Toxic Thinking

Thinking, Everybody does it all day long. Sometimes its positive other times it’s negative. Thinking can drive us crazy at times. Trying to calm yourself or get away from your thoughts can feel impossible and overwhelming at times. Overthinking can be a gateway to a miserable day. Many times I’m in bed trying to sleep, but my mind is going crazy. “Just stop already!!!” But you can’t. It had caused me to lose many nights of sleep. It has also caused much anxiety and depression.

I spent a lot of my life negatively thinking. “I am a piece of shit,” I can never change,” “Why am I always a fuck up, “It’s my fault.” Toxic thinking brings us negative energy, and who wants that? Thinking about terrible past events, “If I only did this, it would have been different,” or “Why did this have to happen.” PTSD can cause the worst of thinking, I know. It drives us down. There are times when I feel trapped, haunted by them, and feel as if I will never escape them. Those haunting memories of events have driven me to be depressed weeks on end, especially if you don’t talk to someone about them. Keeping those thoughts all bottled up inside is a recipe for disaster. You have to let it out. It’s an internal disease.

What do you do if you have toxic thinking?
How does the way you think affect you?
How can we manage the way we think?

Different people have different approaches to ease their minds. For example, you have meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, finding a hobby to keep you busy, listening to music, etc. Personally, when I feel trapped in my mind, its when I’m sitting around being idle or laying done for bed. I try to keep myself occupied throughout the day as much as I can. I have picked up reading again got, into photography, exercising, and the stock market. At night time, classical music has helped me a lot. I close my eyes and try to feel the music flow through me. I let it take me away to somewhere peaceful and calm apart from my toxic thinking that’s eating my alive. Especially when a past traumatic experience keeps replaying in my head. Before, I would use drugs or alcohol to escape the pain, but that would only make it worse in the end. Your either waking up with a hangover or while drinking or using you just go south. I’ve gone freaking crazy before letting anger arise from it, ‘and trust me; you don’t want to be around me when that happens.’ I’m scared of myself when it did—going on rampages destroying everything in my path, hurting myself, or wanting to fight anyone in my way. You cant talk anyone out of it when they are intoxicated. You just have to watch over them and hope they don’t hurt themselves or anyone else. It’s freaking scary, trying to deal with your thoughts while sober is very difficult.

Many times I wanted to leave my recovery because I did not think I could handle it. But I’m glad I stuck it out. Learning to cope with my thoughts has made me stronger mentally. Using alcohol or drugs was me being weak, taking the easy way out, but it would only be temporary because, guess what, they were coming back the next day only now I’m dealing with a hangover feeling like shit. I’ve woken up more miserable and trapped many times and lost lots of money trying to escape them. But eventually, I had to change my ways and learn to deal with them the right way—no more hiding behind a bottle or bag. I am not going to let my thoughts drive me to destruction any longer; I’ve allowed it for too long. Thinking about my past toxically has led me to live a self-destructive life, I even had attempted suicide. I am glad to have walked away from that crash to live another day and to be here today.

I never expressed myself the way I should have, the way I am today. I kept everything bottled up inside and couldn’t talk unless I was intoxicated in some way or form. Not many people know what indeed led me to live a destructive life. It wasn’t until I became sober and started opening up expressing myself to my psychologist to be able to think with a new perspective. Breaking down that wall was challenging, but it was a significant breakthrough.

After my last DUI on October 15th, 2019, when I woke up with my company truck into a telephone pole around 3 am surrounded by police, unknowing how I winded up there. I met with a psychologist two days later at a VA hospital in Connecticut. Not long into our session, I broke down crying. Here I am, 31 years old, a grown man crying in front of a woman I never met before. I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t handle the pain anymore, I was scared of myself. All those years of emotional pain bottled up came out all at once. I knew I needed help; I knew I needed to change. I knew I had to change the toxic thinking of my past that had taken over my life and led me to substance abuse before I got myself or someone else killed. But after that session, I closed right back up. No one knew that I cried in that office, but it made me feel weak and vulnerable. Here I am a United States Marine Veteran, been to Iraq and around the world, A deck boss on commercial fishing boats, worked in storms we shouldn’t have been on, and dealt with more stressful events than I ever imagined I’d experience. I’ve been through many dangerous situations and gotten through them. How did I end up to be crying? Because I never dealt with the pain appropriately. I had my thoughts and perspectives on everything and never let anybody in properly. How could I when I felt and been alone for so long with no one I thought I could talk to about it because I was scared. I felt uncomfortable talking about my thoughts and feelings. Only a few people know some of it.

It wasn’t until January this year when I started with a new psychologist at a substance abuse program in New York did I begin to express my thoughts and experiences. Not at all once, it took time to get there, and we just touched base on them. It was a steep wall to breakthrough, but I am glad I made it. Getting out of your comfort zone is not easy, but its a necessity to move forward with yourself. By talking about my thoughts and receiving guidance into a different way of thinking helped me to progress to think more transparent and more positive.

I can’t change my past, but I can change the way I think bout it.
I can learn to let the past be and not have it tear me apart.
I can think about a better life I’d like to live.
I can think of different ways to handle my pain.
I can feel I have a chance at a sober life.
I can imagine I can be happy with myself.
I can think of more positive attributes about myself.
I can think about how to become a better person.
I can imagine I’d like to enjoy my life on a daily basis.
I can feel I have a chance.
I can believe that just cause I haven’t always been an honorable person doesn’t mean I can’t be today.
I can feel there is a better life waiting for me to live.

Learning to become aware of my toxic thinking and how to direct those thoughts into more positive thoughts had led me to start living a more peaceful and positive life. I don’t always have to think negatively, or when I do, I am more able to detour away from them. I’ve learned how to cope with my toxic thinking. I’ve found ways to keep myself occupied, so I have less chance of going down that road again. I began reading lots of books on self-improvement. It started with a suggestion from a friend to read, ‘Awakening of a New Earth’ by Ekhart Tolle. Not a book I would pick up on my own, but heck it can’t make anything worse. That book opened my eyes in many ways and led me to read many more. I’ve probably read at least twenty books since and have a stack waiting to be read on all different subjects to help me internally. Who would have thought a book could change you in so many ways. I had to be open-minded in my reading and honestly think about many aspects of myself. I had to be honest to myself when I was reading, and once I read something that I could relate too and make me think about a particular topic, I couldn’t unthink it. It would be all I could think about; I couldn’t hide from it. I had to accept it and learn from it to grow within.

When you start thinking about how life affects you, but also how you affect your own life. You start thinking about how to change your life. By being open-minded in my thinking, I have improved myself in various areas. If you don’t manage your thinking, you won’t change yourself. Managing your toxic thinking is an important step. You have to break down that wall and learn to manage your thoughts to progress. It is far from easy but possible over time. Learn to manage your thoughts, and you will learn to think more positively about yourself, your past, your future, your life.

I hope what I have written here is helpful and hopefully relatable. It’s not always easy to express what you are thinking. But these are my thoughts, and I’m sharing them with you to help in some way or form hopefully. I listen to classical music as I write this to help me focus, as I do all my posts. It helps me with the thinking so I can concentrate in many ways. Sometimes when I feel trapped in my toxic thinking ill listen to classical music then imagine the cartoon ‘Tom and Jerry’ since it would have similar music playing in their episodes. I would imagine their chases and actions against each other, and it makes me laugh and brings me back to childhood days when life was simpler. Turning toxic thinking into positive makes life a bit more peaceful.

So if you find yourself trapped in toxic thinking, try reaching out to someone to talk too. Or get up and change your surroundings, try doing a hobby, going for a walk, meditating, read a book, listen to music, watch a movie, anything to detour your mind away. You have to experiment with different ideas until you find what will suit you. Everybody has a different way to cope with there thoughts; find yours, so you are not trapped. Learn to recognize your signs if you start to go down that road. You have to focus on yourself, so you can understand what makes these thoughts arise in you so that you can channel away from them. You won’t change everything overnight, but if you practice and search for understanding these ways, you have a chance to. And don’t always put yourself down, there are positive attributes about yourself. You may have just forgotten, but there is good inside waiting to be refound and expressed. Everything has to start with you willing to want to change and focusing on living a better life. Sometimes we fall back and do get trapped, but the sooner you can recognize yourself in those situations, the sooner you can get back on your feet and start living again. Don’t let your toxic thinking destroy you; there is a better way to handle these situations and a better life to live.

How did you like this article?

About Post Author

Wandering Soul

See author's posts