I walked around from the time I was a little girl, for as long as I can remember with negative thoughts about myself and others going through my head.
I felt very alone in the world because I thought I was the only one like this. No one else seemed to talk about having this stuff in their heads. Everyone else seemed normal, so I had no idea.
My family never talked about what was going through their heads. People shared opinions and really negative comments about others looks or their behavior, but no one talked about the thoughts that go on in their heads. I heard that crazy people were the ones with voices in their heads. Normal people didn't have those voices!
Children play with imaginary friends and we think it is cute, but does that child also get told about the negative that goes through their minds and how to deal with the lies? We don’t see thoughts so we treat them like they aren’t really there.
We walk around with negative, shaming things in our heads. They are about us or about how others have treated us. We reason them out through our skewed thinking.
The big problem is that it is a secret. We all have these secrets in our heads. Insecurities and judgments about ourselves and others. Why don’t we learn in school about the crazy stuff that goes on in people's heads and how to deal with them?
The thoughts that run through our heads and the feelings that we feel are not facts!
Yet we all keep our secrets and get stuck in believing that our thoughts and feelings are facts! We look at others and believe everything looks good with them, because we look at how others appear to be and us we judge by our thoughts.
We can’t see others thoughts so we forget that they have the same stuff as us. Sometimes we share what is going on with us in our emotions or how we feel bad or sad, but how many of us tell others that we have negative, crazy thoughts that go on in our minds? Most people are ashamed of their thoughts so we hide them!
What if we grew up learning that our minds have all kinds of crazy stuff going on in them and that doesn’t mean we are bad?
Of course I am not advocating that we go around telling everyone else what goes on in and through our minds, but what if we made it more open about everyone having crazy unkind thoughts going on up there. What if we were taught that these thoughts aren’t us, they aren’t good or bad, but they are just thoughts. They come and go! It is what we choose to do with those thoughts that is what is important.
We need to teach children and adults that they need to choose the good thoughts and discard the bad ones.
Just because a thought goes through our minds doesn’t make it good or bad, it doesn’t make it a fact. It is how we entertain the thoughts that cause the problems.
We can just look at them, watch them go by, change them to positive or just discard them! We have a choice one at a time to decide what we choose to do with them.
Some of us have more shame and negative thoughts than others, but we all have them and most times we hide them. We smile at each other, each having our own secret wars going on inside, thinking we are the only ones.
I think that children that grow up and turn into a person who shoot at their classmates or people in malls is because they don’t know that their thoughts are not facts and they keep feeding the negative lies.
They listen to their thoughts like they are truth or their friends and no one tells them differently! It is all a secret! They feed the crazy thoughts and starve anything good in their minds until they are given over to the negative.
What if our thought lives were more open in the sense that this is a universal issue and we weren’t the only ones having these thoughts and we had classes in school on how to handle these thoughts in a healthy, manageable way?
Do you think maybe then we could look at others and instead of thinking I am alone and bad and everyone else is good and having an easy life, that we would all know we are the same. We would know that we don’t have to act on the thoughts or make them mean anything.
I am passionate about this because people live all alone in their crazy heads never knowing that others are in the same boat.
They never know that we all have these problems, because it is a secret! They never realize that they aren’t the only one that isn’t having a wonderful life like the rest of the world! It is so sad! People kill themselves because they think everyone else is having the easy life and they are the only ones having all this negative stuff. Their heads lie and they believe it.
We get amazed when a somewhat normal appearing person does some crazy act of violence to themselves or others!
It is because we hide what is going on in our heads so no one knows we all have the struggle! Isolation creeps in because people start to believe they are the only alien on this planet!
We go to church on Sunday’s, or work on Monday’s and smile at everyone and no one has any idea what is going on in our minds.
We can’t see thoughts and if we keep it all a secret from each other, then we look at the world like they are okay and I am not. Whether we are on the better-than end, or the less-than end, or in between, the whole world has this secret thought life! We talk about a struggle, but we don’t really talk about the reality of it or how to deal with it.
It wasn’t until after I had been a Christian for over 20 years and I ended up in 12-Step meeting, that I heard about the thought life discussed. Things are better now in the church than they used to be, but not enough.
Besides the scripture to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, I heard nothing about the thought life. I thought I was crazy and I was the only one in the church who was. It was very scary to believe I was the only crazy person in the church!
When I went to 12-Step meetings I felt okay for the first time in my life. I found out that others were like me.12-Step meeting rooms have all kinds of slogans about our crazy heads! Whether the addict or the family of one, I learned that it was our heads that were causing the problems.
It made life more manageable to take one thought at a time, and do it one second at a time.
My favorite slogan was, “Don’t go in your head alone, it is a dangerous neighborhood!”
When I quit wrestling with my head and started keeping it simple by one second at a time things got better. It is a whole lot easier to take every thought captive when resting and doing it one at a time and there was not a big pile of shame involved in it. When I would look at the big picture of where I needed to be then it looked too big for me!
But when it was just a thought, and we all have thoughts, then I could do one little thought change! No biggy, just a thought! One little thought at a time!
I believe the thought life is where we could really take ground back from the enemy. Our thought life is where people are affected from every people group and every class of people that have ever walked the planet!
Genesis 3: 3-6 tells us the story of the first time the enemy/serpent got into our heads. The woman says to the serpent, “God said, you shall not eat or touch the tree!” Eve knows this to be true because God had said it, but the serpent says to her, “You will not die, for God knows you will be like Him and your eyes will be opened.” Then it says the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasant to her eyes, so she ate! How did she get from knowing the truth of what God had said to the place of eating the tree? She listened to her head!
She reasoned with her head and thoughts, and gave her mind over to the enemy.
That is why the battlefield is in our minds! That is why the enemy keeps the battlefield a secret! That is why stars who have all the money in the world kill themselves! The secret world of the enemy that no one talks about, our thought life!
Let us remember that we all have struggles and we all have crazy thoughts. We are not weird or crazy while everyone else is okay. Let’s take our ground back from the enemy!
If you struggle with your mind don’t keep secrets. Talk to someone you trust. Don’t isolate!
Take your ground back one thought at a time! Don't believe lying thoughts of shame! Change lying thoughts of shame to thoughts of truth whether they are about yourself or someone else! Say no to those shame thoughts and don't believe the lie that you are unique!
We need to fight this together! We need to love ourselves well and love others well!
Commentaires