Unfocused / Avoidant Inattentive states are compensated. They reward you with blocked emotions, filtered memories, and diluted pain. A safe, chaotic distance. Consequently, it also keeps you from a connected life. Journal Prompt: Unfocused thinking helps me...

I am alone, screams the cornering thinking patterns of shame. Journal Prompt: ...are the thought patterns that leave me feeling alone.

A thought pattern of minimizing teaches you to distrust yourself. The person I am in a relationship with talks to me in an abusive way. It's not all the time... It’s not that bad... As if you are talking yourself out of a lived experience, minimizing the problem, the impact, and experience. Minimizing happens when we are afraid of change, conflict avoidant, or having difficulty being honest with ourselves. Journal Prompt: I find myself minimizing when...

identity. Negative emotions are far more oppressive if the ones you feel become an identity. You have power to give your emotions visiting hours, unhooking and mining distance from your emotions. I am having the thought that I am not enough. I am having the thought that I am a shameful person. You are experiencing a thought. You are not the thought.

binary. Binary thinking is the thought pattern of rigidity and inflexibility. The perspective is, all or nothing. When you are identifying abuse, binary thinking is helpful, abuse is abuse, there does not need to be gray. But when your thought patterns discuss your competence and worthiness, gray needs to be invited to the conversation. Journal Prompt: A less binary way to describe myself would be...

Fusion. Fused thinking believes that your thoughts and your being are the same. I think that I don't belong, then I must not belong. There is separation between your thoughts and who you are as a human. Observation is an alternative. You can observe your thoughts and allow them to continue by. You are not required to formally adopt each and every thought you have. Journal Prompt: I would rather not adopt thoughts...