Transcript of How We Can All Improve Our Mental Health: Monica Vermani

Read the full transcript of Clinical Psychologist Dr. Monica Vermani’s talk titled “How We Can All Improve Our Mental Health” at TEDxUofT 2023 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

MONICA VERMANI: Hello, I’m Dr. Monica Vermani. I’m a clinical psychologist and I usually spend most of my time, like other mental health professionals, behind a desk working one-on-one with patients. So I’m a little out of my element on stage, but thrilled to have the opportunity to speak to each and every one of you about what I believe is one of the most important things each and every one of us can do to improve our mental health and make the most of our lives.

When I work with patients at the start, I usually ask people to give me a pre and post of what their life looks like, where they are, where they’d like to be. And so I ask them to imagine, if I had a magic wand and I can take away all their problems, what would their life look like? What would they change? What would they envision for themselves? What would they manifest?

Good question, right? What would you change? It’s such a good question, I thought I’d ask it of myself. What would I, as a mental health professional, change if I could wave a magic wand?

The Power of Our Thoughts

If I could change one thing, I would change our negative thoughts into positive ones, because there is very little that can cause us more hurt and harm than our own thoughts. Thoughts are powerful things, and it’s our thoughts that hold us back from becoming a higher, better version of ourselves.

It’s important for each and every one of us to recognize the power of our thoughts.

The first step to treatment is always awareness, and many of us don’t know how to pause and reflect, to really look at our life with a magnifying glass and see, what is really the problem?

How Problems Manifest in Our Lives

Every problem in our life manifests in three distinct ways:

Through negative thoughts: “I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not capable.”

Through physiological symptoms like headaches, muscle aches, abdominal distress, constipation, heart palpitations, panic attacks.

And also through emotions: sadness, anxiety, and overwhelm.

As well as maladaptive behaviors that come as a result of those negative thoughts racing around in your head and the physical symptoms in your body.

What are those maladaptive behaviors? Overeating, under-eating, over-sleeping, under-sleeping. Alcohol and drugs take the edge off those physical symptoms and negative thoughts. We also do those as maladaptive behaviors. We numb, we procrastinate, we tend to isolate ourselves, we hold back from others, we try not to include ourselves in social circles, and we have a tendency to do other maladaptive behaviors, like playing too many video games, finding ways to minimize harm by avoiding people, avoiding relationships, not dating, or being such a dating person that you don’t give yourself a break from it.

The Origin of Negative Thoughts

Each and every one of us wonder, where do these negative thoughts come from? Why are they so strong? And how can we help ourselves clean up our thoughts and become more positive, resilient, and adaptive thinkers?

Well, let’s start with, where do these negative thoughts come from?

Zero to ten, when you’re born, each and every one of us are born in a household, born innocent, pure, unconditionally loving, like all children are. When we look at those children, you see them unconditionally loving you, positive, not scrutinizing themselves or others, but in a place of living moment to moment in the present.

And then, from that state of mind, how do each and every one of us go to attaching ourselves to negative thoughts, attaching ourselves to self-scrutiny? Good question.

It’s important for us to recognize that it starts that young. When we’re children, we grow up in a household, and our first natural caregivers are the ones that we absorb from. What men do, what women do, how interactions and relationships happen, how much or how little communication we need to do.

We start learning from our biological family unit about conflict resolution, love, sharing, caring, kindness, procrastinating, overworking, underworking, how to cope with stress, and if you’re very anxious, how not to cope with it.

We start entering that world out there, and we start getting now shaped with thoughts that influence our blueprints and our narratives and our core beliefs through school systems, through cultural organizations, through churches and other religious organizations, as well as our peer groups. Many times, our core beliefs or narratives start shaping and morphing into new things. We start expanding. We start learning more.

The Different Types of Thoughts

Now, this is our roots. We got our core beliefs, we got our narratives, we got our stories, but then as we start entering that world and functioning in it, what do we function with? These are the other thoughts that we talk about.

Those are automatic thoughts, those monkey brain thoughts that are jumping around in our head. Some of you guys are doing it right now, and so our minds jump around with automatic thoughts all day long, thoughts that come from our accumulated life experiences, and those thoughts jump around all day long, and they are quite powerful.

ALSO READ: A Snack’s Journey From The Farm To Your Mouth: Aruna Rangachar Pohl (Transcript)

These thoughts come together fragmented, positive, negative. They shape our lives. They shape our decisions. They shape how we interact with the world, how we interact with people, the risks we take, the things we avoid, and then we also have schemas.

What are schemas? Schemas are maps in our head of how we organize automatic thoughts.

So, schemas, when they’re running beautifully, according to our plan, in control of our lives, they run beautifully and we are happy. We’re in control. They’re running the way we were taught they should be, but then if we interact, a bump in the road, a car accident, a job loss, a relationship breakup, or we have a system crash, what happens then?

We start getting nervous about losing control, and some of those core beliefs that our parents taught us, about being careful, that world’s not always safe, there’s always problems that could happen, they kick in. And what do we bring in? Safety mechanisms. Safety mechanisms and self-defense mechanisms.

Why Our Thoughts Are So Powerful

Why are our thoughts so strong? They’re strong because of that. We tie emotions to our experiences, life by nature. It’s just a series of experiences until each and every one of you attach your experiences to a label and a judgment, positive or negative.

Why do we judge things as negative? They inconvenience us somehow. We attach emotions to things that inconvenience us. When things inconvenience us, they cause us hurt, sadness, heartbreak. They cause us to change our course in action or have to grieve the loss of a relationship or a person in our lives. They hurt.

Who said life was supposed to be happy all the time? It’s supposed to have happiness and sorrow. It’s the fabric of life.

And so it’s important for us to recognize that our thoughts are so strong because of the fact that we attach emotions to it. And those emotions come from these blueprints, our beliefs, automatic thoughts that jump around all day, and those schemas, those maps in your head that you feel are safe or unsafe, trustworthy or untrustworthy.

We start worrying about worst-case scenarios, forecasting negativity, self-doubt creeps in, negativity related to fear, not knowing if I can handle the next bad thing that shows up. All of these thoughts immobilize us.

And so it’s important for us to recognize that our thoughts are powerful things and they’re stronger because we start attaching emotions to it. And emotions that are unpleasant, we want to stay away from. We don’t want to be close to those. We don’t want them to repeat.

So one reason why we bring in safety mechanisms, safety measures like self-defense mechanisms, are to help us prevent harm from reoccurring. One reason why we’re always afraid is we’re worried about bad things reoccurring. We realize, wow, bad things can happen, not to others, to me too, and to my loved ones.

Becoming More Resilient, Positive Thinkers

So how can we clean up our thoughts and become more resilient, positive thinkers? Well, this is a process.

So you have to remember, let’s go back to our childhoods. You weren’t born this way. Each and every one of us was born in an innocent purity of living in the moment, experiencing things in full vigor. And then we started attaching ourselves to, “I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not capable. I can’t handle this. What if that’s too hard for me? Others do it better.” And these thoughts create judgments, comparisons, separation, and make you avoid things that could be for your highest and best interest.

How do we clean up our negative thoughts? It’s important for us to recognize that we need to pause and reflect in life and take a mindset inventory of what goes on in this brain.

Then the next recipe I give people is challenge. Rewrite and reframe. Challenge the thoughts.

Here’s the key. Why did I write those three? This recipe is not like CNN. It’s not the news. It’s better than the news. CRR is better.

Challenge the thoughts from the past that are coming into the way now. Challenge the thoughts that tell you you’re not good enough, not capable enough, not smart enough. Challenge the thoughts that say you’re broken after a trauma, after a setback, after a heartbreak. Or the thoughts that say a negative event might lead to a never-ending pattern.

Rewrite thoughts of who you really are. I am capable. I am smart. I am bold. I am able. Rewrite how you even speak to yourself in the here and now. Are you still carrying forth those negative thoughts and then perpetuating them over and over?

After that we’re reframing. What are we reframing? The future is imagination. You can imagine it to be as beautiful and lovely as you like. And what do most people do? Imagine worst case scenarios. Fears of forecasting that worst case scenarios might be repeated patterns of things that have gone wrong, they’ll go wrong again. Or I’m broken from life experiences in the past and that means I can’t be better than who I am. These are again thoughts that are limiting you. What are thoughts, judgments of yourself and others?

ALSO READ: What's Wrong With What We Eat – TED Talk by Mark Bittman (Transcript)

Success Stories from My Practice

In my practice I am blessed and I have over 25 years of experience working with mood, anxiety, stress, and trauma in all of the populations I’ve worked with. I constantly am helping people challenge, reframe, rewrite the stories of their lives, the hardships, and the things that they carry forth that no longer serve their highest and best.

One of the stories that I would like to share with you is a guy that I met in the hospital I was working with. He was a quadriplegic. It was an accident that he had encountered and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He came into my office and I remember him saying, “Hey Monica, can you please pull out a bottle of water and give me a sip of water?” And I realized the magnitude of his physical disability. He was not even able to have a sip of water without my assistance.

So as we spoke, he was disheartened and his future felt bleak. He didn’t know how to see a future for himself because all the goals he had planned were not going to happen. And then as we continued to work and think about life, we talked about revamping and accepting where he was and trying to revise his statement of a future to one that maybe he can handle. And today he’s a successful sportscaster. He makes his sons proud and he was very happy to find there are ways to go beyond his physical limitations, even if he didn’t have a choice.

Another story, a successful physician who was working in a wonderful medical practice making lots of money. However, he was anxious, hyper-focused on perfectionism and dreaded his daily bread because he did not like being a doctor. This man struggled with why is it hard for him to go to work, to this job, day in and day night. He was anxious, plagued with fears of making mistakes and hyper-focused on perfectionism.

As he came into my office depressed, lethargic, and just not happy with his life, not being able to see a future that he looked forward to. We spoke about challenging and reframing thoughts. The biggest thought we reframed was other people’s opinion of him was none of his business. It was his opinion of himself that mattered. When he absorbed this and he understood it fully and he accepted it, he took a chance to look at that magic wand exercise I had. And when we waved the magic wand, he realized he never wanted to be a doctor. He did that to honor his parents. He wanted to be a cop.

And today, I’m proud to say he’s a police officer, happy with his life, enduring more success in his journey, has a successful marriage with a partner who supports him, and his family loves him just the way he is. Nobody was as disappointed by his career change as much as his thoughts were.

And the last story I’d like to share is an IT professional. This guy came into my office, and he was born mute with physical disabilities. He came in typing away on his phone, and the phone spoke to me. And I was like, oh, so that’s how our sessions are going to go. And from that day forward, we began our journey in therapy.

As we worked together, he challenged his vision of his future. He was proud of his parents that encouraged him to be all he could be. He finished university. He got a wonderful job as an IT professional, but it wasn’t enough. He was anxious, angry, frustrated by people judging him by his physical exterior and his disabilities. He was so angry at the world and angry at himself that when we started working on our journey to look at what he’s possessed, how far he’s come in life, as he started recognizing and pausing to reflect on how far he’s come, and he felt proud of himself, he started journaling and writing more about it, and then starting to post it on social media.

He comes in one day and says, “I’m a social media sensation. I have over 100,000 TikTok followers.” And I was like, great. He goes, “Look at me. Whoever thought this. Look at how much I’ve overcome. How far I’ve come from that guy who’s in your office depressed.” And today people are no less shallow. I’m no less disabled. But all that’s changed is my mindset. And it all happened with you helping me change my thoughts in your office.

ALSO READ: The Harsh Reality of Ultra Processed Food: Chris Van Tulleken (Transcript)

My Personal Journey

I’m going to share one more story with you. A South Asian girl born from a traditional family unit. A person that I worked closely with for years. Me. This person here was born in a family that was supportive and loving. However, I always had the idea that all I needed was a job to be self-sufficient. And that’s all I needed. So I went to U of T, got my degree, finished my science degree, got a job. And I thought I was self-sufficient with a job as a psychometrist. Someone who did pre-interviews with mental health patients in a prison site.

So as I was working there, I was encountering wonderful professionals. And one of the professionals pulled me aside and said, “You’d make a pretty darn good psychologist.” And I chuckled at him saying, “I’m not sure if I’m that smart to go to school that long.” And he said, “I beg to differ. Go apply to grad school.” So I did. And I got in.

Then the next problem showed up. How do I afford such an education? And so I paused and reflect again and at another job at CAMH, I had another mentor show up. And she looked at me and said, “Hey, if I can do it and I didn’t come for money, you can do it too. You’ll make it work.” With her encouragement, I embarked on that road. And 15 years of education later, here I am.

Then two decades of working with mental health patients, I had a moment of, I want to give back to patients who can’t afford the time or the expense of therapy. And so another thought crept in. Who are you to write a book? There are so many amazing clinicians and authors out there. Who are you? So I took another pause and reflect, challenged my own self-thoughts, took the little kid in me, put her on the shelf and said, hey, you’re adult version, we got you. And then I realized I can write that book. It took hard work and I did it. And I’m working on my next one now.

The Power of Thoughts

Thoughts are powerful things. Positive and negative, they shape your lives, your worldview, and your futures. Challenge the thoughts from the past that no longer serve your highest and best. They keep you stuck in patterns of self-screwing, patterns of self-scrutiny, judgment, criticism, judgment of yourself and judgment of others.

Notice thoughts from the past that may have worked for you to cope, manage, but maybe today are holding you back from having successful relationships, that job you want, taking a risk. Notice what you avoid. And do you really need to avoid it? Rewrite in the here and now what are true about you.

If positive and negative are both equal for the future, remember, future is imagination. It hasn’t happened yet. So if I’m going to imagine something, why am I imagining worst-case scenarios instead of best-case scenarios? Reframe thoughts about the future that maybe

Hold you back from taking those risks. Manifest as beautiful a life as you would like to. Why can’t you imagine it? If you can’t imagine it, you won’t act. Reinforce positive thoughts that give you a lift, give you encouragement, give you support. Reinforce a future that materializes a life that you only can dream about. Once you dream it, you can take the actionable steps to reach it too.

Imagine how your life could be. We are more than our traumas, our upbringing, our dysfunctional childhoods. We’re more than our heartbreaks, our breakups, our miscarriages, our life misfortunes, our job losses, our mistakes. We are more than all the bad things that happen in our life and we are more than the self-scrutiny, the judgment, and the labels we carry. We are more than our negative thoughts.

Writing Your Life Story

Imagine how your life could be. Our thoughts are the stories of our lives. What story do you want to write for yourselves? I’m telling you about mine and I’m not even done yet. And what would you like to be once you’ve conquered your own negative thoughts?

When you’re in pain, you spill over into others and guess what? When you’re in health, doing the healthy things out there, like changing your negative thoughts into positive ones, there’s a positive ripple effect too. Take charge of your health in order to make your inner circles happier and healthier and then the world even happier and healthier.

I wish for each and every one of you a deeper wellness and your journey to be successful on revamping negative thoughts into positive ones, into ones that help you learn to be all you can be in your highest and best for better. Thank you.