Controlling negative thoughts
So I invented this silly technique that has helped me to overcome many social challenges over the past few years. You all know that I’m not a trained professional or anything like that, so take what I’m going to tell you with a grain of salt. I can only say that this has helped me stop the avalanche of negative thoughts from flooding my mind during social encounters.
I’m going to backtrack a little for a minute.
I knew that my thoughts leading up to, during, and after a social encounter were out of whack. I had enough sense to realize this, however, during said encounter, I was powerless to stop them. They were so much more powerful than I was.
During a social event, I was usually too nervous to think logically. Negative thoughts would be flooding my mind in an uncontrollable torrent. I was powerless to stop it, so I just gave in and simply let my auto-responses and auto-thoughts do their thing. Now, the thing about my auto-thoughts was that they were decidedly negative. They were constantly telling me how much of a loser I really was – that I was unworthy, different, inadequate, stupid, ugly – you name it. These thoughts worked against me in every possible way.
Since I had no confidence or self-esteem to handle social interaction, this was the result. My own thoughts that could have been there to protect me, where, instead, out to destroy me. Why that happened, I’ll never know. It’s hard to believe that I would want to sabotage myself, yet, there it was.
I needed to stop the flow of destruction somehow. I needed a manual system that could be introduced during times of great distress. I had to bring some sense of normality and reality to these “out of control” situations. If I could manage that, perhaps it could be replaced with real confidence and self-esteem someday.
Now, it’s true that I had a little success in developing my social skills up until then, but it was not enough. They were useless in environments (the party) outside of my self-imposed incubation stage. By the way, I owned the incubation stage. I mastered every aspect and wrung every bit of knowledge and experience that I could from this level. Starting conversations with local townspeople had become second nature – I was ready to move on.
But I needed something else to make the move to the higher social levels – I needed a coping technique that would allow me to increase my exposure level.
That’s when I came up with S.T.A.R.E.
More to follow…
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