the tools for doing this in chapter 7. These tools are not magic bullets even though they are extremely effective for taking your life back from the Voice. Psychologists call this strategy “cognitive restructuring.” After you have begun using these tools on a regular basis, you begin to find those experiences that have often been missing from your life—experiences such as peace, joy and contentment.
Christian Affirmations to Help Your Inner Garden Grow
As any good gardener knows, it is not enough to remove weeds, bugs and vermin from your garden. Once the garden has been rid of noxious, life-destroying elements, the gardener needs to nurture and replant the garden. Chapter 8 begins this process for you by showing how to put enough mental nutrients in your garden so that the pests and vermin have difficulty returning. Christian affirmations will help you to fill those mental spaces as the Voice begins to recede from your life.
Weeding Out Illusions and Replanting
Replanting will begin in Chapter 9 as we show you the importance of Christian Rights, Positive Self-Care, Personal Responsibility, Social Responsibility, and Forgiveness . Even though you have learned by this chapter how to weaken the Voice, it will always try to regain a foothold in your life. You will plant these five strong trees that have the quality of being toxic to the Voice.
Putting Mental and Emotional Changes into Action
Since any mental and emotional changes we make must eventually be converted to action, we show you in Chapter 10 how to motivate yourself to make behavioral changes in your life. We have all known people who profess profound changes in their lives but continue to display behavior patterns which contradict these self-professed internal changes. Even after you have eliminated the Voice as a major obstacle in your, old behavior patterns might remain. Changing habits can be difficult. These tools will help you begin the behavioral journey that will rid your life of bad habits and replace them with good habits.
Happiness Is . . .
Psychologists have discovered that we not only need to spend most of our time focusing on keeping our garden from going bad. Once we have neutralized the bad elements, we need to spend the majority of our time continually making it better. Chapter 11 will introduce you to some of the research in happiness that psychologists have conducted within the last several decades. The field of psychology that grew out of this research is called positive psychology. Rather than focus on why some people are unhappy, positive psychologists study why some people are happy and what can be learned from them. Drawing on such findings, you will be shown how to increase your subjective well-being, improve your emotional intelligence, strengthen your social relationships, experience more hope, and learn happiness-building skills such as the Gratitude Visit Signature Strengths.
In Sum
This book and the accompanying classes are based on the integration of cognitive psychology and positive psychology. These two fields, relatively new in the history of psychology, have excellent research evidence attesting to their ability to offer effective skills for people who desire to change. Actually, this book is built upon three foundations: the Bible, cognitive psychology, and positive psychology. In the introduction that follows, you will read the authors’ personal accounts of this book’s origins.
