To understand how to deal with negative thinking, it is important to understand the different types of distorted thoughts that arise.
Ask yourself are you one of the following?
- Filtering: You exaggerate the negative and overlook the positive.
- Generalisation: If something goes wrong once, you expect it to happen always.
- Catastrophising: You imagine disasters befalling you every step of the way.
- Blaming: You blame others for all your problems or vice versa.
- Control Fallacy: You believe you are a victim of your fate, and helpless to do anything about it.
Weeding Out Negative Thoughts
What strategies can you use to help you weed out negative thoughts?
According to Varkha, learning to debate, dispute, and question your negative thoughts and attitudes can help.
She says, "Weeding out negative thoughts without attacking the root cause will only have a superficial effect. The basic ideational and philosophical causes which lead to negative thinking are where the problems lie."
She also suggests that it would be nice, to have a support system, and believes that self-support is the most reliable system.
Beena says, "Working on negative thinking requires a great deal of self awareness and acceptance, in addition to consistent effort."
For example, instead of thinking "Why does it always happen to me?", use self talk such as "Could I have handled things differently to avoid this situation?"
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