Someone I care about recently opened my eyes to something important: Even when it feels like no one loves me, there are people that do and that my words matter.

Thinking is an important part of being a living, breathing human being. However, with mental illness, thinking instantaneously becomes another one of those tasks that used to be easy but now has to be intentional. If we are not careful, our thinking can spiral out of control and our minds can be powerful enough to trick us into thinking things that may or may not be true.

Let me say this before I go on…I am grateful for those who love me and continue to be there for me despite my constant attempts at pushing them away from me.

There are these tricky things called cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are ways our own minds trick us into thinking one thing when another thing is the authentic truth. Within cognitive distortions, there are certain thinking traps that we partake in that contribute to those pessimistic, untrue thoughts.

There are many different thinking traps, but the ones that are most relevant to me are black and white thinking, catastrophizing, and emotional reasoning. I won't try to explain all of them like some kind of therapy know-it-all but I would be remiss if I didn't explain emotional reasoning.

Emotional reasoning is taking our emotions as evidence of the truth. An example may be "if I feel stupid, I must be stupid." I'm a huge emotional reasoner.

I feel lonely most of the time. I don't feel like I have connections and I feel like if I were to simply disappear, no one would notice and the world would continue spinning without missing a single beat. Because I feel lonely, I often tell myself that I am alone and I am alone because I am toxic, hopeless, useless, and a drain on society.

It's easy to see how those thoughts are harmful and could potentially lead to dangerous situations. Those thoughts have placed me in precarious situations with safety and with relationships both with myself and others.

When my mind tells me no one loves me, I immediately begin thinking dark thoughts. Just because of an emotional response to a situation or just another thought, I am immediately in a place where it's scary to be in. The thing with these thinking traps is that some people don't even know they're in them.

Another tricky part of this for me is that I can be aware of a thinking trap and that I am thinking irrationally, but the emotions stemming from those thoughts are no less real than another authentic emotional response that may be stemming from a "legitimate" source.

That is where I get into trouble.

The thought of loneliness is a perfect example of this. I could have thought that because I feel alone and I feel hurt that no one loves me. Just because I am aware that the psychological term for this is "cognitive distortion", does that mean I no longer believe that no one loves me? NO.

Those emotional responses are real to me. When I think these thoughts, it is not out of a place of harm or hurt towards others...it's a true response to what I perceive a situation to be like.

So, I guess the main message is that I am aware that my thoughts are harmful and that they could lead to a dark path, but that does not make it any easier to deal with. My thoughts are of no malicious intent. It's just how I am.

Could I change my thinking? Could I fight against my mind daily, hourly, secondly? I could. But maybe some things aren't meant to change.