Thoughts Create Reality

Think of a difficult situation that you are currently dealing with. What is it? Does it make you feel powerless? Does it suck most of your mental and emotional energy from you? Do you wish it were different?

There are many things that can shape the way we view our reality.

We all have “lenses” that we view the word with. You can have a religious lens, family lens, education lens, gender lens, age lens, ethnicity lens, and so on. When we are placed in circumstances that push us out of our comfort zone the way we navigate them is motivated largely by the lenses we see it from. What exactly makes up our experiences in life?

Let’s start with the event. If a child were to die, that is considered an extremely traumatic experience for a family.  

The next step would be the resources available to the family. Do they have money for a funeral? Do they have counseling available to help deal with the loss? Do they have friends/family close by that can support them during such an emotionally charged time?

Then you examine their emotional response to the situation. Is mom angry this happened? Is dad shutting down and turning to unhealthy coping? Are the other children acting out more than usual?

Which leads into the cognition about the event. This step is key to how the overall experience will be dealt with immediately and managed as the years go on.

Let’s say the child died from an unfortunate drowning accident. Depending on what thoughts each member of the family entertains about the incident indicates what emotions they will feel with it.

Let’s say mom becomes angry. She’s angry at herself that she turned her back for a few minutes and her child drowned. She feels responsible and like she could have prevented it and now she can never forgive herself. Those are her automatic thoughts. Now what if she could examine those and then offer herself a rational response such as: “I am feeling a lot of anger and anger is a secondary emotion. What I’m really feeling is pain. I’m feeling so much pain that my child died. It’s understandable I would blame myself because if I can blame myself then that gives me a false sense of control. That maybe if I had been more attentive this wouldn’t have happened. There could be truth in that, but it already happened. Focusing on what I can’t control is causing me to suffer more than needed. I deserve to allow divine grace to enter and heal these emotions. It’s ok to grieve the loss of my child. I can find healthy ways to express my anger. My heart can be healed.”

By validating her emotions and viewing them as they are, she is managing them and not letting them manage her.

Events don’t create the emotions. Thoughts about the events do.

If we can learn to manage our thoughts towards the events life throws at us we can better cope with and navigate this life in meaningful ways.