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 validated research: dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, spirituality-based CBT, acceptance and commitment therapy (a specialist branch of CBT that uses mindfulness and acceptance interventions), and EMDR. CBT has demonstrated effectiveness for such difficulties as anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, substance use disorders, eating disorders, PTSD, and interpersonal relationship problems, as well as for treating people exposed to adverse childhood experiences and trauma from abuse or neglect.3
The Schemata and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Schemata in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) refer to long-lasting, negative ways of thinking (perhaps “stinking thinking”), feeling, and acting that often begin in childhood and persist into later life. These internalized patterns were thought to originate in unmet emotional needs or difficult prior experiences, shaping how a person sees themselves, others, and their external experiences. Schemata were viewed as mental maps or organizing templates that integrate new and existing information into memory. The term originated with Jean Piaget, who defined schemas as “mental structures that organize knowledge and guide understanding”.
Our mental work is always forming representations, schemes, or patterns that are remembered and reinforced, and that can become concretized in the sense of being held onto and embedded as an immutable belief or identity. These schemes or schemata are valuable only as long as they serve as a framework for achieving a desired or intended outcome, or as a rationalization for carrying out or avoiding certain valued or feared behaviors, outcomes, or consequences. Their reality or benefit is only to the extent of their utility or their relativity to other held needs, desires, or expectations, for continued existence, growth, or movement towards decline, dissolution, death, or rebirth of new beginnings.
In cognitive psychology, CBT, and schema therapy, schemata are understood as more than just thoughts, representing a complex framework “involving memories, emotions, and physiological sensations that drive maladaptive behaviors and maintain psychological distress.” The schema is also seen as an “organized pattern of thought and behavior” or “a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information.” For example, a person who, as a child, was abandoned or neglected can become overly sensitive and be triggered into an emotional outburst or panic attack when they believe they are undervalued or rejected by others. Perhaps we’re oversimplifying by calling it “stinking thinking,” but in a sense, it really is undesirable, problematic thinking.4
When thoughts and thinking become maladaptive and inflexible
These organized, strongly held, or ingrained structures of thought, whatever you call them, can become the underpinnings of significant maladaptive or inflexible ways of interacting with the world, to the detriment of the person themselves or the outside community. These deeply embedded and patterned networks of beliefs strongly influence how we perceive the world, our moods, emotions, and behaviors. When the composite of these inner frameworks of firmly implanted ideas, their influence, and their manifestations is considered, it can be understood as personality or identity. It would be a disorder of personality if significant maladaptive impairments in self or interpersonal functioning persist over time and become a focus for therapeutic intervention.5
But most of us, to a certain degree, get entrapped in our own stinking thinking—schemata, or patterns of erroneous or distorted beliefs that go against life’s natural flow of happiness, productivity, social relatedness, and peaceful coexistence. Those with significant maladaptive thought and belief systems and difficulties integrating and coexisting in society, causing significant detriment to themselves and others, often need outside intervention, such as medical, psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, or even intensive residential or inpatient programs. Given how deeply these personality or characterological imprints are embedded, it is more difficult to get affected people to seek help or stay in treatment, as seen in antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders. There is also a lower likelihood of success for any of the commonly used treatments, but some forms of CBT or mentalization therapy have shown promise.6 7 These difficult personality issues have been well studied to identify therapeutic interventions that promote positive, healthy change.8
Emerging integrative models that emphasize personalized, holistic mental health care, combining evidence-based science, spirituality, and experiential healing, show promise. For example, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a newer iteration of CBT, can be integrated with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, such as ketamine-assisted therapy, and with breathwork practices. Combining these methods can be a transformative mental health treatment, reducing symptoms of PTSD, depression, and substance use disorders and contributing to better outcomes and longer-term remissions.
Holotropic Breathwork, developed by Stanislav Grof, induces altered states of consciousness through deep, rhythmic breathing and is often used as a non-pharmacological alternative to psychedelics in transpersonal psychotherapy and within CBT or ACT frameworks that support emotional release, trauma processing, and self-exploration. It is thought to activate neuroplasticity and promote psychological well-being, especially when paired with mindfulness and awareness of the body and the environment.
Integration of experiences from these therapies is often supported by practices such as breathing exercises, mindfulness, yoga, dream work, journaling, and psychoeducation. These practices help individuals process insights gained during psychedelic or breathwork sessions, promoting more lasting change through behavioral and cognitive reorganization. 9 Mindfulness has become a widespread practice that benefits focus, stress management, and pain management, and it builds emotional regulation and resilience.10
Some things to consider and points to ponder:
As most of us still have the capacity for learning, change, and adaptability, whether our thinking is marginally “stinking” or “overly fragrant,” we might describe the latter as someone who is too cheerful or enthusiastic, carefree, or out of touch with life circumstances, which would also imply a lack of adaptability and less-than-optimal coexistence with others. So, what about those of us who fall into this not-so-extreme or not-so-optimal majority category? We would again have to look to the best experiences and advice of the masters of the art of well-being, successful living, peaceful coexistence, happiness, and spiritual attunement. As I would like to think of myself as a student of all this and as thwarted by the same human limitations and fallibility that we all have, I can only do my best to seek wisdom and explore some of these age-old questions about our human potential to best help ourselves and others during our finite existence and consciousness.
If thinking, emotions, moods, physical health, career, and personal relationships are causing you a painful downward spiral and you have not benefited from your personal efforts, many community or private resources are available, some of which require out-of-pocket payment or are covered by insurance, and others are public programs. Find out about options from your own network of family and friends, research online if you have access, any healthcare providers you may see or have contact with, community mental health services, or emergency services if necessary. There are many possible fits for your needs. In a prior article, I focused on holistic lifestyle psychiatry, an approach mindful of the many vital areas that can improve mental health.11
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For the full article and references, go to: https://parksmd.com/library-of-all-posts/ and to the article: Stinking Thinking Revealed and Getting Unstuck
I appreciate your interest. Please share with others. Thanks to Shan Parks, editor and project manager, for his valuable contributions and editing. All content is created and published for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical services or guidance. Always consult a healthcare provider for care related to medical or mental health conditions. This communication does not provide medical diagnoses, recommendations, treatment, or endorsements.
Thank you!
