In other words -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- instead of "stop thinking," you're saying to "stop thinking the way you are"?
Yep, partly.
Nothing changes in reality, to let go of the way we innately tend to think makes some feel as if their denying the facts. That's not the case, we're just handling the facts in a more realistic sense.
I'll give another example to illustrate that. When LBSs think thoughts like, "I'm alone, and I dread I'll be alone the rest of my life!", that's a common enough thought, no? Yet, the reality is, one will probably NOT be alone the entire rest of their lives, unless they're a hermit or are extremely repugnant. The reality is also that these very same people have had others fall in love with them in their lives, and no doubt, they can attract people and have yet others fall in love with them. Why would that ability fall off the face of the earth all of a sudden? And to take that perception of being "alone" now and project it to be constant to the very end of our lives, is a long, long time for anything in this world to remain constant. The only constant in this world is that things change. And that type of thinking doesn't factor in unforeseen circumstances nor one's own involvement in making things happen in their life, instead it's a rather resigning type thought. What else is wrong with that thought? That it hinges on feeling alone because one certain person out of the world is no longer in a relationship with us? That didn't bother us before we met them. That no one who's been left behind in the history of mankind has ever found love again?
Yet that thinking has a powerful pull to it, because it involves the emotions. Fear, for example, is involved with that reasoning, and fear is a powerful motivator.
But what's happening instead is that nothing's changed in real life, but their perception has... because of the trauma they experienced bringing on a depression of sorts that brings with it that kind of negative reasoning.
Likewise, changing that reasoning to something more realistic helps release us from this depression and also makes life more workable for us because we then are dealing with things the way they really are, rather than filtered through sabotaging depressive distortions.
