Weed out Negativity
Learning to identify unhelpful thinking habits
Negative self-talk can be a lot like weeds in the garden. They just show up seemingly out of nowhere and wreak havoc. We can refer to these as Automatic Thoughts. So what to do?
In the past we began tracking mood and looking at the impact of behaviors. We also looked at connecting the Mood, Behavior, and Thinking. And we started to challenge some of our thinking.
Now let’s look at weeding out inaccurate negative thinking.
It crops up for all of us. Often these negative thoughts are self referential and are largely inaccurate. It’s not about replacing negative thoughts with pie in the sky positive ones. Positive thinking has its place, but what we are doing here is looking at the negative thoughts, determining their accuracy, and changing them into more accurate thoughts.
Step 1
Differentiate a thought from a feeling. Anger is a feeling. I feel angry is therefore not a distorted negative thought. It may feel uncomfortable. You may not like it, but it is accurate if you are indeed feeling anger.
“I feel fat” is not a feeling. It is a belief or opinion that “I am fat” which may or may not be true. “I feel like you hate me” is also not a feeling, it’s a belief or opinion which may or may not be true. Many times just taking this step in looking at thoughts helps to weed out the distortions and creat more accurate thoughts.
Which brings me to the “F” word list. Many words in our lexicon have an emotionally charged valence which is unhelpful. I don’t like “F” words (and interestingly not all F words start with F) because they are show stoppers. They come with other emotionally charged concepts like Lazy, Slobbish, Ugly etc. Consider the sentence “I am overweight.” More accurate in my case and not a judgement of other parts of me.
Other “F” words for me are Judgment, Failure, Fat, Lazy, Ugly, etc.
What words are on your “F” word list?
Step 2
Start with the big, easy to identify distortions. Look at the thought record you kept a few weeks ago. Notice what kinds of thoughts came up in stressful situations. Were you self deprecatory? Did you consider yourself unworthy? Did you allow others to have their way to avoid conflict even when it wasn’t healthy?Look and reflect on these thoughts and then use the above to determine if they are distorted.
Step 3
Look at the thoughts and challenge them a bit.
Are they true?
If you believe they are true what makes them true?
Would your rationale hold up in court?
Would you assign the same rationale if a friend or family member had a similar thought?
That last question often gives us more insight. If my friend had this thought and I was able to find a different rationale that helped them see the distorted quality of it, then I must do the same for myself.
Treating ourselves with the same kindness we extend to others helps reduce our stress levels. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading and as usual leave a comment and feel free to share with others.
Have a great week!