> The thing we tend to overlook about our inner dialog is that we actually have very little control over our thoughts. You know you have a problem when they become suicidal, because healthy minds simply do not have them.
Tell me about it. I've had suicidal thoughts pop up in my mind, unbidden, for over a decade now. From time to time, at LEAST once a week, I'll just start visualizing putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Or jumping in front of the train. Or bashing my head in with a rock. All quite vivid.
And I can't just turn it off. I don't tell a lot of people about it because it frightens them. They've never experienced it before, so they don't understand that having the thoughts doesn't mean that I want to kill myself or will attempt to do so. So mostly on my own, I've been working for years to reshape my internal landscape and to revise the story that I'm telling myself. It's slow going. I've practically become a functional psychologist through thousands of hours of highly motivated research. And I'm in therapy, too, which is a new development. I realized I had reached a plateau where my own solitary efforts had stalled. I wasn't going anywhere.
But over the years I've seen improvements. We can't control our moment to moment thoughts, but we can, over time, change the patterns. We can change the story we tell ourselves. But it takes time. There are no shortcuts. Patience and hope, those are key.