How to Limit Negative Thoughts?
Your day was going great until something unexpected suddenly ruined your mood. Your mind begins to race with negative thoughts, and each bad thought leads to another, creating a domino effect, leaving you feeling panicked and unsure of how to deal with the onslaught of unstoppable thoughts.
Escalation of Negative Thoughts
A minor incident, like seeing something or someone on social media or a disagreement with your team leader, can trigger negative thoughts. Then, these thoughts start to escalate and you begin to tell yourself, "I'm not good enough." "What was I thinking?" "Why didn't I refuse the engagement from the beginning?" "I would be foolish to trust them again," or "I don't deserve happiness."
Deep down, you know there is no stop to this thought cycle, no matter how hard you try. There's more risk involved in believing these thoughts than in the time lost thinking about them.
Are These Thoughts Accurate?
Although a single negative thought won't hurt us, when we let it consume us, it can begin to impact us. Then, we risk developing negative thought patterns and becoming trapped in them.
When we find ourselves in a vicious cycle like this, fear usually takes control and we start to imagine the worst. Everything looks bad most of the time, and we begin to believe every exaggeration we think of.
It is important to remember that negative thoughts are not truly isolated from one another. Our minds quickly bring up any negative thoughts that are connected to an incident, which can lead to depression and even make us question our own existence.
However, thoughts are not always accurate or factual; our deepest fears, habits, and past experiences can all warp and manipulate them. These harmful thought patterns have a greater impact on our beliefs the longer we spend thinking about them. This isn't just psychological; this negative thinking has a chemical component.
Negativity Bias
Our survival is the only thing that our brains are innately programmed to care about.
We constantly scan our environments to find threats that could harm us, as the brain monitors those threats and is always ready to confront them. Therefore, your brain believes it is helping you by bringing up all the memories connected to a negative thought.
For example, when a manager yells at a coworker, calling her stupid because she wasn't ready for a situation, her breathing quickens and her brain releases chemicals that make her aware of the situation and get her ready for a confrontation. Then, in an unconscious reaction, her brain goes back to all the times she's been called "stupid," even by her kindergarten teacher.
Numerous neuroscience and psychology studies have demonstrated that negative stimuli cause the brain to become more active. Evolution is thought to be the cause of this bias towards negativity, as minds were designed to continuously assess environmental risks to ensure survival.
This negative bias makes us ignore five compliments and focus on one criticism we hear from others. Also, it makes us overlook all the good in our lives and only think about things that didn't turn out the way we had hoped. The bias is deeply rooted and is designed to protect the physical body at all costs.
Therefore, negative thoughts will always remain capable of fully controlling our minds, despite our best efforts. Even though we will never be able to completely alter our negative tendencies overnight, we can at least learn to pay less attention to them when they do come to mind.
How to Limit Negative Thoughts?
Here are some things you can do to stop negative thoughts and prevent them from escalating in your mind:
1. Set a Limit
If you find yourself caught up in a vicious cycle of negative thinking, take control of the situation and place boundaries around it until you stop thinking. You have to forcefully prevent your mind from spiraling into this negative thought pattern the first few times, or else the negative unconscious feeling will take over.
When you notice that your mind is racing with nothing but negativity, visualize a brake or stop sign. Then, take a step back, inhale deeply, and reassess the situation from a place of calm rather than one of chaos and anxiety.
2. Redirect Your Attention
Once you've stopped the negative thought chain, redirect your attention to something else. Try your hardest to divert your attention from your current thoughts by doing something different, like running, listening to music, contacting friends, cooking your favorite meal, or anything else that can take your mind off of the thought or incident that initially sparked them.
The more you focus on things that you occupy yourself with, the more you can control your escalating thoughts.
3. Observe Without Judgment
We are frequently our harshest critics when we are caught up in a vortex of negative thoughts, asking questions like, "How stupid was I not to expect this?" "How did I believe this could happen?" "What's wrong with me?" "I always make the same mistakes." "When will I stop making the same mistakes?" And so forth, we judge ourselves harshly.
The next time you find yourself lost in this deep swamp, try taking an observer's seat, observing if you can overcome these thoughts and monitoring from a distance. Often, when we look too closely into the situation, we fail to recognize that our thoughts are irrational or ridiculous.
Being an observer is similar to using a mirror to reflect your thoughts. This sincere, nonjudgmental thinking enables us to identify the loopholes in our thinking, see and comprehend things that we were blind to, and move on.
4. Identify Triggers
When you begin to observe your thoughts objectively, look for patterns in them from a distance and ask yourself: Is there a common driving force behind these thoughts? Once found, don't let it end there.
Search further to identify the underlying triggers and emotions behind them, and consider the following questions: Which motivator has the biggest impact on you? Are there hidden, unresolved issues? Address the underlying cause rather than just the symptoms.
If the issue is too emotional to handle on your own, speak with a therapist to work through it together. Mending old scars or deep wounds may help you find a lasting solution to these negative thoughts.
5. Verify the Validity of Your Thoughts Before Believing Them
Since thoughts can be misleading—as we've already discovered—the next time you find yourself getting caught up in a negative thought spiral, take a moment to verify their validity before accepting them as truths. Ask yourself: Is this always true? Have there been situations where my thoughts contradicted these thoughts? Is there a restrictive belief behind them? What are the skills or strengths that I can use to confront this limiting belief?
Make sure to answer these questions and verify the credibility of your thoughts before accepting their validity.
6. Effective Reframing
Your ability to recognize patterns that support negative thinking and drain your energy increases as you become more conscious of them. Therefore, identify these thoughts and reframe them effectively to turn them into positive and strong ones.
Remember, neurons that work together synapse together. Instead of creating neural networks that undermine your determination and self-confidence, create new neural pathways that encourage you and give you the strength to continue achieving your goals.
7. Take Action Instead of Thinking
The key to moving forward is to take action. Rather than sitting around thinking about what should have happened, what happened, or what will happen, take action. Two things happen when you take action: first, you have less time for thinking, analyzing, or passing judgment; second, when you work toward your goals, your actions serve as proof and refute false, negative thoughts. Compared to other evidence, this is the strongest one.
In Conclusion
The tips listed above should help you stop thinking negatively. Remember that your mind is a valuable and sacred space, and do everything within your power to keep it peaceful.
Whenever you find yourself constrained by these negative thoughts, just focus on the present moment, bring your awareness to your current reality, observe the thoughts from a distance, and remind yourself that you are much more than just your thoughts and feelings.