52: Attack Toxic Thinking

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 52. We are continuing our series on joy. Today we are looking at how to attack toxic thinking.

Hello, Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Good to be together again.

[00:35] Stephanie: Yes. And hey, I’m in an adventurous mood. So for our icebreaker, here’s the question. If you had the chance, would you rather take a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon or a catamaran tour of one of the Hawaiian islands?

[00:53] Marcus: That is a great question. I’ve never been in a helicopter so that is intriguing, it would be very adventurous, and  I don’t know what a catamaran is.

[01:01] Stephanie: Oh, like the boat?

[01:04] Marcus: Yeah, I’ve actually been on a boat around the island of Kauai and that was amazing. We had a whale come up next to us and check us out. That was pretty cool. So  I’ll go with the helicopter just because it’s new and exciting.

[01:21] Stephanie: That would be new and exciting and I would be very happy to do that. I’m going to choose the catamaran and huzzah for that. All right, well, let’s just dive right into it. One of the great joy robbers of humanity is negative thinking. And on the podcast we’ve talked about beliefs and taking thoughts captive before. So today, let’s talk about how to attack toxic thoughts that steal our joy. And just to clarify, we’re talking about attacking our own toxic thinking, not other people’s toxic thinking.

[02:01] Marcus: This is not a political show on attacking other people.

[02:04] Stephanie: No. So part of tearing down the house of fear and building a house of joy, is learning to joy map instead of fear map our world. Toxic thoughts can affect our outlook on life. It can sow discord in our relationships with God and with others, and even affect our bodies. So Dad, let’s do a little bit more brain science. Can you explain for us the VLE, the verbal, logical explainer, and how it affects our thoughts?

[02:34] Marcus: All right. So, the VLE to my knowledge, was doctor Carl Layman board certified psychiatrist and one of the founders of Immanuel prayer ministry, who coined that term VLE. It occurs in his book, Outsmarting Yourself.

And in layman’s terms, the right side of your brain has an experience and the left side of your brain has to interpret it. But if the right side of your brain goes into a cramp and shuts down so that you don’t get your higher level brain functions, then it shoots that interpretive process prematurely over the left side of the brain. Now it is trying to create a simple narrative to explain what you’re feeling without all the data.

[03:20] Stephanie: Very good. And also, I just have to clarify, we’re talking about layman’s terms.

[03:27] Marcus: For people who are not board certified psychiatrists.

[03:35] Marcus: It’s a complicated word, right? Verbal and logical and explainer. The cognitive engine on the left side of our brain puts into words what we’re thinking and attaches a narrative to it. It tries to come up with a logical explanation for what we’re feeling. And the classic example I’ve heard used is, you’re walking down the street and somebody with red hair walks by and all of a sudden you feel incredible sadness, and you don’t know why.

So your verbal, logical explainer will create a narrative for you to explain why you’re feeling this way. And it could be dead wrong. It could say, ‘Well, you have some traumatic memory with red haired people”, but it just doesn’t know. It’s going to put together whatever data it does have and create a logical narrative out of it, no matter whether it’s true or not.

One of the reasons that this is so important is because our emotions don’t really know fact from fiction, we can’t rely on our emotions. Just because something feels really true to us doesn’t mean that it’s true.

[04:49] Stephanie: I was just in a book club with some friends and somebody asked, “Have you ever noticed that what you’re reading affects your mood or whatever?” The book we were reading at that point had a husband who left his family. One of my friends was like, my husband is great but when he walked in the door I was mad at him.

[05:16] Marcus: I’m mad at all men.

[05:17] Stephanie: Yeah. And she was like, I had to walk myself back to no, I’m not mad at my husband right now, I was just very engrossed in that story. And then everybody was sharing that yep, I catch myself in that all the time. This was a sad book or this was a happy book or whatever.

[05:33] Marcus: Well, it’s the same with music. I remember when I was your age I was painting houses for a living. It was common to have the radio on in the background and some days we’d be listening to music, and most music are love songs. And so you would find yourself thinking about relationships and the girls you’ve known and all this other stuff because the music was just on that theme.

And other times, you’re listening to political commentary shows, and so your mind’s on all the stuff going on in the culture. Other times, you’re listening to a baseball game or something like that. And it just so radically affects the mood you’re in and the thoughts that are run through your head. Which is why the Bible tells us to meditate on the word of God in the morning and in the evening, and do this regularly. Keep your mind on things like this because it is so easy for us to get caught up in the world of emotions created by our narratives.

[06:24] Stephanie: Yeah. I often think about it in terms of what is discipling you and your emotions? Anyway, that made me think of that. What are some common sources for toxic thoughts? Are they always just triggered by amygdala?

[06:45] Marcus: I’d say ultimately it all goes back to the devil because his title is the father of lies. So father means, I’m the fountainhead of something, I’m the source of all of it. So if there is a lie I’m believing, if there’s a false toxic belief, then ultimately the devil’s responsible for it. It doesn’t mean the devil’s talking to me and it doesn’t even mean that I have a demon.

But it means at some level it puts me in sync with that side of the equation. It puts me in step with what the father of lies is doing and not what the spirit of truth is doing. And so if I want to keep in step with the spirit, I’ve got to learn how to take thoughts captive and how to attack these toxic thoughts, so I can get myself back in step with God.

[07:30] Stephanie: So we’ll often talk about the world, the flesh, and the devil. You know, you might pass a billboard or you might have somebody stir up anger in you.

[07:47] Marcus: Yeah. So the way Karl Payne explains this is that the world is anything external to me that is triggering something. The flesh is anything internal to me that is triggering something.

And so the example I’ve heard him use many times is that if I go past a billboard and I see a picture of a doughnut, then all of a sudden I’m thinking about doughnuts. I wasn’t thinking about doughnuts until I saw the billboard sign. On the other hand, I could be home alone on my bed and start thinking about donuts. That’s my flesh that’s coming from inside of me.

[08:20] Stephanie: And then in a very bizarre scenario the devil might whisper, “Donuts.”

[08:24] Marcus: Donuts. I’m sure he has his favorites, too.

[08:33] Stephanie: I’m getting slap happy. Okay, so how do we handle toxic thoughts? Do we handle toxic thoughts differently depending on where they come from?

[08:44] Marcus: Yes. So again, referring back to Dr. Payne, with the things coming from the world the answer is to run. So flee sexual morality, flee the things of the world. He used the example of somebody who would drive home past a **** shop on his way home and too often he found himself pulling in. Dr. Payne’s solution was to drive a different way home.

The guy was like, “But that would take an extra half an hour.” And he was like, “Ask your wife which one she prefers.” So he’s like, “Run from that, don’t put yourself in that position, run away from it” Internally you can’t run away from yourself, it’s kind of with you so you have to replace the thought.

So you run from the one and you replace with the other. If you can’t run and you can’t replace, then you’re probably dealing with some attack from the enemy. So you resist the enemy and you make him run. You make him flee. And so those are the three core strategies.

[09:54] Stephanie: Cool. If our toxic thoughts are triggered by an upset emotion, what is a good strategy for attacking those thoughts?

[10:02] Marcus: Well, first of all, when it comes to emotions, our thought life runs two directions. One, our emotions can trigger thoughts. So sometimes because I’m feeling this emotion, it’s reminding me of all the things that I tend to think when I feel this way. On the other hand, my emotions can get triggered by what I’m thinking. So we’re very familiar with that one.

And that is what I believe triggers the way I feel but it can go the other way around too. What I’m feeling can trigger what I’m thinking about. So when we talk about resisting the devil and fleeing from the world and replacing toxic thoughts, those are all strategies that are related to this.

At its heart when it comes to my emotions triggering thoughts I got this idea and it really was crystallized for me by Dr. Daniel Amen, who was describing these as automatic negative thoughts or “ANTS”. And the automatic negative thoughts tend to swarm whenever we feel these emotions.

He tells the story about an eight year old boy who was struggling with anxiety and depression. And he taught this boy how to in “Christian terms” take his thoughts captive. How to turn his brain into an anteater by coming up with a game plan. Every time I feel these emotions the same thoughts keep coming up in my head, so why don’t I go ahead and come up with a game plan for what I’m going to do the next time this happens? And that game plan is, what are the new thoughts I’m going to replace those old thoughts with? So I think that’s hugely helpful.

[11:50] Stephanie: And it’s helpful to make a “T” bar chart.

[11:53] Marcus: Yeah. So that’s the point of a “T” bar chart. On one side of the chart you have, this is what I currently believe when I feel upsetting things. And on the other side is, this is what God wants me to be thinking instead. So you can think of it that these are the lies and this is the truth of.

But honestly, that can be confusing for people because sometimes the beliefs that are coming don’t feel like lies, and sometimes they’re not total lies. And so we just say these are the beliefs, the toxic thinking that kind of robs me in my piece.

[12:24] Stephanie: These are the automatic negative thoughts.

[12:25] Marcus: These are the automatic negative thoughts on this side. These are the anteater thoughts on the other side. So I do find that helpful. The first time I saw this in person as an actual strategy was in my first week as a pastor. A lady in the church had lost her college age son in a tragic car accident. He was engaged to be married, he just graduated, and was about to go to med school in the fall. I mean it goes on and on. But why I associate it with this is that I gave her the assignment to keep a journal.

And I said, “Start your day every morning by asking God two questions. Number one, what lies does the devil want me to believe today? What is the devil’s attacking thought for me today?” Write it down and then say, “ God what is the thought you want me to hold on to instead?” So you’re just going to replace that thought immediately and you’ve got your strategy and your start. So it’s like day by day building out your strategy against this. Well, several years later she emailed me and basically said, “Thank you for that exercise, it probably saved my life.” That’s how profound our thought life can be when it comes to this stuff.

[13:43] Stephanie: Well, and it makes so much sense because another paradigm that we talk about a lot is WLVS, wounds, lies, vows, strongholds. If you have been wounded and you are actively watching for the lies and replacing them with truth, seeking God in the midst of it, then hopefully you won’t carry out the rest of that pattern.

[14:03] Marcus: And that’s where the real prayer pattern actually comes from. When we invite Jesus to meet us in the painful memories we get two things. One, we get an attachment with somebody who’s happy to be with us in that memory so that we’re not alone in it.

And secondly, we get a new perspective on the memory. We get truth that replaces those lies. So it uproots the lies, replaces it with truth, and it takes out the sense of being alone in what we’re going through because Jesus is there with us. So in that sense, it addresses both the right and the left brain issues that we have. Our right brain attachment needs and our left brain narrative.

[14:43] Stephanie: And we talked about REAL prayer several episodes ago if anybody is jumping in and new to the joy series.

[14:49] Marcus: REAL prayers. Remember the past wound, explore that wound, ask Jesus to heal it, and then listen to what he does. Then look around, revisit the memory, and see if anything changes. So that’s the super simple overview.

[15:06] Stephanie: So in the context of CASA, which is the acrostic that you use in your new book, The Four Habits of Joy-Filled People, attacking toxic thinking is the final “A”. You have calming, appreciating, storytelling, and attacking toxic thinking. And how do you envision this? Is this just an “a la carte” thing that you do these things when you need them? Or is there a generally best practice order?

[15:36] Marcus: If you think about it, the first two, calming and appreciating, are largely the right brain building activities and the storytelling. And attacking toxic thinking is the left brain and that’s dealing with our narrative. Appreciation kind of connects to both, but appreciation by its nature is relational, because I’m grateful to someone, right?

So what happens is that as a general pattern by practicing these things over time it creates a habit, which is where the title comes from. I want to develop the habit of calming quickly. I want to develop the habit of bouncing back. And I want to practice the habit of turning my brain into something that amplifies appreciation instead of fear.

And then I want to get in the habit of telling myself stories and sharing with other people these emotional stories that have a positive point to them. And then when I turn my brain into an anteater, after a while it starts attacking these toxic thoughts automatically. It’s no longer a laborious, conscious process that I’m going through.

So to that extent all of these things can be thought of like learning to play the piano. You know, it’s going to go slow and maybe be awkward at first but the more we practice it, it gets to be second nature. Then we can start experiencing it instead of thinking our way through every step.

[17:01] Stephanie: Yeah. And on the relational note I know I made a joke at the beginning that we’re talking about attacking toxic thinking in ourselves and not others. If you have a loved one or somebody who you know is having toxic thoughts, could you give us maybe a tip or a strategy to help them, or to help yourself with them?

[17:25] Marcus: Well, yeah, this brings us back honestly to the VCR concept. And that is the main thing we want to do is to keep a relational bridge open. There’s an exception to this and we’ll get to in a second. What we want to do is keep the relational bridge open and focus on validating the emotions and making sure they know that we are happy to be with them, even if they don’t agree with us.

And it’s all part of that loving your enemies thing that Jesus talks about. So when I say there’s an exception to it I’m going to Matthew 23. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and he’s calling them snakes and vipers, right? And saying that they’re sons of hell, that they’re going to hell, and that their destiny is deserved. What is up with that?

And I’m like, that doesn’t sound like loving your enemies when you first look at it. But when you think about it this way, those people were on their way to hell. They were blind guides who were going in a bad direction and Jesus knew they needed a jolt, right? They needed something to really wake them up from this. And there is a time for brutal honesty.

[18:37] Stephanie: I would also say that they were supposed to be the mouthpieces of God for that generation and they were not.

[18:44] Marcus:  No, they were the mouthpieces for satan. And so you look at that and sometimes getting in somebody’s face is the most loving thing you can do. It’s just that we’re so quick to justify our actions that we have to be really careful about. It’s one thing when Jesus is doing it because his motivations are right. In our case we want to, as much as possible, make sure that we’re validating first and then comforting. And comforting is where we share truth.

Part of comforting is giving people a new perspective. And sometimes we can do that with an intervention with somebody where it’s like, hey, you gotta wake up to what’s going on here. And the most loving thing you can do is have the intervention but you want to make sure that you’re doing it out of love.

The danger comes when we are brutally honest with people for our own benefit and not theirs. And that is, I just want this to go away. I don’t like having to deal with this. I don’t like how it makes me feel. And so what I’m really just trying to do is fix them quickly so that I don’t have to deal with this anymore. And that’s the flesh. That is not love.

[19:47] Stephanie: What about something that isn’t high energy toxic thinking, but I can tell this person is just constantly fear mapping the world. How do I protect myself from fear mapping like them? Or how do I help insert some joy? That could be too big of a topic right here.

[20:10] Marcus: It’s a pretty big topic. But I will say that there’s a temptation to take responsibility for them. Like it is now my job to fix the way they look at the world. So we do have to be spirit led in this because there’s not always a concrete principle of “do it this way, this is what you do.” It’s like, “God, how do you want me to handle this in the moment?”

[20:30] Stephanie: Amen.

[20:31] Marcus: When I am going to talk to somebody about their thinking, part of this is finding out how open they are. Because there’s some people who are locked in their thinking and they don’t want any help. You’re just going to become their adversary by trying to help them.

[20:47] Stephanie: I mean are there non-verbal things though?

[20:50] Marcus: You want to show in your body and  in your face that you understand how they’re feeling. You want to keep eye contact and present without staring them down and making them feel like, what are you crazy? You know you have to be careful with your non-verbals and stuff like this.

Because you can say all the right things but all your non-verbals are saying the opposite. So we are trying to connect with people in the emotion that they’re actually experiencing and then see how open they are to movement. And beyond that I’m not sure I have a clear principle in mind.

[21:29] Stephanie: Okay.

[21:30] Marcus: Do you have one in mind?

[21:31] Stephanie: I didn’t going into that, but as you were talking about it I was thinking about all the different levels of where you meet people. Like, if they’re at different levels of the brain and where you meet them in those levels. But that would be a whole different episode.

[21:49] Marcus: Yes. We actually have five “S’s”’s around that and I don’t know if I can pull them off the top of my head right now.

[21:54] Stephanie: No worries. There was a lot of good here. And we are coming up to the end of the episode. So do you have any closing thoughts to wrap up attacking toxic thinking?

[22:05] Marcus: I remember walking into a Starbucks one time and seeing an ad for an Alcoholics Anonymous on the bulletin board. I laughed when I got to the bottom of the brochure. It said, “Just ignore that committee in your head.”  I’m like, how many of us can kind of relate to that?

What’s really hard is that sometimes I’ve got anxious thoughts, despairing thoughts, disgusting thoughts, angry thoughts, and fearful thoughts. And all of these thoughts are pulling me in different directions. The Bible talks about a double minded man being unstable in all of his ways. If you think about what it means to be double minded, it means I’m being pulled in different directions internally by the narratives that are running through my head.

Part of this is trying to sort out the emotions and sort out the narratives that are connected to the emotions. And sometimes I just tell the devil, “Get out of here.” Or distract myself out of it and ask God to give me something true to focus on instead. And I found in my own journey that sometimes it’s not helpful to try to figure it all out.

Sometimes it’s not helpful in the moment to try to figure out why am I feeling this way?  Sometimes it’s okay just to distract yourself out of it, find something else to think about and just replace the thought. Long term, we may need some help with a counselor or prayer minister to get at some of those roots. So I think there’s a difference between in the moment and long term.

[23:36] Stephanie: Yeah, that’s helpful to think about. Thank you so much, my father. And, hey, thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart-focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.