Why am I always worrying?

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shalinisweet

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  • Joined: 15 Jan 2014

Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post31 Jul 2014

Hi,

Thanks for reply on my post. I am not able to break my thoughts. Every time i fear. Suppose I am doing something i feel negative thoughts about my family members. After that I will do again and again same work, and my mind start making negative story.

I don't know what i do. Every time my mind have negative thoughts.

Shalini

Save Innocents

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  • Joined: 08 May 2014

Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post31 Jul 2014

Hi shalini sweet,

Before responding to above problem, I would like to discuss your earlier post & would rather suggest to consider your decisions.
I saw your program on Astha Chanel. I like you very much. - referring to Shivani

That is what everyone feels when they watch her on much hyped programme. The reality should be disclosed to everyone (PP & ex-I have exposed Shivani number of times). Suppose you open a shop & start behaving badly to your customer, then what will be the result? Your shop will shut down within few days. So, in order to keep up the business, one needs good promotion, advertisement, crafty speeches, (unreliable) assurances etc etc.

These all are found in one & only Shivani. She has become a role model for many others BK behen-jis. So, whatever you see on Astha channel is a big trap & don't rely on it too much. Even if someone else would have been in her position, she would also have behaved same way. What they want is innocent customers & thats why she speak softly with fine gestures (though if you see her gestures & the way she speaks, you will get to know that it is all unreal & crafty possessing neither an Indian nor Western accent). I would personally like her if she behaves in more natural manner.
I always fear about god. - 15 Jan, 2014

If someone creates fear inside you, he is not God & cannot be considered a nice human being too. How God must be? Someone who accepts you the way you are, with all your problems, pains & sufferings. One who uses your weakness to overpower you & give command to follow rigorously or otherwise some dire consequences would come, is not worthy to be called God. In BK system, they put fear of their Baba inside innocent people as soon as they find your weakness, so decide who can be considered God?

Now your recent problems:
I am not able to break my thoughts.

No need to break it. Whoever asked you to break it must put a brake on his own thoughts which are misguiding you.
Breaking thought process means fracturing your mind. Do never try it. Let thoughts flow naturally. And thoughts stop naturally when it is needed. External efforts are not required at all.
Every time I fear.

Fear from what?
Suppose I am doing something i feel negative thoughts about my family members.

What is so astonishing about it? This happen to everyone these days, if they are not happening then either person is very disciplined or abnormal. As a matter of fact, in whole world other may try to hurt you, but only your family members will help in need. So, care about them & try to do introspection on why do you feel bad about them? Is it so that they are not fulfilling some of your demands? Or are they abusing you verbally? or are they too sticky than needed? Or are your expectations from family members is too high? Find out the cause behind your irritation towards them? You may discuss it here, we all will try to help you.

[But please don't go to BK center or they will detach you from your own family seeing this expected opportunity. Those who don't have these problems, it all starts after going to BK center].
After that I will do again and again same work, and my mind start making negative story.

First start observing whether any of your deed hurt others. If it does, then take steps to do same work in other manner. You have that needed flexibility otherwise you would have never disclosed your problem here.

And don't make stories, wait for the result, & you will find yourself that it is not so that you fail or other scold you every time. Mind is like that only, in fear it will make the most unexpected story & will try to pose nothing as something.

Also be open to your family members & tell them openly that see this is the work I am doing & tell me what should i do to avoid repetition of earlier mistakes. They will not bite you for that. Limited communication is also reason for such problems in family.
Every time my mind have negative thoughts.

Alright, if you have negative thoughts, try to pick few of them. Out of thousands, at least 2 or 3 can be selected. And then wait for the outcome. Match your thoughts with results. You will understand that negativity is just virtual & does not has a right hand in shaping up your future, it just degrades performance. Without negativity also, you can live.

Absence of negative thoughts will not reduce span of day.
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Pink Panther

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  • Joined: 14 Feb 2013

Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post02 Aug 2014

Shalini,

When you say ”negative thoughts” that is two things.

First is you have some thought, secondly you have another, a judgement thought, thinking that the previous thought was negative. You have thereby given new life to the first thought. You may then wonder what to do about it or worry about it more in some way. So the first thought is now into its third or fourth incarnation!

When you have a thought you’d consider ”good”, do you think to yourself - oh, that was a good thought, then continue with ”I am so glad I had that good thought”. No, you move on.

A thought has no real impact unless it’s put into action. Any thought, whether ”positive” or ”negative”, exists only as long as you think it. If you believe that a thought grows or continues, you are mistaken. It is merely repeated or remembered.

That process of repeatedly having the same thought patterns is the onomatopoeic root (where the sound is the origin) of the word ”vritti” - related to our English word ”whir” or ”whirl"and ”vertigo” i.e the whirring, rotating, turning over of thoughts which repeats in a pattern.

People who do harm without thinking need to stop and think.
People who think without doing are ”safe", but ineffectual.
To know that a thought is not useful is good skill to have, it prevents poor actions.
To dwell on it afterward, worrying that you had the thought and the judgement is ”whirring” - its having your gears in neutral and going nowhere, only to waste time and energy.

Be content that all thoughts, ordinary, great or bad, are all the same, they are just thoughts, just bubbles that burst unless you blow more of the same.

People who act without thinking need to slow down and think carefully about what they do.
People who worry too much about what they’re thinking are probably not doing much, not acting practically, or maybe they are doing things they do not want to be doing.

Change your actions or just pay attention to your actions - and you will change your thoughts.

leonard

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Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post03 Aug 2014

Woohoo! Such good advice Mr Panther.

Tanya

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Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post03 Aug 2014

Yes, makes sense to me as well. Actually it was only for general guidance and advices like these that I joined the BKs but when gradually they started pulling me into other irrelevant things (and tried to make me their follower & forced me to believe everything they claimed) that I completely lost faith in them and spirituality itself. It was so stupid & silly of me to have associated myself with such crafty people.

kmanaveen

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Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post03 Aug 2014

Tanya wrote:advices like these that I joined the BKs but when gradually they started pulling me into other irrelevant things (and tried to make me their follower & forced me to believe everything they claimed) that I completely lost faith in them

Quite true!

And Shivani is their one such face for wider audience. She tells things which often are not true to BKs (e.g. regarding celibacy) but are baits for innocent people to reach their centers where they keep traps ready.

Shivani will never tell what BKs god says about about Jesus, Buddha, Nanak or Mohammad (sorry for being little off-topic here).
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ex-l

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Re: Why am I always worrying?

Post11 Aug 2014

There's a related article written by a non-BK called John-Paul Flintoff, albeit a non-BK operating in very similar market for ideas as the BKs are now targeting, e.g "world changing" ways of thinking and "coaching" etc. However, he does reference cognitive therapy - and more developed scientific understanding of the brain than the BKs have - which is thought to be very effective in such areas and is probably a first port of call for help in such areas. Unfortunately, I doubt it has spread well in places like India.

Have a look at the categories at the bottom of the article and see if you recognise any.

It's notable that the BKs religion ... depending mainly on the utterances of a disincarnate god spirit ... does not advance along with the finding of science which it sees as largely existing to serve its goal of eradicating 7 billion impure human being through nuclear war!

A question to the original poster and other concerned readers, what do you mean by "worrying" ? Is this worry the voice of your own inner critic ... one that was put their by your parents or culture and even encouraged and fed to grow stronger by the Brahma Kumaris?

I think one think that should upset people about the Brahma Kumaris is that claim to have a 'one size fits all' treatment for all people's and they really don't have any concern or interest in individuals actual conditions, not the suitability of their 'one size fits all' treatment.

Their position is ... "Come here and be processed. If our process fails or causes you problems, it's your fault not ours of its. You're just a failure".

This is not even true spirituality or gurudom (the leading from darkness to light). A true master or leader would see where an individual is at and approach them from that point bring them out from it ... even admitting where they did not have the right skills or methods and encouraging individuals to seek answers elsewhere. That, especially, would be true spiritual integrity ... clearly knowing and stating the limits of your abilities, not exaggerating your own unique self-importance and supremacy - like cheap market traders - as the Brahma Kumari leadership has done since the very beginning.

Some people are sincere and very self-critical. Even too self-critical. To the point of self-defeat. Conversely, many quite self-centred, tricky and nasty individuals completely lack any self-reflection, never mind criticism.

I don't believe the habit of self-criticism, which you might be calling worry, is "karma" I think it's largely just taught and put there by parents and family at a young age.

The BK system does not really go into self-analysis so much as laying on another layer on top of whatever is therefore from before ... I consider it is just putting on another ready made facade rather than deep intrinsic work.
John-Paul Flintoff wrote:How to silence negative thinking.

It is all too easy to fall into unhealthy patterns of thought, but visualising your inner critic can help. There are different patterns of negative thoughts, but addressing this problem can be helped by confronting your inner critic.

Psychologists use the term “automatic negative thoughts” to describe the ideas that pop into our heads uninvited, like burglars, and leave behind a mess of uncomfortable emotions. In the 1960s, one of the founders of cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck, concluded that ANTs sabotage our best self, and lead to a vicious circle of misery: creating a general mindset that is variously unhappy or anxious or angry (take your pick) and which is (therefore) all the more likely to generate new ANTs. We get stuck in the same old neural pathways, having the same negative thoughts again and again.

Happily, increasing evidence of the brain’s plasticity suggests that we can disrupt this poisonous cycle and put in place something much more healthy. Brains don’t stop developing in childhood, as was previously believed: studies of London cabbies doing “The Knowledge” of the city’s layout have found a redistribution of grey matter, and individuals who sustained massive brain damage have been shown to develop workarounds using undamaged parts. So we can learn to stop our thoughts travelling down the well-trodden neural pathways by creating entirely new ones.

The first step is to become aware of your automatic negative thoughts – and for me, anyway, that’s much easier (and more fun, actually) if I personify the inner critic, with a sketch, and give him/her a voice. By doing that, I externalise the thoughts: they’re no longer coming from me. And it seems I’m not the only one who likes working that way.

Personal negativity

I don’t know what yours is like, but I imagine my inner critic as small with a shaved head, and dark shadows under his bulging eyes. He generally looks worried, and avoids eye contact, but sometimes he stares boldly, his face contorted into a disbelieving sneer.

The description is based on drawings I’ve made of him. And having determined his appearance, I gave him a name: Uriah, because like the Dickens character my inner critic is “ever so ‘umble”.

He’s determined to keep me that way, too. Whenever I’m about to do something exciting – that’s when Uriah pops up. And in the privacy of my own head he says things like this: You’re not ready. Nobody wants that anyway. You’re too old. It’s not going to make any difference. Nobody is listening to you. You will never be successful. You don’t work hard enough. It is painful.

I knew nothing about my inner critic until a couple of years ago, when a friend was training as a life coach, and asked me to be her guinea pig. At the time, I thought life coaching sounded a bit odd and – well, Californian. I didn’t expect much. But I trusted my friend, and found the experience so helpful that I decided to train as a life coach myself – not a therapist, any more than a football coach is a therapist, but a conversational partner who uses insights from psychology occasionally to be supportive and challenging at the same time. (The company that trained us both, Coaches Training International, did indeed turn out to be Californian.)

Until then I had assumed – like most people, it seems – that when a negative thought popped into my head it was just an accurate reflection of the way things really are. But I’ve since come to see that the inner critic only ever promotes a point of view. And there’s always another point of view available if we choose to look for it.

Finding your inner critic

Not long ago, I was running a workshop on creativity for a group of about 30 adults who, for a variety of reasons, had lost the free spirit of creativity they’d had as children.

So I decided to show them my drawing of Uriah, with speech bubbles coming out of his head to show the specific, shameful thoughts that trouble me. I have to tell you that it made me extremely uncomfortable to hold up that picture in front of these strangers, and to read out those horrible specimens of self-criticism. (“Tell them I’ll never be successful! I’m too old! I can’t do that!”)

But as I did it, I looked around at the faces before me and I realised that they weren’t especially interested in my inner critic – they were much more interested in uncovering their own. (What’s more, my own anxiety about this shameful secret substantially disappeared as soon as the words left my mouth.)

So, having shared my own self-critical thoughts, I invited everybody else to take a pen and paper and write down the kinds of thoughts that pop into their own heads.

The room went very quiet.

Then I asked them to imagine about the kind of person who might say those mean-spirited things, and to draw him, or her. (It doesn’t have to be a “good” drawing.) Some drew a picture of their old headteacher, others drew a parent, or somebody at work. I asked them to give the character a name, and to draw speech bubbles containing all those horrid sentences.

When working with people like this, I ask them to notice, in future, whenever these characters come into their heads. To be really curious. How often does it happen? What’s the trigger? What emotional state does it leave you in? How strong is that emotional state, from one (low) to 10 (high)?

And after noticing, I invite them to argue back with their inner critic. “If it helps,” I might say, “think of somebody you admire for whatever reason, and imagine that person is beside you now, offering support. If they were arguing for you, what might they say?”

Answers don’t always come easily. Some people are just too afraid of the negative thoughts. But that usually passes. Others might think the exercise is silly. So I lay it on thick about the science: psychologists, automatic negative thoughts, and neural plasticity. But either way, it basically comes down to the same thing: moving beyond the negative chatter in your head, and putting your inner critic back inside his box. And as many coaches, and cognitive behavioural therapists, can confirm – getting acquainted with your inner critic can be remarkably helpful.

Categories

We all have our own particular set of automatic negative thoughts, but they tend to fall into broadly similar categories.
    Black and white thinking, with no grey areas: “I’ve completely failed.” “Everyone else can do it”.
    Mind reading other people:“They think I’m boring.” “People must think I’m stupid.”
    Crystal-ball gazing: “There’s no point in trying. It won’t work.”
    Over-generalisation: “This relationship ended, so I won’t ever meet anybody.”
    Disqualifying the positive: “I may be a good mother, but anybody can do that.”
    Drama queen: “I can’t find my purse. I’m going senile.”
    Unrealistic expectations: “I should keep going, even when I’m tired.”
    Name calling, to self an others: “Silly fool.”
    Self-blame: “She looks cross. It must be my fault.”
    Catastrophising: “Nothing is ever going to work for me.”
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