Overcoming Negative Thinking

Remember the Debbie Downer character from Saturday Night Live skits? Sometimes people make the bad habit of looking at the worst case scenario in every situation. It's no fun to live that way, and it's miserable for other people to live with it, too.

Negative thinking might be a habit you picked up in your family. You may want to edit that inheritance right out of your life script. Keep the good things you got from your family, but surrender this unfortunate pattern. Thinking negatively tends to make you feel worse, and make you more likely to suffer with depression or anxiety. Using cognitive therapy techniques, developed by Aaron Beck, MD and David Burns, MD, you can free yourself from it. A good therapist can help you learn to weed out your negative thoughts in a few sessions. You are likely to feel much better.

Cognitive therapy is based on some simple concepts. Everyday, we get up and we experience events: negative, positive, and neutral. We have feelings about the events that trigger our actions in response. Cognitive therapy helps illuminate an often hidden step between the events in our lives and the feelings we experience: that important filter in between is our thoughts.

There are about 12 types of cognitive distortions that Burns identified in his classic book, Feeling Good. These include emotional reasoning (because I feel it it must be true), black and white thinking, fortune telling error (I see the future and it's terrible), mind-reading error (I know what other people are thinking and it's bad), and personalization error (I am the cause of everything bad). There are other distortions as well. Unless you train yourself to identify your distorted thoughts, you live as if that negative twist is reality. It's usually not.

There are several quick re-frames I use with my patients to help them shift out of negative thinking. One is considering an alternative view----any alternative view. Another is to consider the worst that can happen in a situation, the best that can happen, and what is most likely to happen. The third option is probably somewhere in the middle. So cognitive thinking isn't just looking on the bright side. It simply removes the negative predictions and opens you up to real experiences, not movies in your head.

You can also refocus by considering what action can you take to positively impact a difficult situation. Positive, constructive action is almost always better than obsessing or dwelling on the negative. It also puts you in a more active, healthy role, instead of the passive victim. This is likely to reduce your sense of powerlessness and  reduce symptoms of anxiety and/or depression.

People who develop the power to shift out of negative thinking are happier. Abraham Lincoln had a point when he said that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Developing your self-discipline to not let your mind hop on a negative train takes practice and willpower, just like working out at the gym takes more effort than stopping by the doughnut shop.

One of my favorite Dr. Phil lines is,"How much fun are you to live with?" When you take responsibility for being a positive person, partner, and parent, you will really improve the lives of everyone around you. Using cognitive techniques can effectively help you weed out the gloom and doom, and you will enjoy your life and everyone around you so much more. You deserve it, and so does everyone else whose life touches yours.

You Are What You Think

Your mind is incredibly powerful. The stories you tell yourself can alter your reality. Be careful what you think, because it creates its own reality in your life and in your relationships. Many people have a story that would be better to collapse, so they could live a more satisfying life.

It is a bit like your mind is a garden, and you need to weed it regularly from negative or victim-like thinking. If you aren't conscious of weeding out the negative thoughts, you can develop behavior patterns that reflect your negative thoughts. To have a great life, and healthy relationships, you need to focus on your blessings, the things you are grateful for, and not the shortfalls.

In a love relationship, the stories we tell ourselves are powerful. If we tell ourselves that our partner isn't making us happy, aren't we less likely to try in the relationship to do our part? What if your partner isn't supposed to MAKE you happy, but you are supposed to make yourself fulfilled and share your happiness with your partner? If you have a different story you tell yourself about your relationship, like you want to do everything possible to be the best partner you can be, won't your actions be an important part of writing the love story you are a part of? You play an active role in creating each of your relationships. You are not the Russian judge at the Olympics, just there to grade your partner critically. Your partner is only part of the equation. You need to be your best self!

Abraham Lincoln said, "Most men are about as happy as they make up their minds to be". Your daily mind set, and telling yourself positive things about how you feel, and what you are going to do that day, is important each morning. See whether you can smile at a couple of people tomorrow. I love to ask families to share at dinner the best or funniest thing that happened that day. It really is true that what we think about---negative or positive---expands to fill the space available.You can make a decision to make it a great day or have a wonderful relationship with your spouse or child, and that decision will help you take the actions that help create improvements.

There are, of course, difficult things that happen in life---losses,breakups, illness, etc. Sometimes all we can control is our reaction to challenging situations when they happen. Most people that I see that are resilent in the face of tremendous difficulty, deal with their feelings,but don't take up residency in victimhood. You can choose to,have a good life, anyway, for the time that you have, including today.

One of my favorite books about overcoming negative thinking is 'You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought' by Peter McWilliams and Jon Roger. Also helpful in learning to identify and eliminate negative thought patterns is,'Feeling Good' by David Burns,M.D. If this area is a challenge for you, you might read some positive input the first and/or last few minutes of the day.

In wrapping up todays' blog, consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt, who told us,"Do what you can, with what you have, with where you are". Watch what you think this week, because your thoughts are powerful things. You might be happier if you give up your story.