Tips on Dealing with Negative Thoughts

I am often plagued by negative thoughts. These range from the tamer, “No one loves you,” to the more brutal, “Your loved ones are being tortured and it’s all your fault.” I’ve dealt with the cornucopia of awful for long enough - and been to enough therapy - to have a few methods for combating it.

First, fact-checking. Say your brain is telling you that the sun is going to crash into the Earth. Check the facts on that and realize that for one, the Earth goes around the sun and so it would have to be the Earth doing the crashing, and two, if the Earth moved out of orbit even just a bit the whole planet would freeze or burn, and you can look outside and realize that’s not happening at all. Or maybe your brain is telling you that insert-loved-one’s-name-here is suffering horribly? Call them, text them, take a moment to just check in. Your brain might even up the ante, as mine so often does, and tell you that they’re just lying to protect you from the truth.  Which brings us to the next weapon in the arsenal:

Logic-building. Take the pieces of the facts you know and stack them together. You know this person, and they are honest with you the vast majority of the time. And if they are talking to you over the phone, they’re probably doing okay. Or perhaps your brain has informed you that everyone on the planet hates you? Remember that most people are pretty focused on their own lives, and hate is a big expenditure of energy. They’re not chasing after you with sticks and rocks, so their opinions of you are probably mild-to-nonexistent, and none of your business anyway. Try to remember the shape of the rational world, and hold onto it as a framework to support your perceptions.

And if all else fails, there is always flat-out confrontation. This is similar to the “white-knuckling” of addiction. Center on that voice inside, the voice of your self, the one that speaks the words you read or rehearses the words you’ll say next. And when that negative thought comes in, you speak with that voice and call the thought out - “That’s a lie.” Hold your focus on your own self-voice, on the certainty that the awful thought is just a lie, until the thought loses strength and dissipates.

These are methods that have been helpful for me. I hope they are helpful for you as well. And I hope - if you take nothing else from this post - that you will at least remember that you have within you the power to shape your thoughts and perceptions, to make the space within your mind into one that you delight to dwell in. You are more than the sum of your thoughts and feelings, and you. are. loved.