Stop Taking Your Thoughts Personally
How to break the cycle of suffering before it starts
Our suffering doesn’t start where we think it does.
We assume that negative thoughts are a major source of our inner tension. The worry, self-criticism, and anxiety. Often, we try to fix the problem by changing our thoughts.
If we have anxiety, we’ll try to think of something positive.
If we are criticizing ourselves, we’ll try to think of our good qualities.
If we’re worrying, we often try to focus on rational thoughts.
While all of these approaches make sense, they often don’t work. That’s because we’re intervening too late in the process of emotional suffering. By the time we start battling the intrusive thought, we’ve already taken it personally, which means it has become who we think we are.
Here’s a simple way to see it in real time.
Something triggers us. Maybe it’s an odd email. The tone in someone’s voice. A memory of how you acted in the past. Or a projection about what will happen in the future.
Then comes the thought.
“This is bad.”
“I messed something up.”
“They don’t respect me.”
So far, nothing bad has happened. Thoughts arise all day long, good, bad, and neutral.
Next, is when the suffering is created.
The thought fuses with your identity.
Our emotional response makes the mind upgrade the thought into something personal and meaningful. It turns it into, “This says something about me,” or “I must have done something wrong.” That’s the moment when the nervous system switches to panic mode, and suffering begins.
From there, the ego tries to cope with the mental story it’s now invested in. This looks like replaying and auditing old conversations in your head. Checking your phone compulsively. Building a defensive story in your mind. Or getting angry at the situation.
All of this can grow from one neutral data point. That’s how powerful the mind is.
A common example looks like this: You send a text. More time goes by than usual with no response.
Just silence. And voila. That’s the trigger.
The thought appears, “I said something wrong, or they don’t respect me. So they are blowing me off.”
This then escalates into, “This always happens to me. People must not like me.” Then your mood drops and starts affecting your real life.
All of this from a space of silence between text messages. Everything else was interpretation and reaction.
This is where the practice comes in.
