Fighting Negative Core Beliefs

Hey! I have not posted in a while.. haha.. a few years! But I really wanted to challenge myself to get back into writing – especially in cases where it can help others. Before I continued with posting the rest of my old videos, I wanted to first make this post. I quite possibly have BPD, it’s not a “for sure” thing yet but … very likely. So, I wanted to address how I could fight some of these negative core beliefs with scripture. I will be writing these things referencing another website, which I will post a link at the end to. I have just basically made a lengthy website read more short, because… ADHD am I right? 🙂 I’ve also added some of my own thoughts. Anyway, let’s dive right in.

1. All or Nothing Thinking

This can vary from lofty standards and fear, to shame… weighing you down. Man, those are heavy sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time.

“In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.” – Ecclesiastes 11:6

We should not try to anticipate the outcomes of our actions, but look to glorify God instead; through productive and meaningful activity, trusting the final results to God. It’s really hard for me personally not to get ahead of myself, or doubt my abilities before I even attempt to do something. It can get really discouraging. But now, now that I am aware of this type of thinking and that I do have this type of thinking, I can alter how I perceive things or change how I react to things. I also can feel secure that at the end of the day, God is in charge of the final results.

“neither he who plants nor he waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth”
– 1 Corinthians 3:7

2. Mental Filter

This sort of thinking pays attention to only certain things. When you think something like, “I always let people down” or “he never listens to me!” …it’s likely you’re filtering out the evidence that doesn’t support that one-dimensional storyline. This can be an issue when developing inaccurate core beliefs about ourselves, others, or life. As we all know, life isn’t one dimensional. There’s not just one storyline. There’s not just one version of a story.

“Test everything, hold onto what is good.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:21

Though it is short, I love this verse. It’s very powerful for me personally. Through everything, I need to hold onto what is good. Let me repeat myself for my own purposes: I need to hold onto what is good. It is incredibly easy to get bogged down and stuck when you can’t see the good… or don’t want or try to. Maybe you see the good and the bad, but don’t reach out for the good… like you’ve given up. I have been there, believe me. It’s not a good place to be. However, there is hope! The antidote to this is to be open-minded, to postpone judgement, and to be interested in learning balanced information before concluding. This takes patience and humility, both are fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5). I personally also think this takes a sprinkle of self-compassion.

3. Mind Reading

This causes us to imagine that we know what other people are thinking or feeling. (I feel this all the time. Anyone else?) It often leads to fear and anxiety about perceived judgements/ rejection by others. Once you guess what someone else is thinking, you quickly react to the thoughts you’ve projected on them. You may feel unnecessarily hurt or offended. This reminds me of a Kati Morton video I watched regarding BPD. If you don’t know who she is, please look her up and follow her on YouTube. She has all kinds of psychology related videos, as she is a therapist herself. Anyway, in one of her videos she referred to BPD (just as an example) as being like an emotional burn victim. If you’ve ever been burned, you know how sensitive any slight touch is to that burn and how painful it is. Mind reading sends us into being emotionally sensitive, due to our minds already “knowing” what someone is thinking, and not only that, but taking it a step further and making judgements or starting up conversations in your head that you’d want to say.

“Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.” -Proverbs 14:10

The antidote here is straight forward: The only thoughts and emotions you have access to are your own. Read that again if necessary! I did! You can either ask another person to share honestly what they’re thinking/feeling, or accept that you don’t need to know because it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, remember that what God thinks of you is what matters. The Bible says that He delights in you! (Psalm 18:19)

4. Fortune Telling

This imagines that you can predict what happens in the future. I mean, who can do that? That’s So Raven?! Just kidding. Man, I am dating myself with that one, haha. Once you believe you know what’s coming, you’ll naturally react to that reality. It’s problematic because we tend to predict negative outcomes, which often holds us back. We have to realize the limitations of our perspective, and trust in God. I mean, if I told myself, “I am going to die in surgery!”… do you think that I would have the surgery?! No! I mean, being real though if it was a life threatening situation I would not oppose. But do you get what I am saying? I am going to repeat this again – We have to realize the limitations of our perspective, and trust in God.

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, and make a profit.’ You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ ” – James 4:13-15

Our God is all powerful and all knowing. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. You can rest assured, reader… whoever you are… that God will be with you in every moment. Trust Him.

5. Disqualifying the Positive

This type of thinking specifically discounts positive examples/ information in favor of negative ideas/ perspectives. It minimizes the positive while zooming in on the negative and gazing at it with a magnifying glass, making it the most important. I am not going to lie to you, I have done/still do this… and it is very hard to adjust this type of thinking. However, I am a work in progress. I do trust that God will provide me with what I need to fight this. When you have been in such a bad, toxic place in life… for such an extended period of time, it’s difficult to see the positive in anything. That has at least been my experience. Feel free to share your experiences as well, if you feel comfortable or compelled to.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8

You aren’t going to be able to choose all your thoughts. I can attest to that. But, we can choose what we want to intentionally think about, right? Just as an example, I was driving to the hospital the other day to get some of my records, and something caught my attention (no idea what it was) and a bad memory popped up in my head. Luckily, I recalled a technique my amazing therapist said about letting memories or thoughts pass like a leaf, moving down a stream of water… you see it come in, and you just notice it passing, and then it goes away. In that moment, I could have intentionally thought about all the feelings and the hurt and everything that went along with that memory and get stuck there (with anxiety and depression to follow immediately), or I could notice it, let it pass, and think about other things that would not cause me to dissociate and be stuck in the depression cycle again. Intentionally choosing what we want to think about can help your overall attitude and perspective. Give it a go. I dare ya. 🙂

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading and I sincerely hope someone or some people will find this entry as helpful as I found it. You can read the website post I referenced if you’d like to read her details about these topics here. You can also sign up for e-mail alerts for when I post a new blog, and follow me on social media. I’d love to make new friends! In the meantime, take care of yourselves and have faith.

xo Alyson

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Coping Skills

On this episode of Journey to Wellness, I list off some common coping strategies to help when we’re feeling stuck in a slump or need something to do to in our spare time.

Sometimes we get stuck in our feels (feelings), and then we don’t know what to do. Then, we spiral into a hole that is hard to get back out of. If we stop the cycle and implement some coping skills, we’re better off for it.

What are some of your coping skills? I’d really like to hear from some of you on this. I always love hearing someone’s coping skills, especially if they differ from mine.

Also, thanks for coming back and checking out my blog post after it has been forever since I have posted. Haha. I’m going to try to do better, although I am running out of videos!

Take care of yourselves. Until next time.

xo Alyson

Dissociation

Hey ya’ll ! Sorry for the unexpected hiatus in my blog posts! Life happened. And here we are. Lol.

So, here is my video I made regarding dissociation, the next video in my journey to wellness series. In it I talk about what dissociation means and what my personal experience with it is. I also share some ways to combat this experience that was shared with me by my therapist at the time.

Let me know your thoughts and/or your suggestions to combat dissociation if you are one that experiences it! Let’s get the conversation going!

For more videos on this topic, I would suggest searching “Kati Morton dissociation” in a YouTube search! She’s a professional and I am not! I’m just a person in search of healing.

Until next time!

xo,
Alyson

Strategies for Wellness

Hello friends,

Today’s video discusses some different ways I’ve found to help stay mentally well. It takes much more than therapy and medication to achieve the level of happiness we want to reach. So, grab a pen and paper, and write these down! Add some of your own ideas to your list and comment below if you want to share your thoughts! Whenever you need to cope, you can have something ready to look at that you can refer to. You can also google or do a pinterest search for Coping Skills and it will bring up lists upon lists of different coping ideas. I’ll put one of those lists down below:

copingskills

I hope you all enjoyed today’s episode and blog and find it helpful for you. Keep fighting and keep looking up. You’ve got this.

xo,
Alyson

Something Good

Hello friends,

The first part of this video I discuss Monavie juice, which I no longer drink. The main part to take away from that is that your nutrition is important whether it is through diet or vitamins. Both can definitely help how you feel physically.

There was not much to this video besides me catching viewers up on my life after my grandma’s death and figuring out how great physical exercise made me feel. I look back on this now and realize that I need to try desperately to implement that same exercise in my life again now that I am not doing as well as I was in this video.

The main take away from today’s video was that despite the sadness and bad going on around us there is always some sort of silver lining – some sort of positive perspective for us to look into instead of the opposite. If you didn’t enjoy this video, don’t worry. They’ll get more in depth into mental health again after this one, so stay in your seat. 😉

goodineveryday

Hope you guys have a great week. I’ll see you next time.

xo,
Alyson

Opening Up

Hello friends,

One thing is for sure – opening up to someone is HARD. Like I say in this video, you have to experience that uncomfortable feeling for a moment when you share your story to someone in order to begin healing. But…. there are helpful things to try to get your story across when trying to communicate! Writing is one of them!

Let us not be locked down and silenced by fear. We need to open up and share – for ourselves and for those around us. You never know who is being inspired by YOUR actions.

caourage-starts-with

Join one of the greatest support groups on the internet! The people that follow Kati Morton on YouTube, a.k.a. Kinions, would love to show their support for you. I am also here for you. My e-mail and comment sections are always open for you.

xo,
Alyson

The Past

This is one of my more vulnerable videos. I am being open and honest about my past and the difficult things I endured throughout the course of that time. Things have changed since I made this video, which I will briefly mention here:

  • I currently am back on medication for things that I deal with. There’s nothing wrong with being on them if you need to be. At that time I wasn’t in need of that sort of intervention but, with time, things always have the possibility of changing.
  • I no longer work where I work where I said I did in the video. I work in a laboratory now, which leads me to my next bullet point.
  • I didn’t get my bachelor’s in nursing, but in Clinical Lab Science instead.
  • My relationship with my mother isn’t in the same state as it was in the video. I didn’t truly have her back, and I don’t have her now. Yes, she is living, but the relationship between us is severed due to choices that she has made. Yes, I do carry some bitterness about it now.

This is a very condensed version of the things of my past but I wanted to be open and share my story so that maybe someone out there will find the courage to share theirs as well. We currently live in a society that wants to hush these sorts of outcries but do not be hushed, do not have fear. Your story is worthy of being heard and you are worthy of healing.

I really hope that you took the time to watch the entire video, and if you did, thank you. It took a lot of guts for me to make and share that video when I did. It might even answer some questions for some of you that know me as to why I acted the way I did in the past…especially in school. I was enduring a lot. It was hard for people to understand because it hadn’t happened to them. HOWEVER, I am so glad that these people had not experienced this and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Just having a friend during that time meant the world to me.

I hope that you can take away something positive from my vulnerability in this video and it can even possibly help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and specifically abuse. I want all of you reading this and watching my video to know this: there is help, there is hope, and there is healing available to those who seek it. Don’t be afraid to do so. Your life is worth it.

xo, Alyson

The Beginning

Hello, friends.

So, since it has been a while that I have worked on my Journey to Wellness series, I am going to get you all caught up with some videos I made on it about five years ago. I considered remaking them since they are older now, but the information is still relevant and I still want the same things. In this first video, I introduce the series and set some goals that I have pertaining to my mental health and wellness. Five years later, I still have not fully accomplished all of these things I set out to accomplish but, I am still trying. That’s what matters. Take a few minutes, check out the video, and if you have any questions/comments you can leave them below or click on the “Contact Me” tab and send it to me that way.

I look forward to continuing this journey with you, whether it be in vlog or blog form. I hope you’ll stick around.

xo, Alyson

Link to Kati Morton’s Youtube Channel

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me on my journey to wellness. I’ve previously had blogs in the past but never really kept up with them. My hope is that I can maintain this one and take those of you who are interested along with me on my journey to wellness.

xo, Alyson

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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