Negative Thoughts - Learn to Deal With Them

Introduction

It is common for many people to experience negative thoughts occasionally, but at times, these negative thoughts can intrude on one’s well-being, relationships, and achievements. These thoughts are generally irrational. These thoughts are usually linked with one’s experiences or can be due to the fears that have remained latent within the individual for years. The negative thoughts could be about oneself or others. These thoughts seem to jump in from nowhere and can be unpleasant and disturbing. An individual may find it challenging to control these thoughts and may find it difficult to engage in their daily activities.

What Are the Common Types of Negative Thoughts?

The common types of negative thoughts are as follows:

• Intrusive Thoughts About Sex and Sexuality: These thoughts revolve around an individual’s sexuality or sexually harming others. A few examples include:

1. Fear of getting attracted to members of the family.

2. Fears pertaining to one’s sexual orientation.

3. Fear of being attracted to infants sexually.

• Intrusive Thoughts About Religion: This includes:

1. Experiencing negative thoughts in a religious place.

2. Continuous repetition of certain prayers.

3. Analyzing one’s faith from time to time.

4. Fearing they have lost touch with their beliefs and faith.

• Intrusive Thoughts About Relationships: Examples include:

1. Obsessive thoughts about a partner letting go of the relationship.

2. Seeking reassurance from one’s partner constantly.

3. Obsessively assessing the strength of their feelings for their partner and finding fault.

• Intrusive Thoughts About Eating Disorders: These include:

1. Obsessive fears about weight gain.

2. Preoccupied with avoiding eating, eating, or calories in food.

3. Trying to be in perfect shape. If not, a feeling of being unworthy of love might arise in the individual.

4. Inaccurate thoughts about one’s appearance.

• Intrusive Thoughts About Violence: Examples include:

1. Thought of killing others.

2. Using knives or other harmful items to injure others.

3. Poisoning the food prepared for loved ones.

4. Harming children or loved ones.

What Are the Causes of Negative Thoughts?

The following are the causes of negative thoughts:

• Anxiety Disorders: Anxiety disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD- a disorder in which one experiences fear, obsessions and unreasonable thoughts that result in compulsive behaviors) and generalized anxiety disorder (severe, persistent anxiety that affects one’s daily activities) can cause frequent, recurring negative thoughts. Individuals with OCD perform ritualistic behaviors or compulsions to deal with these thoughts.

• Anxiety: Temporary anxiety that usually occurs before a medical procedure may instill negative thoughts like the fear of dying or being disabled in an individual.

• Eating Disorders: Individuals with eating disorders may have negative or intrusive thoughts about the need to achieve perfection, their food choices, and their appearance. They may be immersed in thoughts of food.

• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): It is a disorder in which an individual fails to recover after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. These individuals may be repeatedly reminded of negative or tragic memories. They may also re-experience a few symptoms that they experienced during the traumatic event.

How to Identify Negative Thoughts?

Those with negative thoughts will experience one or more of the following:

• Preconceived Notions: This involves individuals making assumptions about how others would think or making negative assumptions about the output of events.

• Overgeneralization: In this pattern of negative thinking, individuals tend to apply the negative consequence of one experience to all other future experiences. This can create a feeling of negativity in everything the individual does and can result in feelings of anxiety.

• Catastrophizing: In this pattern of negative thinking, individuals always assume that everything they do will have negative outcomes, and they refuse to consider more probable and realistic consequences.

• Labeling: When individuals consider themselves to be negative, it might influence the way they think about themselves. For example, if an individual feels that they are not good at speaking, they will always feel negative about the activities that require speaking with others.

• Emotional Reasoning: This is based on the belief that something would be true based on one’s emotional response to the situation. For example, if one feels nervous, emotional reasoning would make one think that they must be in danger. This can increase anxiety and negative feelings in the individual.

• Blame and Personalization: Individuals with this thinking pattern take everything personally, even if they are not responsible for it, and blame themselves for all things that they do.

• ‘Should’ Statements: Thinking dictated by ‘should’ statements create a negative perspective by making one think only in terms of what one must do. These are mostly unrealistic and can create a feeling of pessimism and poor self-confidence.

All the above thinking patterns differ in very minute ways and involve deformations of reality and irrational ways of viewing situations and people.

How to Deal With Negative Thoughts?

Various self-care strategies and treatment options can help one deal with their negative thoughts. Medications like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or other antidepressants like Clomipramine can help one with OCD. Antidepressants can take about eight to 12 weeks to show their effect. Other tips to deal with negative thoughts are as follows:

• Identifying the thoughts as negative or intrusive.

• Carrying on with the usual behavior.

• Recognizing that these thoughts are involuntary and are irrelevant to one’s daily life.

• Accepting the thoughts rather than pushing them away.

• Being aware that these thoughts may return anytime.

• Indulging in meditation or mindfulness.

• Substituting negative thoughts with positive, realistic ones.

• Using a diary to maintain track of one’s thoughts.

• Learning to cope with criticism and feedback.

• Taking small steps in bringing about the changes rather than forcing positive thoughts.

• It is fine to fail a few times in one’s effort as changes cannot be made overnight.

What Is Cognitive Restructuring?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of talk therapy in which an individual works with a behavioral therapist to identify negative or faulty thought patterns and learns a few techniques to reshape the negative thought patterns. This approach has been efficacious in treating various health conditions like anxiety disorders, depression, substance use disorders, personality disorders, and eating disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy works on the principle that altering one’s perception of certain events or circumstances can change their feelings and actions toward a particular situation or event.

Cognitive restructuring encompasses the following strategies:

• Self-Monitoring: To change a negative thought pattern, one must first identify the negative thought pattern. Cognitive restructuring enables the individual to identify negative thoughts and analyze when and where they crop up. A few individuals may be vulnerable in certain situations. Identifying such situations can keep the individual prepared in advance.

• Questioning the Thoughts: This technique of cognitive restructuring involves learning to question one’s thoughts and assumptions. A therapist might teach the individual about the Socratic questioning method to identify where and how one’s negative thoughts are illogical or biased. Some questions include, ‘Is this particular thought based on facts or emotion?’, ‘What is the worst that could happen and how to respond if the worst happens?’, and so on. Questioning enables one to consider new possibilities that are not as intense as the ones that one may fear.

• Collecting Evidence: One can maintain a record of the events that kickstart a response like what one was doing and with whom. One must record the strength of the response and the memories that formed as a consequence. Evidence can be collected against one’s assumptions and beliefs. Accurate beliefs should be compared with distorted ones. By doing this, one can benefit by looking at the evidence that shows an action that has nothing to do with the individual.

• Weighing the Pros and Cons: One can use this strategy to identify the advantages and disadvantages of a particular cognitive distortion. Comparing the pros and cons side by side can enable one to decide whether altering a particular thinking pattern would be beneficial.

• Creating Alternatives: Cognitive restructuring focuses on helping individuals find new ways of perceiving the things that happen to them. This is done by encouraging the individual to come up with alternative explanations that are logical, rational, and positive to substitute with the distortions that have been held on to for a long time. This helps create positive affirmations.

Conclusion

It is normal to experience negative thoughts once in a while but if the intensity of negative thoughts rises to a point such that it hinders the daily functioning of the individual, then one must seek help from a therapist. There are various self-care tips like the ones mentioned above that can help one overcome their negative thoughts. Cognitive restructuring has been found to be beneficial in helping one overcome their negative thoughts. The three Cs of cognitive restructuring include; catching it, checking it, and changing it. Individuals experiencing intrusive or negative thoughts do not act on them but find them to be disturbing and distressing. By seeking appropriate help, one can overcome their negative and intrusive thoughts.