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

by Jennie Allen

We have bought the lie that we are victims of our thoughts rather than warriors equipped to fight on the front lines of the greatest battle of our generation: the battle for our minds.

Like the young woman in so much pain who sat across from me this week, drowning in anxiety she has been fighting for two years. She looked at me, pleading, “Help. Tell me what to do!” “I don’t want to live anxious,” she said. “I’m in counseling. I’m in Bible study. I’m willing to take medicine. I want to trust God. Why can’t I change? Why do I feel so stuck in this?”

Like the young woman in so much pain who sat across from me this week, drowning in anxiety she has been fighting for two years. She looked at me, pleading, “Help. Tell me what to do!” “I don’t want to live anxious,” she said. “I’m in counseling. I’m in Bible study. I’m willing to take medicine. I want to trust God. Why can’t I change? Why do I feel so stuck in this?” Goodness, I relate and have fought the same thing. It’s incredible, if you think about it: How can something we can’t see control so much of who we are, determine what we feel and what we do and what we say or don’t, dictate how we move or sleep, and inform what we want, what we hate, and what we love?

It’s incredible, if you think about it: How can something we can’t see control so much of who we are, determine what we feel and what we do and what we say or don’t, dictate how we move or sleep, an...

Why, I wondered, don’t the changes so many women desperately want to make stick over the long haul? And why did I still struggle with some of the same fears, negative patterns, and other sins that I had been fighting for years? Even as I observed this boomerang effect at a broad level, I was also in relationship with dear friends, women I knew well, who seemed to battle the same issues year after year. Each time we’d get together, I’d hear the same song, five hundredth verse.

Our emotions were leading us to thoughts, and those thoughts were dictating our decisions, and our decisions were determining behaviors, and then the behaviors were shaping our relationships, all of which would take us back to either healthy or unhealthy thoughts.

Our emotions were leading us to thoughts, and those thoughts were dictating our decisions, and our decisions were determining behaviors, and then the behaviors were shaping our relationships, all of which would take us back to either healthy or unhealthy thoughts.

If you feel sad and I tell you to quit feeling sad, has any progress been made? What if, instead of spending our energy trying to fix the symptoms, we went to the root of the problem, deeper even than the emotions that seem to kick off our cycles? The reality is that our emotions are a by-product of something else. Our emotions are a by-product of the way we think.

If you feel sad and I tell you to quit feeling sad, has any progress been made? What if, instead of spending our energy trying to fix the symptoms, we went to the root of the problem, deeper even than the emotions that seem to kick off our cycles? The reality is that our emotions are a by-product of something else. Our emotions are a by-product of the way we think.

My friend Christina, a licensed therapist, tells me that Psychiatry 101 teaches therapists that when you and I choose to believe a lie about ourselves, it’s one of these three lies we believe: I’m helpless. I’m worthless. I’m unlovable.

Psychiatry 101 teaches therapists that when you and I choose to believe a lie about ourselves, it’s one of these three lies we believe: I’m helpless. I’m worthless. I’m unlovable.

When we begin to think about our thoughts, perhaps for the first time, we can stop the downward spiral. We can reset and redirect them. That’s our hope. Not that we would wrestle each and every fear, but that we would allow God to take up so much space in our thinking that our fears will shrink in comparison. I love the quote from A. W. Tozer that says, if God is “exalted…a thousand minor problems will be solved at once.”2 Sign me up. I want that.

Not that we would wrestle each and every fear, but that we would allow God to take up so much space in our thinking that our fears will shrink in comparison. I love the quote from A. W. Tozer that says, if God is “exalted…a thousand minor problems will be solved at once.”

I’d never before seen such an undeniable manifestation of Satan’s work. The experience could have been terrifying, but instead, it had a different outcome initially: it made me wild with faith. I vividly remember that night. I talked about Jesus with everyone who would listen, including the waiter at the restaurant my family and I went to afterward and my sister’s friends who happened to be in town. I was overwhelmed with how real and true it all was—God. Heaven. The enemy. This war we’re in.

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

Years earlier I’d memorized Psalm 139, and there in the black darkness of my bedroom, my mind whirring with doubt and fear, I’d whisper these words: Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol [the grave], you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.1 I was banking on these words being true, specifically the ones where David, the author of this psalm, said that, try though we might, there is in fact no way to escape the presence of God. I wanted that to be true.

in a microscopic village we’d traveled a full day by prop plane and rickety bus to get to, I heard these familiar words from the mouth of a man whose native language is not English. We loved the same God. How could this God not be real? This man could have read one of the other tens of thousands of passages, but here we were reading the very words—the only words—that were holding up my fragile faith.

So what is the one thought that can successfully interrupt every negative thought pattern? It’s this: I have a choice.

Based on Paul’s writings long ago to the church in Rome, you and I can learn to mind our minds to the point that controlling our thoughts becomes reflexive—an automatic, intuitive response. In Romans 8:5 Paul said that “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” and that “those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”

When we’re spiraling in noise or distractedness, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through stillness. When we’re spiraling in isolation, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through community. When we’re spiraling in anxiety, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through trust in His good and sovereign purposes. When we’re spiraling in cynicism, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through worship. When we’re spiraling in self-importance, we have a choice to shift our minds back to God through humility.

But we don’t simply need our spiraling thoughts to stop; we need our minds to be redeemed.

Instead, we need a complete transformation: our minds exchanged for the mind of Christ.

We are not made to think more good thoughts about ourselves. We are made to experience life and peace as we begin to think less about ourselves and more about our Creator and about others.

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. When we believe that about ourselves, we think less about ourselves and more about the mission we have been given to love God and the people God puts in front of us, no matter our circumstances.

What do you do once you take a thought captive? You then submit that thought to Christ. That is how you experience a new mind, a new identity, a new way to live, one that’s Spirit empowered.

You are what you think. The Bible says, “As he thinks in his heart, so is he.”5 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.

The enemy will tell you that change is hopeless, that you’re a victim of your circumstances and your thought patterns. The enemy wants you to settle, to find a way just to survive and be somewhat happy. The enemy will urge you to accept that “this is just who you are,” that your thinking is rooted too deeply in your personality or your upbringing to ever make a shift. Your first objective is to capture the thought—to have the courage to face that defining, destructive thought and interrupt it: I have a choice.

Taking every thought captive is not about what happens to us. It’s about choosing to believe that God is with us, is for us, and loves us even when all hell comes against us. But I have better news: capturing thoughts and then believing the truth will inform and shape every aspect of your life and give you peace and joy that transcend your circumstances. How? Because Jesus defeated sin, Satan, and death and rose from the grave, and because that same resurrection power indwells men and women who have been redeemed by the gospel.

This is redeeming the time amid unprecedented distraction and noise. This is the beauty of esteeming others amid a narcissistic culture. This is learning to speak the truth in love in a world that says we should never offend. This is how you can breathe deeply and sleep peacefully in an anxiety-ridden society.

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

But now, first, while the rotations were coming fast and furious, she needed to be alone with God. She needed what only Jesus gives.

Why is the simplest, best thing for our souls’ long-term health so crazy difficult to do? 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.

If I could stay busy, my not-so-concrete thinking went, the doubt couldn’t catch me. If I stayed distracted, I’d feel no pain. Because if I slowed down enough to look at my soul, I might be overwhelmed by all that needed fixing in me. I didn’t want to hear what God might want to say to me—or take the risk that He would remain silent, hidden, deepening my doubt about His existence, His love.

We juggle committees and demanding jobs and try to keep up with an unrealistic number of friends—yet we feel isolated. We are often doing so much for God but barely meeting with Him. And we feel as if we are failing everywhere we look.

Yet, just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we find ourselves naked and afraid in life, so we choose to hide.

humans never stay in neutral. We are either moving toward something or moving away from something.

It has been said—and I think it is true—that the most valuable asset we possess is our attention, which prompts the question, To what are we attending?

I’m angry, and she was rude, so I will choose to meditate on God’s kindness toward me. I’m overwhelmed, and I have too much to do, so I will pause and choose to thank God for existing outside the boundaries of time and for empowering me to accomplish only that which I need to do. I’m stressed, and I’m fearful about my finances, so I will choose to pray instead of fear.

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

every person walking the planet has this deeply embedded fear that haunts them day by day. If anyone really knew you, the fear whispers, they’d leave you. This is the lie of shame. This is the lie that shatters your self-worth—the lie that reminds you over and over of the real you that you don’t want others to see.

When we listen to lies about our worth, we naturally back away from others. In many cases, our distancing behavior succeeds in pushing people away, reinforcing our fear of rejection. 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.

We weren’t made to be alone with our thoughts. (Are you as happy as I am about that last one? What a terrifying place the mind can be.) We were made to reach out, to connect, to stay tethered. We were made to live together in the light. The apostle Paul beautifully described this way of living: If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.8

the prevalence of group therapy is on the rise because it works, even when little else does. It is not just comforting to have someone else in our corner; it’s scientifically proven to heal.10

It’s true that choosing community over isolation can be downright scary. It requires us to take a risk. 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’t control how people will respond once we’ve let them in on our struggles. They might say something insensitive. They might minimize the depth of our pain. They might paste on a smile and quote Scripture at us. They might do all these things on the same day. To these and a thousand other pushbacks, I have only one response: you’re right. You’re right. You are! But every valuable relationship in my life is one I have had to fight for. People can be jerks and flighty, inconsiderate and self-centered and forgetful. I know this because I am a person, and I’ve been all these things at some point.

Nobody can play defense forever; we have to show up. With our whole selves. When I come to a moment when I am staring at the risk of showing up in my friendships, I choose to show up. And then when stuff happens (because it will), we work through it. But you know what? When we are faithful to keep showing up for our lives, those lives make room for us.

We talked for a while about what was making them uncomfortable, and then I issued a collective task: at least one time over the following twenty-four hours, each of them had to ask for help. Ask for creative input, I told them. Ask for help unloading your car. Ask for an afternoon walk. Ask for advice about a problem. I didn’t care what they asked for; I just wanted them to practice asking. 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.

I laugh at inappropriate times, like in court and at funerals and during my child’s performance of the speech she worked hard on. (Why do I do this? Can someone tell me, please?) I ask intense, intrusive questions. I’m forgetful. I interrupt serious moments to ask where you got your cute sweater.

As acquaintances deepen and broaden into friendships, the asks can feel tougher. The stakes are higher now, and fear of rejection is a real thing. My counsel: go for broke. When you notice that your friend isn’t herself, bug her until she shoots straight.