Hello,
My name is Scott Langston and I am a full-time school counsellor,
But I also moonlight as a psychologist and counsellor in private practice online.
And this short video is to share a sort of epiphany moment that I had.
With a client.
Sometimes,
As the counsellor,
You have your own aha moment,
And this was one of those.
There is a.
.
.
And understanding in psychology that.
Um.
.
.
It's often counterproductive to try to work very hard on our weaknesses.
We're often told,
Growing up especially,
That when we find something we're not good at,
We have to expend energy in that,
Particularly academically.
To get better at it to sort of.
Work on our weaknesses.
Actually,
That's.
.
.
As I say,
Counterproductive.
By far and away the best way to do it.
Improve yourself overall is to work on and with your strengths.
Because we're good at those,
They motivate us and we can see big benefits by investing time and energy into them.
Ask any professional musician or sportsperson.
Investing time and energy into our weaknesses is frustrating.
Demotivating.
On the whole not particularly helpful.
So we can work around our weaknesses,
We can try to avoid those situations,
We might need to do some minimal work to get by,
But it's certainly not worth the massive investment of time and energy.
So why are we talking about this in terms of mental health?
Um.
.
.
It's often assumed that a positive mindset is going to help.
Being more positive,
Looking on the bright side,
Expressing gratitude,
And there is a place for all of those things.
The danger of course is when positivity moves into toxic,
Toxic,
Excuse me,
Positivity.
And becomes cattle productive again.
However,
There's not really a continuum between.
Pessimism and optimism between negativity and positivity.
They're two different things and we confuse them and try to work together on them by,
If we have very,
Very negative experiences or a very negative outlook on life,
Trying to be more positive as a countermeasure to that negativity.
And that's actually not bad.
The most helpful approach.
We look at positivity as a separate trait.
We can certainly work on it,
But if it's something we're not naturally good at,
If we don't naturally see the glass half full.
.
.
Silver lining on the cloud then it can be quite hard.
It's good to remind ourselves that that's an option and that's a perspective.
But it's far more likely.
That we are pessimistic,
Negative thinkers and there is work that we can do on reducing the amount of our negativity.
Our negativity naturally stems from our evolution.
We look for.
.
.
Potential threats,
Potential things to go wrong.
Plan ahead and avoid them.
That was surviving on the planes in hunter-gatherer societies.
So it's normal.
However,
It's not helpful to us now,
Given that our environment has evolved.
Far,
Far,
Far more than we have.
So we're still.
Saddled with this negative trait,
This,
This,
This.
This move towards negativity as an automatic trait.
Most of the negative thinking we do,
We are unaware of.
It doesn't register,
We're not aware we're doing it.
It leaves us feeling a little bit down,
A little bit flat.
We haven't noticed it happening because it's an automatically wired brain process.
Um,
There are.
.
.
Ways that we can become aware of and address.
Negative thinking.
And I'm going to suggest to you five ways that you can do that.
They all happen to start with C.
Um.
.
.
There are things we can cut out of our habitual thinking.
Once we're aware that we do them.
So the first is complaining.
When you complain about something,
You give it strength,
You highlight the fact that it's there.
You dwell on it.
It becomes an irritation.
The more you complain about things,
The more negative you feel.
So if you can cut down the amount that you can play.
That's going to be very,
Very helpful.
Criticizing things and people.
Is also very high on the list.
We tend to look at what other people are doing and either in our own heads or outwardly voice our criticisms about how somebody is not good enough,
How somebody has done something silly,
How somebody has been disrespectful,
How somebody is unable to manage and do their job properly.
We fall into criticism of others in a sort of very gossipy and unhelpful way.
So I'm not suggesting that we.
.
.
Should never ever complain or never ever criticize they are vital parts of our cognitive functioning but we need to be aware when we're doing them and try to reduce them when we see that they're not helpful.
Another C is expressing concern which can be rephrased basically as worrying.
Um.
.
.
What are you worried about?
What are you concerned about in the world?
If it's something totally out of your control.
Then it's not helpful.
So you might be concerned about the environment,
You might be concerned about climate change,
You might be concerned about the political situation in a country half a world away.
There's nothing you can do about those things.
Even grandstanding on social media is not going to change those things.
So think carefully about where your concerns lie.
Again,
Back in hunter-gatherer societies,
It was really,
Really important to be aware of who had the power,
Who was in control,
Who of the hundred people that you knew in your lifetime you could trust and rely on.
We now have that information about billions of people who we'll have no real interactions with ever in our lives.
And if we are worried about them and their actions and their thoughts and their impact on our lives,
Then we are not doing ourselves any favours.
Another sea is commiserating.
Somebody is expressing their complaints.
My concerns.
And you sit and you nod along and you commiserate and I get that,
Yeah,
I understand that,
Yeah,
That's awful,
That must have been dreadful.
We're just looping in.
To the negativity.
That doesn't mean we have to be cold and heartless and don't care.
Of course we can care.
But be careful when commiserating with people.
Be careful that it doesn't just enter into a cycle and a feedback loop of further negativity.
Further complaining,
Criticising.
Further concerns.
And the final C would be catastrophizing.
So imagining,
Storying in your head,
Making things seem as though they are inevitably going to be.
Huge problems as though they're inevitably going to be.
Something that impacts our lives massively.
It's easy to take a social slight.
Or a criticism of yourself and build up a story in your head as to why.
It's true why it necessarily means other things and spreads.
Catastrophizing is a way of storytelling that is deeply unhelpful and deeply unfair to ourselves.
In summary,
Reducing our negative thinking is going to have a much more profound effect on our well-being than attempting to artificially promote our positive thinking.
