“For As He Thinketh In His Heart, So Is He” Proverbs 23:7
In my work as a psychologist I have evaluated thousands of children and adolescents to help understand why they are having anger problems, depression and even experiencing suicidal thinking. One of the tests I use to help me evaluate these kids is called the Incomplete Sentences Blank. In this particular test there are 30 items where the first few words of a sentence are given and the rest is left blank. The subject then has to fill in the remainder of the sentence with their real feelings. There are a couple of items that I have observed that generally elicit the same type of response over and over again. They simply start like this, "Boys think I____" and "Girls think I____." Just the other day I was evaluating a six year old girl. In her case I administered the test orally since her reading and writing abilities were fairly limited. When I came to the first of these two items her response was as follows: "Boys think I.....am weird." When I came to the second one her response was the same: "Girls think I....am weird." I can't tell you how many thousands of times I have observed kids respond with adjectives like "weird", "stupid", "dumb", "crazy" or "ugly." What breaks my heart is that they don't think that this is just an opinion of their peers---they believe it is TRUE! They really believe they are stupid and ugly! They probably were told this a few times when they were young and then other experiences over time, in their eyes, seemed to reinforce this. Today they are not hearing this out in their world from their peers but rather everyday inside their own head.
Have you ever been told you are dumb or are a loser? DON'T EVER LET ANYONE MAKE YOU THINK YOU ARE DUMB OR THAT YOU ARE A LOSER!! You are not dumb and you are not a loser! Nobody is dumb or is a loser! We are all human beings of equal worth! There are two lines of thinking that I observe over and over again in my work that are so horribly destructive. The first is how you see yourself and the second is how you believe others see you. I say these two lines of thinking are so destructive because in my work I see people who think so negatively of themselves and then they believe others look at them the same way! Just like the kids with whom I work these people think it is the truth!
If you have any thoughts in your head that remotely resemble the ones I have listed above, GET RID OF THEM NOW!! Do not for a second believe that you are any of those things! Have we all done dumb things? Of course we have---that's what makes us human! We aren't perfect and we make mistakes---sometimes really big mistakes. That's okay. We learn from them and move on trying hard to not make the same mistakes again. Lets make these two lines of thinking work in your favor by thinking some positive adjectives about yourself and believe that others may think the same positive things about you. It is simply your choice so why be burdened with negativity when we can just as easily choose positive thinking. Remember we are working on becoming emotionally fit. You may just be starting and this does not come easily but it will get easier as time moves on.