Thoughts Aren’t Threats
TW: Self-harm thoughts
Now that Chicago - among many other places - is in a second wave of the pandemic, I’ve been trying to take some time to think about ways to stay calm. One of the major things I’ve thought of is a refresher of my cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) work that I started during my junior year of college. Even though a lot of the things I worked on in CBT have become second nature, I felt now is a good time to work on some of the basics in a more formal way to ensure strength in potentially difficult days to come.
The first - and maybe even the most important - thing I remember from CBT is a mantra I worked on with my therapist and that features prominently in a book that’s helped me a lot over the years (The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD). It’s a simple phrase to help diffuse tension in the moments when thoughts feel insurmountably tough to conquer.
It’s a simple phrase: “Thoughts are thoughts, not threats.” And it means exactly what it says: no matter how threatening a thought may seem to me, no matter how bleak the future seems if I accept a thought as true, it is still just a thought. It’s just one of the many thousands of thoughts that pass through my mind each and every day, and the only thing that makes some thoughts seem more powerful than others is that they feel threatening.
For example, when I was first learning about this way of thinking, I was often afraid around sharp objects like knives because I was afraid I was going to hurt myself with them. The thought made me alter my behavior - staying out of kitchens and the like - and that gave it even more power. “Now I can’t even be around knives,” I thought after I got used to avoiding them, and things kept escalating from there until these thoughts were pervasive and invaded my everyday life to an unbelievable extent.
Thankfully, it’s been years since a thought has had that much power over me, but even in the years since, I have had many times when I had to remind myself that the thoughts in my head are not necessarily going to happen. This is true about everything from the election results to COVID exposure to doing well on a task at work. No matter how insistent the thought is, or how many times I think it, it is just a thought.
During my initial CBT work, I used to have to write stories in which my thoughts were coming true. It was terrifying the first time I started typing, and the story - like my thoughts - soon started spiraling out of control until it was so much worse than I had imagined it before. But then, my therapist told me to just look at the screen. It was just a computer screen with words on it. There was no blood. No one was hurt. Nothing that I had written ever came true in real life, and that was because I am the one with the power to either make my thoughts come to life or choose a better way to deal with my anxiety.
By thinking that “thoughts are thoughts, not threats” over and over, I taught myself to apply this to my other thoughts even when I wasn’t writing worst-case scenarios in therapy anymore. After a while, it became second nature, although in a more stressful time, it’s helpful to repeat exercises like this for current negative thoughts I have and see that they, too, aren’t actually threatening me.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I practiced this with the thoughts that I was getting COVID from every breath I took even remotely near another person. But I never actually got COVID from any of those thoughts, and in time, they faded. I didn’t need to write out a scenario where I got it and got extremely sick because of the work I did before, but all that work set the stage for having an easier time now.
In the coming weeks, I plan to do a deep dive into the CBT techniques I remember, as well as work my way through a therapeutic journal. After everything that’s been happening in the world, plus the relapse I had recently with the puppy, now seems like a very good time to check in with myself and revisit the techniques that have helped me so much.
With the mantra of “thoughts are thoughts, not threats,” I’ve been able to convince myself that I’ve hit a hurdle in the road instead of going completely back to the beginning of my journey. I look forward to seeing how much more I can improve with the aid of CBT techniques, thought analysis, and everything else that has brought me out of tough times in the past, and create a great future.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.