Today in this blog, we will understand negative thoughts, how they arise, their possible reasons, different types of negative thoughts, their impact on our lives, and finally how to deal with them. Simply, we can say it is cognitive reframing.
First of all, let us understand what a negative thought is. So basically, a negative thought is something that comes into our mind that is contrary to reality, irrational, or self-defeating; such thoughts weaken our willpower and keep us demotivated. It is like the bad fuel that we feed to our mind and soul. Negative thoughts are the devil that tries to make a permanent home in our mind; it spreads its wings quite rapidly and ultimately transforms a person into someone completely negative, full of demotivation and disappointment. It is mainly known as cognitive distortion because it distorts reality and reinforces negative emotions.
What are the reasons behind Cognitive distortion?
There are many reasons behind cognitive distortion or negative thoughts; most of them are related to mental disorders and past trauma. We will try to understand the potential reasons one by one.
- Wounded inner child or past trauma: These two are the one of the major reason for this because they leave a deep imprint on our inner self which can continue till long time and affect our thinking and decision making, a wounded child or past trauma is something which define an adult personality, our personality is mostly dependent on inner child and our past experiences because our body and mind has this natural tendency to act and develop mechanism toward past experiences. If our inner child is wounded, it will create cognitive distortion or negative thoughts in an individual; the same is true for past experiences. If a person has an experience, it can create a negative thinking pattern in him.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder: OCD is mainly a mental condition where a person repetitively experiences unwanted thoughts that lead a person to irresistibly perform certain tasks to prevent some harm or mishap. These types of phenomena in a person’s mind are responsible for bringing negative thoughts into their mind.
- Generalized anxiety disorder: A person suffering from generalized anxiety disorder experiences a relentless sense of worry and anxiety about every aspect of their life, even though things appear to be completely fine. Such a repetitive phenomenon can lead to cognitive distortion and can keep a person in constant anxiety and full of negative thoughts.
- Depression: Depression is a mental health condition where an individual seems to be experiencing an inescapable feeling of sadness, loneliness, and hopelessness. At a physical level, the symptoms include laziness, lack of energy, poor concentration, and sleeping longer than usual. In some extreme cases, self-harm is also noticed. All these things cause cognitive distortion and make a person too negative that his entire thought process is full of negativity.
- Excessive self-criticism: Excessive self-criticism can also lead to negative thinking. Although it is important to be honest about your strengths and weaknesses, focusing too much on the weaknesses is a clear invitation to the devil called negative thinking; hence, accepting your weaknesses and telling yourself that this is a part of learning will keep the good balance.
- Lack of self-confidence: The person who lacks self-confidence is usually suffering from negative thinking; such a person is always questioning his worth and never cheers himself up.
- Fear of the future: The future is unknown, and we do not have much control over it. Many people have this habit of assuming the future and keep fearing that the worst is yet to come. This habit can develop negative thinking in us and can cause a lot of hindrance in our personal growth; hence, just accepting that we have very limited control over the future is the only way to keep the mindset positive.
Now we will see how Cognitive distortion affects our life.
Cognitive Distortion has a very intense effect on our lives. It can affect almost all parts of our life, whether personal or professional; it can affect our health at both physical and mental levels, our relationships, how we interact with society, and the quality of our decision-making. Now we will see one by one how it affects all these aspects of our life.
To know more about Negative thinking, you can read https://sdlab.fas.harvard.edu/cognitive-reappraisal/identifying-negative-automatic-thought-patterns
- Personal life: Due to negative thinking, we force ourselves to think negatively about ourselves; hence, with time, we start acting like that, and finally we become the same. Swami Vivekananda said: what we think, what we do, and what we become.
- Relationship: A person with negative thinking can never achieve a successful relationship because he/she will doubt everything; he will keep making fake scenarios which are negative and which will hurt him.
- Social status: Such a person has a very low social status because people perceive him as a loner and full of negativity, and nobody wants to be around negative people. In some cases, the person himself makes bad relationships with people through his words, which itself is a result of negative thoughts.
- Decision making: A person with a negative mindset is quite indecisive; hence, such a person will either not take a decision or will always take a decision with low or partial confidence, and such a decision will never be appropriate in the long run.
- Physical and mental health: Negative thoughts bring unnecessary stress and anxiety, which causes many physical and mental diseases. At the mental level, diseases like depression, and at the physical level, immune weakness, imbalance, and many heart diseases due to chronic stress.
How to deal with and get rid of Negative thinking
- Cognitive distortion: The first step to eliminate negative thought is to understand the negative thoughts and we have already discussed in detail about it, it’s reason and it’s result, hence now the thing is once we identify that we are having negative thoughts too much we need to focus on eliminating this for this we can practice the mindfulness which will rewire our negative thoughts, it means we need to be the observer of our own thought and then filter the thought as per our understanding of positive and negative.
- This is the technique that is commonly used to treat any type of mental disease. Simple mindfulness can help a lot to eliminate negative thoughts; mainly, the purpose of mindfulness is to understand that we are not the mind because we can observe our thoughts, and hence we can control them. There are many ways to practice mindfulness. You can sit in a calm place and ponder your thoughts; let them come and go, and observe them. Simply go for a fresh morning walk and let the thoughts come and observe them; you can do your favorite activity, and at that time, if a thought is coming, let it come and observe it. Once you start observing and filtering your thoughts, it will be easier to rewire them and cure your cognitive disorder.
- Reframe your thoughts: Whenever you have a thought, whether negative or overwhelmingly positive, it is important to reframe and revisit all your thoughts, their source, reason, and impact. Analyzing all of these for every thought will let you differentiate clearly between wanted and unwanted thoughts. Re-framing your thought mainly means readjusting it and trying to bring it into practical, positive coordinates; this process of re-framing and bringing your thoughts into a positive horizon will help you a lot in improving thinking and bringing positivity into your life.
- Journal your thoughts: It is well proven that just by writing down something, we get a clear understanding of it. It is very important to journal your thoughts at the end of the day, just before bedtime. If we can just sit calmly and write down our thoughts from the entire day, then it will be easier to understand how we are having cognitive distortion.
- Take a deep breath: It is the simplest and my favourite because it does not need so much effort fancy practices just the thing which we are doing from our birth will keep doing till our death it is just we need to be more focus and aware towards our breath this will instantly help to clear our mind and give an understanding of our thoughts which is positive and which is negative.
- Practice wellness: We have already learned about a few direct practices to get rid of negative thoughts; now it is the time to do some practices which will ultimately bring positivity in our life, and hence negative thoughts will disappear. One of these practices is practicing wellness; it is all about doing and wishing things which will bring wellness to you.
- Not a complex process of meditation or worship, just eating healthy and developing healthy habits like making your bed, keeping yourself clean, arranging your workplace, keeping green plants around, choosing a healthy hobby like playing outdoor games, doing yoga, running, or hitting the gym these things, once introduced in your life, will certainly bring positivity and will erase all the negative thoughts.
- Develop a gratitude practice: Developing a gratitude practice simply means being thankful for everything, every person, every place, almost all the things that are or have been a part of your life. Being thankful to others will make your heart full of kindness and compassion, and the interesting thing is that a kind and compassionate heart will never get any negative thoughts in its mind.
- What you need to do is just take a few minutes in a day and think about all the things around you to be grateful for. You can just write it down, or you can recite it in solitude: how grateful you are for these trees, these lakes, rivers, your parents, your teacher, your friends. This will cultivate positive thoughts in your mind.
- Say positive affirmations: Positive affirmations are the strongest way to combat low self-confidence. Negative thoughts improve self-compassion and promote a positive thought process. To do this, we need not do anything extra; we just need to follow basic steps. First of all, keep saying these lines to yourself:
I am capable, I am enough, I am kind towards others, I can be successful, I can achieve everything in life, I have a beautiful relationship, People around me love me too much. Just saying these lines to yourself will fill you up with a lot of positivity.
Conclusion
Now, since we have learned this much about cognitive distortion, I think this is your time to start practicing. You can start from this simple act of just taking a deep breath and reciting, ” Now I am thankful to god to make me the best creation He has made till now; I am grateful to Mother Nature for providing all the natural resources she has provided for my nourishment.
I am thankful to my parents for giving me this wonderful upbringing, going the extra step beyond their capabilities. This problem of Negative thinking may appear small to you, but with time it makes you almost sick, and you become the person you would never want to be. Hence, no delay; start focusing on your thoughts and start practicing them from today.
You can also read Socrates’ “Know Thyself” Algorithm: Daily Reflection Steps for Self-Awareness