Sometimes the thought of the day ahead makes us feel physically unable to get up out of bed to face life. We fill our minds with negative thoughts and catastrophize about every thing that comes into our heads. Thoughts like “work is going to be awful” or “I’m going to do it all wrong again” or “No one likes me” flood our minds and spiral us into a cycle of negativity and sadness that can be really hard to pull ourselves out of on our own.
The thing that we need to try and remember is that these our OUR thoughts. We choose to have them, albeit perhaps unconsciously, and tell ourselves these negative stories that feed our emotions and feelings. The negative thought leads to a negative emotion which then leads to a negative behaviour:
“The day ahead is going to be terrible” ↠ we feel terrible ↠ we want to avoid the day altogether.
So, what if we told ourselves a different story? Following are some ways that you can try to help yourself change these negative thought patterns and break the cycle:
Positive thinking:
Telling ourselves positive things over and over again can have a really positive effect on the mind - even if we don’t actually believe these positive messages when we start to say them. The more we repeat them, the easier they pass into our subconscious mind without being rejected and they then become our automatic response to situations. Repeating positive messages and affirmations to ourselves will help create a new cycle:
“Today is a new day and I can make it whatever I choose” ↠ We feel optimistic and hopeful ↠ We feel more able to get up and start our day.
Challenging negative thoughts:
When we are thinking negatively, our thoughts often escalate quickly - so one negative thought can take us down a path where everything goes catastrophically wrong, spiralling us into a state of extreme stress and anxiety:
“I’m doing this really badly” ↠ “I’m rubbish at everything” ↠ “Everyone would be better off without me”
In situations like this, we need to rationalise our initial thoughts. Are we REALLY doing as badly as we have told ourselves we are? Where is the EVIDENCE that this is true. Rationalising is really important to bring ourselves back to reality and try to keep our thoughts and therefore our feelings and our behaviours in perspective.
The other thing to ask ourselves, is what is the very WORST thing that can happen if this is true. So what if we ARE actually doing this wrong/ this person DOES think this of us / we HAVE failed at something etc. Is the outcome really going to be as terrible as we perceive it to be? Keeping our thoughts rational and in perspective will help us to keep our emotions realistic and ultimately more manageable.
Often we don’t have coherent thoughts that we can analyse and process, which makes challenging them and rationalising them much harder to do. This can be from subconscious thought processes that are affecting our emotions and behaviour.
Writing things down can often open up the subconscious mind - allowing us to access feelings and thoughts that we were not consciously aware of having. Alternatively, talking about things out loud to someone who will listen objectively and non-judgmentally, will help you explore and rationalise your thought patterns and access deeper feelings with guided questions to help you gain a different and more positive perspective.