Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts

by Jennie Allen

Evil never wants to be noticed, I should mention here. It sneaks in and hijacks our minds, and we barely notice anything’s amiss.

How we think shapes our lives. Every great or horrible act we see in history and in our lives is preceded by a thought. And that one thought multiplies into many thoughts that develop into a mind-set, often without our even realizing it. Our goal is to be aware of our thoughts and deliberately build them into mind-sets that lead to the outcomes we want and the outcomes God wants for us.

Standing between us and victory is one of three barriers—or perhaps all three: the devil our wounds our sin

We forget that He not only loves us but actually likes us too.

Connection with God is the foundation for every other God-given tool we have to fight with.

[Negative emotion], and [reason], so I will [choice].

“If you want your child to thrive, then make him or her feel seen and loved.”

The part of your brain that activates when you feel rejected or uninvited by a friend is the same part of your brain that fires when you’re in physical pain.6

When you and I isolate, we switch into self-preservation mode.

Researcher and author Brené Brown said, “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.”12 Or put another way: we must be known in order to be healthy.13

We can exist with superficialities but it is nowhere near as good as it is with transparency.

Ask until asking no longer makes you cringe. That advice might just save your life someday, so I’ll repeat it for you here: ask until asking no longer makes you cringe. Ask, and ask, and ask.

This is hard when you have always been the giver. Learning to take allows others to be blessed.

Be the friend you wish others would be for you.

For others of us, anxiety has become the soundtrack of our days, so familiar we hardly notice it playing in the background of every scene.

The enemy has ensnared us with two little words: “What if?” With those two little words, he sets our imaginations whirling, spinning tales of the doom that lurks ahead. But our tool for defeating “what if” is, not surprisingly, found in two words: “Because God.”

We experience palpable physical responses to things that are not real threats, and our future-tense fears are leaving us bound up with tight chests, unable to relax or be present, utterly forgetting that there is a God who will give us what we need today, next week, and twenty years from now, even if our very worst nightmares come true.

“97 percent of what you worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misperceptions.”

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. “Corrie,” he began gently, “when you and I go to Amsterdam—when do I give you your ticket?” I sniffed a few times, considering this. “Why, just before we get on the train.” “Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”20

We always have exactly what we need, when we need it. Do we believe that?

We actively choose to close the curtain on fearful, untrue thoughts.

Cynicism at its root is a refusal to believe that God is in control and God is good. Cynicism is interpreting the world and God based on hurt you’ve experienced and the wounds that still lie gaping open. It forces you to look horizontally at people rather than vertically to God.

Before I tell you what happened, I should mention that cynicism usually grows because we think we deserve better than we are getting. At the root of cynicism is crippling hurt. Cynicism says that nobody can be trusted, that we’re never, ever safe.

Beauty interrupts us, it awakens us, it undoes us, it cuts us open, and restarts our hearts. Beauty is God’s evidence of something far more wonderful coming, a world beyond the one we can imagine, even in the most spectacular moments here. A God better than what we hope for. A God who blows our minds.

Good things happen when we train our attention on that which is beautiful, on that which is authentic and compelling and good. What’s more, beyond the obvious emotional experience, those good things from the hand of God can point us to the One who creates beauty, who is beautiful.

Clyde Kilby’s ten resolutions for mental health. Resolution six is this: “I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are.”

Michiel van Elk, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, recently explained how he is using MRIs of the brain to show that feelings of awe shut down selfishness. When we are in awe of something, we become less self-centered, more others-centered, and more connected to others around us.

So this prompts a second question: What are you looking toward to make you happy?

whatever causes you to experience strong emotions of either happiness or disappointment—that is likely the thing you are living for. And it is very likely ruining your life.

Ouch. I need to think about this one. I’m not sure I agree.

we can observe our suffering without being overtaken by our suffering. We can see it without becoming its slave.

Jesus, we can acknowledge our frustration, pain, and suffering without abdicating our peace and joy. In Jesus, we can change where we fight from without changing what we fight for.

By the power of Jesus, we can demonstrate to ourselves and others that, regardless of how grim the situation seems, God is in the business of redeeming all things. Out of gratitude to Jesus, we can see God’s purposes in our pain.

choosing gratitude over victimhood, Paul centered his thoughts on God’s purpose behind the pain.

We don’t have to like our circumstances, but we can choose to look for the unexpected gifts they may bring.

“Son, you are light. I know this because I have seen God in you. I have seen you go from a selfish punk kid to a young man who responds to conviction, a young man who hears from and responds to God. You love people. You put others’ interests ahead of your own. All this is evidence that God is in you.

“So, you are light. It’s a fact. It’s your God-given nature as one of His kids. “And you are headed into the pitch-black darkness. “There will be times when you act like the darkness, but you will never be the darkness, and you will never be at home in the darkness again.”

When we shift from the thoughts that distract and choose to fix our thoughts single-mindedly on Him, everything shifts!

You know, this is what this entire book comes down to: our thoughts being wholly consumed by the mind of Christ. This matters because, as we looked at earlier, our thoughts dictate our beliefs, which dictate our actions, which form our habits, which compose the sum of our lives. As we think, so we live. When we think on Christ, we live on the foundation of Christ, our gaze fixed immovably on Him.