Welcome to Mind Wise, an audio and video podcast exploring holistic perspectives on mental health care, psychology, neuroscience, spirituality, and wellness. I am your host, Dr. Ron Parks—a writer, teacher, and physician. Today, we’re going to explore:

Stinking Thinking Revealed and Getting Unstuck from Ideas and Beliefs—with Mindfulness, CBT, and Holistic Strategies for Lasting Mental Wellness

The chill of winter, the news, and politics

It was midwinter, with a chill in the air and sleet and snow steadily falling, coating the roads enough to form a treacherous layer of black ice and making travel precarious. Those of us caught indoors often turned on the TV to get the latest weather report, searching for how long our forced winter hibernation would last. On TV, news reports featured recurring stories about outlandish things the president or his party representatives were doing to upset the applecart of democracy. The more dramatic the reporting of threatening changes to the status quo of established institutions and our way of life, the greater the weight on our minds and emotions. Our emotions balanced between worry, fear, and some anger. As the final reports grew more ominous, they predicted more frigid weather, icy rain and sleet, impassable roads, and the closing of businesses and events. My wife lingered to catch the final news and reports. Still, I scurried away to enjoy my nighttime herbal tea and routine of yoga and meditation to shake off the negativity and emotional burden of my earlier exposure to network news, some articles I’d read, and the reported climatic changes, both environmental and political.

A dream of arrogance, deceit, and deception

My pre-bed sleep-enhancing routine worked, and I drifted into a night of peaceful slumber until early morning, when my mind began transitioning toward wakefulness. A realistic dream appeared, drawing on residues of the prior day’s images and unsettled emotions, as if to bring them to a settled, completed state within an ensembled narrative to file away in the depths of memory, perhaps for wisdom or future retrieval. In the dream, I was part of a group at a large event center in a fancy high-rise in the middle of Manhattan. I had responsibilities as a senior facilitator and offered to organize and lead an activity in several large adjoining rooms with open floor space. It was to be a workshop on mindfulness and pickleball mastery. Each person had a tennis ball and a smaller hard rubber ball used for racquetball or handball, as in some of the city’s gyms and spas with small, enclosed courts.

To my surprise, one of the best-known public figures, whose personality and behavior often offended many, was participating in the event, possibly because it was his building. He seemed pleased to take part and exuded a casual confidence that fit his image as more nonchalant. It was hoped that he would see it as a fun way to get a little away from his worries and win over some admirers at the same time. To my surprise, I was supposed to team up with this famous public figure, whose arrogant, dismissive, or bullying behavior often offended others and was considered unforgivably offensive.

My job was to pair the other participants and have them practice together as a collaborative team. Each pair was to find a line in the room that would act as a net. I intended to use the activity and movement of a pickleball competition between the two, along with practiced focus and concentration on the ball, as an exercise in mindfulness. My goal was for the realization to occur with the release from the usual background thought chatter, bringing peaceful flow and connectedness through the coordinated flow of the activity and the fun game.

I was hoping my very public celebrity partner could let go of some of the entrapment in his own worries, pressures, and self-defeating personality traits, as well as in his tightly woven beliefs about himself, since I sensed he wanted to. I questioned how to address each other in our interconnected pair activity to encourage us to let go of some of our tightly held mental preoccupations and distractions that keep us from being fully present in the moment.

Because my attachments to my sense of self and titles, including my moniker as doctor, seemed to be a potential problem or distraction for others, I told my partner and the group they were free to call me by first name or by my career title, whichever was comfortable for them, and that it was not something I was overly attached to. As for my partner, it would be his choice to let go of his closely held public identifiers and image. The exercise felt a little awkward for everyone, including my partner, but there was a glimmer of hope that he and I could relax and enjoy the meant-to-be therapeutic activity.

I awoke and noted my related thoughts for later recording in my dream and insight journal, which I came to value as a helpful tool for mental and emotional health on our journey toward understanding and, perhaps, wisdom. My reported dream and insights from it are presented to heighten understanding of the danger of entrapment or fixation in the mind’s thoughts, interpretations, and beliefs, whether firmly fixed or, for most, hopefully flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. The figures in the dream are not meant to represent any public figure or anyone I know. Most likely, the representations are projections of aspects of myself for my self-understanding and self-improvement work, possibly highlighting some of my inflexibility or arrogance in self-perception and behavior.

It is a hidden gem to know oneself as more fluid and adaptable rather than set and immutable. All this underscores the importance and benefits of healthy practices such as journaling, mindfulness, meditation, and other sensible lifestyle choices. Constant attention to when our thoughts and beliefs are tied to strong emotions, over-identification, and attachment is an important way to avoid mental imbalance, emotional distress, and unhappiness, as the Buddha’s spiritual teachings on our thoughts, mind, and attachments emphasize.

The importance of keeping your focus on the ball in the game of pickleball is a metaphor that appeared in the dream segment above. It is a reminder of the ancient wisdom and spiritual teachings that, by allowing the mind to focus, reduce its hectic activities and mental preoccupations, and relax, it can enter a restorative, healing state.

Stinking thinking and the roots of cognitive behavioral therapy

“Stinking Thinking” became a popular expression, popularized by Zig Ziglar,1 an American motivational speaker, in his self-help, personal, and career development talks. Albert Ellis, a psychologist who founded Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), used the phrase to describe the kinds of negative, self-sabotaging thoughts that can make people feel emotionally distressed and dissatisfied. Some core cognitive beliefs or distortions that lead to emotional distress can be characterized as rigid, absolutist thinking; irrational beliefs that rarely align with reality; and what we may call “stinking thinking.”

Some examples from Ellis’s work of distortions in thinking that can become so well set in the mind that they influence thinking, emotions, and behavior in ways others see as irrational include: feeling you must excel at everything, which breeds fear of failure and self-criticism, leading to over-striving for perfectionism and competence; believing and being convinced that you must be universally liked or approved of, making your self-worth dependent on others and making you overly needy for others’ love and approval; catastrophizing, exaggerating problems and discomfort, and viewing setbacks as unbearable disasters; obsessive worrying about dangers and believing that the constant worry is protective, when it actually leads to avoidance and paralysis; and feeling that you must always be dependent on others and rely on someone stronger and more competent, undermining independence and self-confidence.2

The idea that adverse thoughts influence emotions and behavior has deep historical roots in ancient wisdom—such as the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus, who taught that people are disturbed not by events but by their interpretations (thoughts) of them, and the Buddhist understanding of the impact of the mind and its thinking on life and well-being. It is therefore understandable how stinking thinking, as an expression, found its way into popular culture. Modern psychology, psychiatry, and therapies have likewise evolved from the fascination with the operations of the mind and mental activity, from ancient times through the times that followed, up to the present: philosophers, scientists, researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and healthcare workers.

Aaron Beck, MD, is considered the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This psychotherapy has become mainstream in mental health care and treatment, as well as in addiction recovery and personal development. Cognitive-behavioral therapy challenges and seeks to modify problem-causing thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes, along with associated behaviors, to aid emotional regulation and foster better ways of coping with and addressing problems. Beck expanded the idea of schemas as core beliefs that strongly affect emotional responses and behavioral patterns, and he identified negative schemas as significant contributors to depression and anxiety.

CBT has evolved into a range of valued psychological and behavioral psychotherapeutic treatments that focus on clearly delineated medical, psychological, and emotional difficulties, based on carefully conducted and valida...