“ We need to learn to interrupt or reverse this process before the final crash shatters us .”
• Our diseased synapses then allow this negative atmosphere to create lousy attitudes , which now have some agency in our choices . Then we ’ re reacting to our own attitudes instead of the real situations we ’ re in .
• The lousy attitudes feed on partial truths , and reasonable regrets devolve into toxic shame and blame as the power of focusing on the past grows .
• This deranged neurochemical nightmare then mutates into paralyzing doubt and metastasizes throughout our entire systems . As a result , we are so full of TMT ’ s malignancy that we crash into despair , disconnected from faith and crushed by hopelessness .
The egg is hopelessly fried to a crisp unless the chef rescues it in time with a spatula . And our hearts will flatline , too , unless we implement the treatment plan before it ’ s too late .
“ We need to learn to interrupt or reverse this process before the final crash shatters us .”
We need to learn to interrupt or reverse this process before the final crash shatters us . To do that , we must come to believe the two most important realities in learning to survive and really live again after TMT : ( 1 ) Not every thought is true , and ( 2 ) feelings are not facts . Coming to grips with the fact that our thoughts and feelings are not always reliable is part of the process I call prehab . Prehab gets us ready for “ self-brain surgery ” by strengthening our resolve to get better and giving ourselves informed consent for the hard and painful procedure of changing our minds .
Once we understand those two bedrock truths , we can learn the life-saving self – brain surgery operation I call the bad-thought biopsy . The biopsy teaches us to think about our thinking , which gives us a chance to turn around the malignant crash I just described , like this :
• We pause when an intrusive thought barges in — You ’ re never going to be okay again !— and wait a beat long enough to investigate the thought before we allow ourselves to emotionally react to it .
• This short pause between thought and reaction allows us to close the gap between what we think and what is true before we allow emotion to enter our choice of reaction . It gives time for light to flood the darkness of our feelings with facts .
• We can then critically examine whether it ’ s the actual situation we ’ re in that is keeping us down or whether our own attitudes are contributing .
• Seeing things more clearly can reanimate us when we ’ ve been paralyzed by doubt . It can help us find our hope again as we climb out of the hole of regret and shame and back onto the solid ground of healthier perspectives on our post-TMT lives .
But self – brain surgery is not the end of the story . It ’ s not a one-and-done cure for all the
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