You Create Your Thoughts
To begin with, let’s talk about thoughts in general. They are your thoughts, you have created them, though it may not seem like that, and they are only thoughts, they’re not facts, they’re just thoughts. This means that one of the issues with negative thoughts is they can, very frequently, lead you to believe things that aren’t true.
The second issue with them is, if we consider a very simplified version of the CBT model, our thoughts have significant effects on our feelings, our feelings have significant effects on our behaviours, and our behaviours also seriously affect our thoughts. This means that it’s very easy to get into a downward spiral and it’s not as easy to stop those negative thoughts or to stop and reverse that that spiral.
A lot of our thoughts are automatic, there’s a wonderful part of our brain that automates things we do on a regular basis, so we just need to go through a period of feeling, thinking, behaving very negatively and the brain says ‘okay that’s what we want to do, right I’ll make it automatic’. You then don’t even have to go to the effort of creating a negative thought, one will just pop into your head in response to a specific trigger and continue that downward spiral.
A CBT Approach
It’s quite hard to stop the negative thoughts and so CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) has several approaches. One that I use and that works really well with some people, but not with everybody, is to first of all become aware of your thoughts, particularly the negative ones and to make a note of them. Do that for a couple of days, just write down the negative thoughts that come into your head and you start to be aware of how you’re thinking. When you’ve done that you’ll either find one thought or one connected group of thoughts that is predominant, so that’s what you want to work on. Firstly, try to think of a more positive thought to replace it/them. You don’t have to go from absolute despair to complete and utter delight when you’re doing this, make it a reasonable step, but make sure it it’s a positive step. If you are thinking that you’re not really worthwhile for whatever reason, then you can say – yes but I have achieved X, Y or Z. Remind yourself of what you have achieved, because at the moment you’re in the middle of reminding yourself of all the things you’ve done wrong and are doing wrong. Then it’s just a matter of every time you think that negative thought, or one of that group of negative thoughts, you switch as quickly as you can to the alternative, the more positive one. You won’t always mange to catch the negative thought in time, but gradually what you’re doing is telling your brain I don’t want to be thinking these negative thoughts, I want to think this slightly more positive one instead and then you’re beginning to create a new, much more positive habit and have started to make a change to that downward spiral. If you have a list of negative thoughts, you can go back and pick another one or another set and work on those, which will help to turn that downward spiral into a more positive upward circle. This works but the technique does require time and effort to spot the negative thoughts and change them as often as you can.
Story and Metaphor
If that approach isn’t right for a client, then I have alternatives where we work with the unconscious mind, usually, but not always, in hypnosis. This generally involves using story or metaphor, which is the language that the unconscious mind understands, and gives the unconscious mind ways of getting rid of the negative thoughts and/or feelings. We can work on either thoughts or feelings in a very gentle, metaphorical, story type way and not only will that help with the negative thoughts you’ve got, but it will also give you a technique to get rid of any new ones that appear.
Both the above options give you immediate help and a way of managing your thoughts and feelings in the future so that you can be more in control of the thoughts you are thinking. This will help you to avoid the return to automatic negative thinking and the inevitable effects on your feelings and behaviour.
If this all sounds familiar and you’d like to find more out about the techniques I’ve been talking about, then please get in touch and we can see what we can do with your negative thoughts and their consequences.