Hi Brooke.
I gave in to an urge today to have cookies that were available at work. The rapid firing thoughts that led to this action were “I want it. It won’t matter. and I don’t care.” After I ate them, I did a thought download about why I got caught up in the moment and didn’t even think to identify with those thoughts as coming from the screaming toddler. I realized in my thought download that I am not able to think of the thoughts as coming from the screaming toddler because I am so fully identifying with them as coming from myself. I am not yet able to separate out from it when the urge is very intense so that I can change the thought. I’m really not even sure how the interruption would look in the model. Here’s what I came up with:
C: cookies at work
T: I want cookies
F: desire
———————interrupt
A: change thought to “This is the screaming toddler”
F: tolerant
R: ride it out until urge passes

I feel like I’m missing something. The R doesn’t prove the T for one thing. Another issue is that there must be a new thought before “the screaming toddler” thought that drives the action of interrupting the 1st model. That’s the thought that I’m missing. The one that allows me to separate out from identifying myself as the toddler who is screaming “I want the cookies”.

So I asked myself how to stop identifying with the toddler and instead identify with the parent who neither resists or gives in. The answer I came up with was to 1) slow literally everything I do down to ask “who is thinking” in order to build capability at slowing things down. 2) Every time I give in, do the evaluation again and again to get myself in the habit of asking “who is thinking” 3) Do screaming toddler visualizations to bring the thought to the forefront of my mind

What am I missing? What else can I do to get better at interrupting and changing my role from child to adult?
Thank you!