Go On...Have a Negative Thought

There must be few things that are of as little use as the advice to ‘just think positive’; and this is coming from a therapist! It is the ‘just’ part of that advice that bothers me the most. If turning negativing thinking and attributions was a simple as just thinking positively, wouldn’t everyone do that?

The act of challenging negative thinking is a tough one because it requires an individual to reappraise how they believe things are. It means having to change our position in the mental argument in our minds. We have become fixed on that way of thinking and it has shaped our expectations. Giving up that which we have spent time mentally building and having to admit to ourselves that maybe there is a more useful way to think about things, is not easy. Take one look at a social media post about politics and you will get all the evidence you need to support just how difficult it is for people to consider a different point of view. 

Positivity is important when it grounds us in reality. Positivity has to be grounded in reality if it is to begin to change negative thinking. No amount of me thinking positively is going help someone run a marathon this afternoon, but using it to support a training programme is very likely to help them maintain confidence in their ability to complete their goal. 

In most ordinary cases the negative thinking comes out like a rant and is a good pressure valve for the stresses of the day. We let off steam and know that we are thinking about in an irrational way, but that’s okay in the short-term. 

A sign it has gone too far is when we fail in our attempts to adjust our thinking back to a more positive and rational tone. 

The person who is suffering from destructive and debilitating negative thoughts is even more unlikely to receive any benefit from the ‘cheer up’ advice. If it was that simple they would have done it already. Perhaps we should consider the negative thinking as a symptom, and seeking to resolve the causes rather than just focusing on the ‘thinking symptom’.

In all other day-to-day circumstances, when we think negatively it would be useful to ask ourselves three things: 

1 Is this a really useful way to think right now? It may be the perfect way to think about the situation in a different context, but right now?

2 Will I care about this by the weekend? It may seem hugely important now, but will it matter so much later?

3 Does the situation justify this level of negative emotion? Perhaps you are feeling negative about something else and this is just the pressure valve for that? 

It’s okay to have negative thoughts, life is no fairytale. They are your thoughts so, no matter how difficult, you can challenge and change them. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting a Better Nights Sleep - The 3 Week Challenge: Principle One

Image
It all began a month or so before lockdown when I noticed how many sleep aids there were in the chemist.  That same week I had four people contact me for help with sleep problems.  This made me ask myself: “What does psychological research and Hypnotherapy tell us about getting a good nights sleep?” A positive psychological approach focuses on what makes people healthy rather than unhealthy. Instead of looking at the behaviour of someone who is struggling to get a good nights sleep, we should focus on the person who frequently sleeps well. How is the behaviour different? Can we copy it? I began teaching people to use these psychological techniques alongside Hypnosis to nudge their sleep pattern. I was pleased to see the differences that could be made…but more people are needed to really see how effective it could be. Fancy a challenge? You need to apply the principles for the next three weeks and review the changes to your to sleep.  Each princip...
Read more

Hypnosis Explained

Image
    If you are hoping to read that Hypnosis is a magical, mystical, controlling power that can make people behave in ways they choose not to, then you are certainly going to be disappointed. Any assumption that a person is asleep or unconscious is also not the case.  So have you ever experienced Hypnosis? Think back over the last 24 hours…. When you woke up this morning, do you remember that half-awake half-asleep feeling? On that commute to work, perhaps you drifted into auto-pilot and as you were driving along? Perhaps your mind drifted to the things you had to do.  You could be forgiven for thinking that you were daydreaming. Tonight, just as you drift off to sleep you are very likely to experience that same half-awake half-asleep feeling. Every one of those experiences could be given the name Hypnosis. Hypnosis is a natural state we all experience many times throughout the day. It is as much part of our lives as breathing. The idea of being under the control of ...
Read more

Imposter Syndrome: Do you sometimes feeling like a fraud?

Image
  One behaviour people experience from one time or another is being an imposter; the feeling that they might get ‘caught’ out for not being as good at what they do as people assume they are. Imposter syndrome is where an individual doubts their accomplishments and abilities and these are converted into a fear of being exposed as a fraud. Interestingly, this still happens when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.  What do you attribute your successes to? Unjustified feelings of being an imposter are an attribution bias. It is a tendency to attribute successes to luck or poor judgment on the part of others’. In a self-deprecating way, the assumption is that they are ‘just getting by’ and if others saw the real them then they would less than impressed. When we feel this kind of imposter syndrome, we failing to have any internal acknowledgment of our own achievements, something which is characteristic of those suffering from anxiety, and unsurprisingly, low self-estee...
Read more