We all have an inner critic – the part of ourselves that disapproves and criticizes the things we think, say and do. For some of us, that critic has a disproportionately large influence on how we feel about ourselves.
This inner critic creates images of how we might fail in the future, all the things that could go wrong, and how bad we’ll feel if we try things and fail because all we’ve done is fail in the past anyway. . Our imagination creates scenarios that reinforce our belief that we will screw up (or already have) things. It’s like the inner critic hijacks our imagination to make bad movies that we’re forced to watch.
These movies are not good movies. We may have pleasant dreams, but for many of us, the movies that run through our minds are not sunny and positive. More often they are scary or sad movies, full of fear for the future and regret for the past. They are dark dramas that examine the many ways the movie star (himself) has messed things up in life.
Classic feel-good movies, the kind you’d never want to see in a theater, are for some reason the most popular in the coffers of our minds. And there is no lack of ideas for these films. There is an inexhaustible supply of fear and anxiety to develop in the scenarios. They have titles like “Fear My Fiance Has Second Thoughts,” “Stupid Things You Said at the Holiday Party,” and “You’ll Die Alone III: Valentine’s Day.”
Our cave ancestors
Why does our mind make such bad movies? I think there is a deep evolutionary reason for this. When our caveman ancestors existed many years ago, struggling to find shelter and food, they had to worry about all the bad things that could happen because it gave them more of a chance to avoid them. things. They had to consider every animal that might be out there waiting to eat them, every foraging trip that could end in disaster. These films had titles such as “When Animals Attack Our Tribe”, “Caught in a Homeless Storm” and “Left Behind II: Broken Ankle”.
Our caveman ancestors had to consider the possibility of these situations in order to be ready for them. Those who were not prepared when something bad happened were the ones who got eaten or starved to death. Nature wiped out cavemen who didn’t think about worst-case scenarios. Those who remained were the ones who thought about the most dire situations in case they happened and were thus prepared for them when they did happen.
Over the many years between then and now, the filmmaking mind developed its production skills. As our brains grew, we developed better tools and better objects of production. As civilization grew and culture developed, more and more materials became available for making mental movies. Technology provided more fodder for anxiety. The question now is, Do these feel-good movies still serve a purpose?
I think they do. It is still valuable for us to think about things that could go wrong in the future. Clearly, it is in our nature to consider these results. It can be practical on a basic level. But the biggest problem is when movies stop being practical and start to be self-destructive when we can’t turn off this machine to create mind movies. It gets to the point where these movies exist only as kindling for the fire of our fears, creating anxiety and depression in a runaway ring that can become tickets that dominate our lives. These runaway box office hits with titles like “Unhappy Marriage,” “Stuck in a Dead End Career” and “Depression II: Smoking More Weed” dominate the lineup. How can we change the tone of these films? How can we fire the executives who are responsible for developing these sensational hits?
Changing the tone of these films with mind
When our minds are playing these movies, it’s hard to remember that we have the power to get up and walk out of that theater. In real life, even if a movie is bad, we paid for it and most of the time we don’t want to get up and leave. What if we had the power to change the movie? Wouldn’t we benefit more from watching movies with titles like “Feeling Pretty Good Today,” “Relaxing Family Holiday Visit,” and “Relationship II: We Worked It Out.”
In talk therapy, there are different approaches to this situation. Meditation and mindfulness practices can help us develop the power to turn the channel on these movies, get up and walk out of the theater, and demand a refund. Clinical techniques such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) can give us the tools to stop these films before they are produced and enable us to change the endings from sad to happy.
Our minds make these movies, and on a surface level, we know they’re not real, that we’re just imagining things. However, at a deeper level of consciousness, our brain accepts these movies as the truth – that the bad things we’re seeing in these movies are actually happening. And this can cause our bodies to react as if they are. This stress and anxiety causes us to physically react as if we were actually experiencing the things we see in these movies. Think about this the next time you find yourself watching a bad movie in your mind. Remind yourself that it’s just your thoughts, it’s not reality. Even if you already know this, remind yourself. You can choose to watch another movie. Remember, you have the power to get up and walk out of the theater!