Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 2 preview..
Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 2 preview… Chapter two: Cognition
How Does Our Thinking Affect Us?
‘Cognition’ is the scientific term that describes how we process ‘thoughts’ into ‘knowledge’. You can ride a bicycle, yes? You may remember the physical experience of learning to ride your bike, when your dad first took your stabilisers off, and shoved you down the street! ‘Cognition’ refers to how you MENTALLY processed those early cycling experiences. You probably rode around a few times, fell off a few times, and then you just ‘knew’, and you have known ever since. How you came to ‘know’, that’s cognition, it’s how we process information. Most people I know, including family, friends and clients, are suffering, in some way, shape or form, from the effects of not managing their cognitive processes as well as they could do, or not ‘managing their thinking’. From now on throughout this book, I will refer to ‘cognitive processes’, as ‘thinking’.
Whatever room or space you are in right now, what’s it like? How would you describe it? At this very moment I am in my consulting room in Cambridge (UK). It’s a fairly big (about 4m x 3m) room in a doctor’s surgery. There are certificates and diplomas on the walls, as well as interesting pictures, and a few really thick, expensive looking psychology books with bright yellow post-it notes sticking out with ‘I agree!’ and ‘spot on!’ scribbled on them. You COULD describe it as a cross between a doctor’s consulting room, and a nice, relaxed living room. I say ‘could’, because everyone would describe it differently, everyone would ‘see’ and ‘feel’ it differently. Some people would describe the room as ‘big’, others, ‘small’. Some people might say ‘warm and cosy’, others, ‘cold and uncomfortable’. Some people would describe it as ‘light and airy’, others, ‘dark and claustrophobic’. How is this possible? Surely the room is the same room for everyone? It is, but we all see things differently, based upon our previous experiences, our belief systems, our expectations, and our different thinking styles – these four things come together to create our ‘perception’. In other words, we are not actually experiencing ‘reality’, but reality as filtered by our beliefs systems and thinking styles (our rose, or shit-tinted spectacles). We believe that what we are experiencing is REAL, but it isn’t.
We are not experiencing reality, but reality filtered through our beliefs systems and thinking styles.
I am looking out of my window at a beautiful, exciting and energising spring day here in Cambridge, and yet my first client of the day is suffering from something labelled (incredibly unhelpfully, in my opinion) ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’, SAD. How can this be? Are we not experiencing the same day? In the pots outside my window, the flowers are starting to bloom, leaves are starting to appear on the beech tree in our car park, squirrels have come out of hiding and are playing ‘chicken’ with the cars as they turn and park in our car park (one of them not very successfully by the look of things). There is definitely a sense of spring in the air. Cambridge is starting to wake up after the winter freeze and you cannot fail to sense it, unless you ‘suffer from ‘SAD’ like Peter, my first client of the day. Peter doesn’t see the flowers. Actually, that’s not true. He DOES see the flowers, but he doesn’t ‘process’ them, he filters them out. The same thing goes for the leaves on the tree, the squirrels in the car park, and the exciting spring weather. He ‘sees’ all these things, but the message either doesn’t reach his brain, or isn’t processed into knowledge. Instead, what Peter sees is grey, cold, uninviting, blandness, and this makes him feel depressed, lethargic, irritable and anxious (I say ‘makes him feel’, but it doesn’t actually ‘make him’ feel anything. He makes himself feel these things but he just doesn’t know it). The huge difference between what I see and experience, and what Peter sees and experiences, is all down to how we filter or interpret what we see – our cognition. I am going to have a great day today; Peter, I’m sorry to say, will probably have a shit one.
I could have fifty people in my consulting room (at a squeeze), and they would all have a different experience of being there, and they would all have a different experience of the day, because they would all be VIEWING these things from their own perspective i.e. filtering them through their own rose-tinted (or other colour) spectacles, through their own belief systems. It isn’t about reality; it’s about interpretation and perspective. There are a number of unhelpful thinking styles that people can have which can each have a huge effect on how they process experiences in life, affecting how they view and interpret events.
Take something simple. You are in Tesco one day, doing your weekly grocery shopping, and you notice a person staring at you. As you look back at them, they turn away and continue shopping. Now, if you were a little socially phobic, you would probably be embarrassed by being stared at, you would probably be wondering what they were staring at. If you were a little paranoid, you would definitely be feeling a little ‘got at’, you might think they were trying to cause trouble; you might want to snap at them ‘what are you looking at?’ If you were a little conceited, self absorbed or egotistical, you might just be flattered that they were staring at you. If you were a little obsessive, you might brood about this experience for the rest of the day. If you were a bit of a catastrophiser, you might blow the whole thing up into a huge trauma: ‘what’s wrong with me, why is everybody always staring at me, why can’t people be nicer, people can be so horrible’. If you generally felt quite powerless, you might be thinking ‘what does it matter, I can’t do anything about it anyway’. If you had low self-esteem, you might think ‘it doesn’t matter if he/she liked me, I would be too embarrassed to ask them on a date, and, anyway, who would want to go out with someone like me?’
I’m sure you get the point.
The key to managing your thinking effectively, is to know yourself, to know what you are like, to understand what personality and unhelpful thinking styles you have, to know when you are likely to over-react, feel paranoid, get upset etc. – we call this ‘self-insight’. When you KNOW how your brain and body interacts, you can make adjustments accordingly, and have a more realistic perspective on events and experiences. If we don’t have much self-insight and don’t manage our thinking effectively but instead allow our limiting beliefs or unhelpful thinking styles to regularly distort our perspective on life, we can be affected in a number of ways. Limiting beliefs and unhelpful thinking styles can cause you to suffer, for example, relationship break-ups, lack of success at work, anxieties, mental and physical illnesses, or emetophobia.
You may find it incredible that merely the way you think and feel about yourself can cause such a wide range of problems and even physical symptoms and illnesses. ‘Ok’, I can hear you say, ‘I can see that your thinking could cause psychological symptoms such as stress, anxiety, phobias etc., but it can’t possibly influence physical illnesses.’
If you think about it, this is not such a bizarre concept as you might first assume. There is plenty of research that suggests the way you think does have a real impact on factors such as: how happy you are; your proneness to anxiety or depression; how much success you achieve; how innovative and entrepreneurial you can be; your ability to recover from a major illness such as cancer or a stroke and even your immune system (e.g. Dunkley et al., 2003; Emmons and McCullough, 2003; Mirowsky and Ross, 1990; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991; Clark, 1999; Taylor et al., 2006; Mueller and Thomas, 2000; Tschuschke et al., 2001; Watson et al., 1999; Lewis et al., 2001; Cohen and Doyle et al., 2003; Lengacher and Bennett et al., 2008; Yoshino and Mukai, 2003; Davidson and Kabat-Zinn et al., 2003).
Question: When are you most likely to come down with a cold, and when do you tend to get a really thumping headache?
Answer: When you are stressed, not thinking clearly and not managing your emotions….
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