What causes negative thinking?

Last month I talked about the power of positive thinking, (here). So, this time, I’m going to have a look at negative thinking. Negativity is something a lot of my clients want to change, and it gets a lot of bad press. However, it’s a normal part of life, and can often be dealt with in a healthy way. If negative thoughts spread out of control, they can become a severe nuisance. But they may serve a purpose and, if so, perhaps we should listen.

The purpose of negative thoughts

Here’s a thought experiment if you have trouble seeing any positives in negative thinking. Imagine you’re taking a walk and a large, hungry tiger jumps out at you. Do you feel positive or negative about the situation? And what does that feeling lead you to do?

Sometimes, negative thoughts and emotions are rational responses.

It’s natural, and useful, to experience fear when you’re threatened. Fear causes you to focus on getting away from the danger. Unfortunately, although this works with physical danger, it’s less helpful with the emotional stresses we encounter every day. For example, during an argument, anger can take over and result in you saying hurtful things you don’t mean. Your unconscious is trying to stop the other person from attacking you and isn’t too focused on resolving the disagreement. Less in-the-moment examples would be long-term stress from a difficult life situation, or low self-esteem. These can all result in a repetitive cycle of negative thinking, making it much harder to solve the problem.

Negative thinking styles

Most negative thought patterns fall into one or more of these categories:

• Filtering: ignoring good things in favour of bad.
• Polarisation/black-and-white thinking: seeing only failure or success with no in-between.
• Overgeneralisation: using one bad experience as “proof” of a wider conclusion. For example, because you didn’t get a new job this time, thinking you will never get one.
• Jumping to conclusions: making a decision with no evidence.
• Catastrophising: expecting total failure because there is a small problem.
• Personalisation and blaming: assuming every problem is caused directly by either yourself or someone else, respectively. These are known as control fallacies.
• Fairness fallacy: assuming life will be fair and resenting it when it isn’t.
• Shoulds and musts: deciding how things ought to be, and feeling upset when they’re not.
• Emotional reasoning: thinking that if you feel a certain way, it must be a fact.
• The fallacy of change: expecting others to change to suit you, and possibly trying to force them to.
• Always being right: inability to admit errors.
• Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: assuming good deeds will always be rewarded.

If these sound familiar to you, you can find more information about each type via an online search. I recommend learning to spot when you are using these negative thought patterns. Then, they can be stopped before they spiral out of control. Maybe keep a negative thoughts diary for a week or two, and see which ones pop into your mind most often.

Breaking the habit of negative thinking

Learning to deal with negative thoughts can have many benefits, as discussed in the previous positive thinking article. First, when you feel negative, do not simply try to force the feeling away. Consider carefully what purpose the feeling is serving; remember, bad feelings are there to alert you that something is wrong.

It’s okay to spend some time feeling negative, just don’t let it completely overwhelm you in the long term. Try setting aside a specific “worrying time” each day and distracting yourself from negative thoughts outside that time. Tell yourself, “it’s not time to think about that yet”. Twenty or thirty minutes is the most you will need. When it is time, let yourself cry, be angry, listen to sad music, or shout and swear if it helps. But stop when the time is over and do something to release the feelings. Look for something good about the bad thing. See if you can learn a lesson from it, or if you can make it funny. Or write all the thoughts down, and destroy the list.
You can find more ideas about dealing with negative thinking here, in my other blog on the topic.

How to stop thinking negative thoughts

Finally, if it’s really bringing you down, talk to someone about it. A friend or family member might be able to see things differently and help you to do the same. If there is no obvious cause for the bad feeling, and it persists for a long time, it might be a sign of depression or anxiety, or even a hormone imbalance. You should speak to your doctor.

And, of course, you can contact me at any time to see how I could help you to ditch the negative thinking and feel happy again.