I think Artista nailed it. Seeing the pattern in detail is a place to start. Changing the toxic thinking pattern? Um. In my three or four years of trying that, I can say from my own limited experience that it's difficult as hell. We will relapse and we'll have to keep pulling ourselves back on the wagon. Also in my experience, you can feel as though you've gotten somewhere, you've grown out of that poisonous mindset. . . and suddenly something happens, the anxiety disorder surfaces, and we're self-sabotaging again. But again -- I'm relatively new to the process of actively trying to recover, so I'm responding mostly because I identify with what you said.
@ Ms. Spock: "It is like if things go well something terrible will happen." Yeah - always waiting for the hammer to fall. Is that a self-fulfilling prophecy or what?
The Problem is being sure to sparate "toxic thinking"-- i.e. which
causes trauma-- simply how you actually feel as a result of it; and it's vital to identify what you really feel-- esp. when it comes to trauma.
We live in a "band-aid," blame-the-victim society that just tells us to lie to ourselves and repress things, and just plain doesn't care about the person, telling us that we cause all our own problems;and to me it feels like Holocaust Denial when someone suggests that the problem is "negative thinking" when there's a history of real abuse.
"Toxic thinking" would be
denying the abuse happened, or thinking that the victim deserved ior caused it-- which is a common temptation, since it's easier, and a common resolution which results in the trauma.
For example I was bullied in school, but I would get angy and protest it-- and eventually ran away from school after school until I was 13; and those memories don't seem to bother me so much,, I guess since I exercised some control.
It's what happened
afterward that I can't stop thinking about, i.e. my parents forced me into a mental institution where I was a prisoner of abuse, and couldn't leave-- and was told that I "had to stop running away from my problems," and that if I didn't want to be there then it just prove that I
needed to b there" etc.and basically do whatever they said in order to be obedient, literally a psychological lobotomy.
Basically it was Soviet-style blame-the-victim brainwashing, and this was a state-run facility; and they'd just DENY any abuse, physical or mental, incuding the abuse from the humiliation of imprisonment itself; they would say it was all my fault, and they just didn't care what they put someone through; and any show of anger over it would be punished as well: It was the old power-game, and I emerged with Stockholm Syndrome, but also ended up blaming myself for everything.
THAT'S where I start getting the major symptoms of depression, anxiety, and emotional flashbacks of situations-- mainly after I got out and began blaming myself for other people's abuse, or feeling helpless in forcing myself into hurtful situations so that "I didn't run away from things--." as well as fear of persecution for any false step, performaing a delicate balancing-act to avoid being hurt, as well as to avoid
showing it.
It's this type of repression that causes a person to feel helpless, and so it's vital NOT to repress actual feelings as "toxic thinking" or any other similar buzzword. Lies cause the trauma,,and the worst thing we can do is deny our true feelings, since that tells us what's really going on.
