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

by Jennie Allen

Then let’s say I am married to a spouse who is typically distracted with work. I don’t feel seen in our marriage, which confirms my deep-seated fear that I am indeed worthless and invisible. So even in the most inconsequential of arguments with my husband, I feel anxious and start to spin every time he’s short with me. I can’t see all that he has on his shoulders, I can’t empathize with his stresses, and my needs exceed his ability to ever meet them. Before long we are full-on fighting constantly, and we don’t even know why.

The danger of toxic thinking is it produces an alternate reality, one in which distorted reasoning actually seems to make sense.

“Jennie, this is the enemy,” she said. “None of this is from God. This awfulness you’ve been experiencing…this isn’t who you are.”

Because alone in the dark the devil can tell you whatever the hell he wants.

Every spiral can be interrupted. No fixation exists outside God’s long-armed reach. Because we are a “new creation,” we have a choice.4

The only true self-help is for us as followers of Jesus to believe who we are as daughters and sons of the King of the universe and to know that our identities are secured by the shed blood of God’s own Son.

But self-help can offer only a better version of yourself; Christ is after a whole new you.

Satan knows that we are what we think—so if we are believing things that are not true about us, then we are believing what the devil wants us to believe instead of what God wants us to believe.

Our own small choices are accomplishing everything the devil intends—our passivity and destruction—with zero effort on his part. He is out “to steal and kill and destroy.”9

I’ll tell you: because real, connected, intimate time with Jesus is the very thing that grows our faith, shifts our minds, brings about revival in our souls, and compels us to share Jesus with others. It’s where the spiral stops. To put it plainly: all hell is against us meeting with Jesus.

The first enemy, distraction, keeps us from seeking help from God for the chaos in our heads. This second enemy, shame, keeps us from pulling others in to help.

This is a classic mind trap, a self-fulfilling thought pattern in which our insecurity feeds our isolation, which in turn feeds the lie that we are worthless and nobody really gets us or cares to. We feel unseen and unloved, and to protect ourselves from further rejection, we won’t let anyone close enough to change our perception.

Loneliness can make us think that everything is a threat, even if there is no real threat to be found.

Relationships like that take time, effort, and energy to cultivate, but they shift everything.

Nobody can play defense forever; we have to show up. With our whole selves.

Now, notice I didn’t say to seek out perfect people. Whole people. Healthy people. Does this potential friend of yours seem to be in touch with her strengths and weaknesses? Is she clear on the values that guide her life? When she feels all the feels, is she then able to kind of rein it in? Is she thriving in other relationships, or does she seem closed off from the world? Do you feel seen and valued when you interact with her? Does she listen well, or is she always turning the conversation back to herself? Is she motivated to grow? Does she seem happy? Is she at peace?

Our spiraling thoughts of isolation threaten to keep us trapped in a place of self-sufficiency and shame, but vulnerability brings those to a screeching halt. So, be all of you right away, so that your friends get you—the real you.

we may scare off the wrong people sooner but we’ll bring in the right people more quickly too.

Victimhood is yet another enemy of our minds that keeps us fixated on something other than the God of the universe, believing the lie that we are at the mercy of circumstances.

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.