“How can we cause a change in something that has already happened?”

Which one do you think is easiest to change: Your thoughts, feelings, or behaviours?

Are any of these unchangeable?

Many people think behaviours are the easiest to change, followed by thoughts and then feelings (or vice versa).  Some people don’t realize that thoughts or feelings are changeable at all.  

I would suggest they are.  And maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I even think that this can happen AFTER the thought has happened or the feeling is experienced.

How!??

When considering change or growth, the common belief is that there is a linear and causal relationship to time.

For example:

We have the power to change thoughts, feelings, behaviours in the future.  We can notice the thought, feeling, or behaviour in the moment and then do something to cope with (or change) that for the future. For example: Let’s say you begin to feel anxious and worried about your spouse who you have called several times and they haven’t answered, and they are supposed to be driving home and the weather and road conditions are poor. You begin to pace around and feel sick thinking about the worst-case-scenario. Then, you notice this, you can identify your:

• Behaviours (your breathing rate and increased and that you are pacing),

• Thoughts (about catastrophe)

• Feelings (scared, anxious, and worried)

You then implement a change:

• You coach yourself through it just like you might say to a friend or your child if they came to you with fears.  You might have a dialogue with yourself that sounds something like, “It’s okay, [spouse] is fine, I am sure he is focusing on the road versus his phone.  He is safe and will arrive home soon. This is anxiety talking, not fact. I am going to take a few deep breaths and let some of my energy out by moving my body intentionally. I am in control, I am safe, and so is he.  If he isn’t home in 20 minutes, I can try phoning him again, but I am going to trust that he is driving safely and is late because of road conditions”. 

• You take some breaths, stretch and move your body a little bit, shake your hands out, roll your shoulder back, unclench your jaw and go make yourself a cup of tea. This helps calm your nervous system for the time being and, sure enough, your spouse pulls up into the driveway moments later - safe and sound.

This type of pattern – 1) before, 2) implement change, and 3) after – all makes good, logical, sense the way we are used to thinking about things (that linear, cause-effect kind of relationship).

However, let’s consider a different kind of pattern. Imagine it to be more like this:

The difference here is that the implementation of “change” effects the future, but also the past. 

How can we cause a change in something that has already happened? Well, think about it more like changing the relationship to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (vs. the original experience). Let me explain more.

Say the above example happens again and you go through everything mentioned above. You engage in self-talk, slow breathing, and other calming exercises to reduce anxiety and take a perceived, and arguably very real, level of control back in your nervous system. Then, afterward you can think back to a few moments or days ago and establish a level of intentional disconnect from your anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. You might think, “Oh, that whole experience was based in fear not fact, and I was able to soothe those fears by speaking confidently and calming my body.” Now, you don’t feel like you are one with those thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, but you have a healthy amount of separation from them in order to take some power back. After all, they are just thoughts, feelings, and behaviours… albeit some scary ones. But we don’t need to get trapped into thinking that just because something induces fear in us, that it is real and will happen. You have now changed the relationship you have with those thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. In the past, present, and future.

Then, the next time you encounter these thoughts, feelings, and behaviours associated with anxiety you will be better equipped to cope with them and separate them from fact or reality if needed.

So next time you think, “I can’t change my thoughts or my feelings about something, especially after the fact” or “I never seem to be able to recognize when anxiety is creeping in and how to separate that from fact, especially beforehand and so that I can even make a change” … consider the figure eight pattern and that sometimes ‘change’ is implemented after the fact, beforehand, or both. And that regardless of when you do make a change (no matter how subtle it is), it can still have an effect on past, present, and future.