Our ability to avoid negative thoughts protects from signs of depression and defines a major part of our family lives, professional success, attitude and acceptance by people around us.
Our inability to do that can lead to anxiety, symptoms of depression or panic attacks and unhappiness in major aspects of our life.
Many of us have an education from good or very good schools, but practically no schools teach us how to think, what to think, or what NOT to think. The process of thinking, which should be the basis of any education and the HUMAN life itself doesn’t get deserved respect and attention.
We often become victims of this lack of knowledge and our own persistent negative thinking and related emotions.
As a result many of us can recall being stuck with repetitive negative thoughts which we can’t or have a great difficulty getting rid of. This condition often disallows a better brain function and creates –
* anger * anxiety attack symptoms * panic attack symptoms * signs of depression * ADHD symptoms * inability to sleep * inability to have a better mood * inability to focus on any productive and positive sides of our lives.
These negative thoughts make us lose control of our brain and we need to learn how to take it back. This knowledge rewards us with more pleasant life on all its sides.
We often hear that our “Words Have Power”. It also means that our thoughts behind the words have the power.
Scientific research has proven that our thoughts – positive and negative - cause actual physical reactions in our bodies.
In case of awful, miserable, negative, hopeless thoughts our brain works less efficiently, often putting us in an emotional collapse. Some of us can experience –
* cold hands temperature * sweating * changing heart rate * tension of muscles * changing breathing rate * difficulty remembering important events later * stress symptoms * signs of depression * anxiety attacks * difficulty controlling temper * and even violent thoughts.
This happens because in such cases our brain releases affecting our emotions chemicals, making us feel much worse.
On the other hand, happy, positive, hopeful, loving thoughts cause releasing chemicals that make us feel better. Our hands warming up, muscles relax, heart and breathing rate normalizing and brain function enhances, becoming more effective and supporting.
Negative thoughts are often automatic, and they often lie
We are not usually trained to analyze our thoughts. We feel that they just happen. We often don’t realize that if we have a thought, it doesn’t mean it has any truth behind it. Our thoughts don’t always tell the truth. In fact, they often lie to us, using our not always healthy imagination.
These lies, running through our brain can ruin our lives. They can fool and scare us, and be mean to us. They can make us feel –
* sad * frustrated * hopeless * irritated, and * angry.
We should use periods between such possible outbreaks to analyze, realize and memorize that these negative thoughts are very often just thoughts — not facts. We need to accept that we don’t have to believe all of our thoughts.
We need to learn questioning and challenging every awful thought coming into our head. It would help us avoiding lying thoughts, controlling how we feel and how we act in response. After learning to challenge and correct the negative, lying thoughts, we can take away their power to hurt or control us.
We gain less anxiety symptoms, signs of depression, a better mood, and a better chemically balanced positive brain.
Negative thoughts from interactions with the outside world
We constantly interact – directly or indirectly - with all sorts of people around us. They can be in our family, including children and elderly grandparents, our bosses and/or employees, teachers, students, politicians, attorneys, police officers, friends, doctors, neighbors, etc.
Most of us notice that after communicating with some of them – positive people - we feel inspired, full of positive energy, ready to roll, achieving any of our plans and goals.
Avoid Negative People
The other – negative ones - make us feel exhausted, full of doubts regarding ourselves, our intelligence and our goals. We can become discouraged, helpless and almost hopeless, full of negative thoughts and emotions, signs of depression.
These negative people usually find something to criticize in our plans and life – without suggesting any improvements or better ways. They often find some reasons not to do what we are doing, and never offering any better solutions or ideas.
Some good physiologists are suggesting that these negative people have an ability to “consume”, transfer to themselves our energy and positive emotions, restoring their own reserves.
This ability allows them to feel better about themselves, especially if they see any success in destroying our positive emotions and thoughts, creating signs of depression in us.
When a family member is stuck in negativity it can bring down the entire household.
This is one of the primary reasons why we often hear “avoid negative people” advice. We should take this advice very seriously. Most of us can find convincing proof of its value in our own life experiences.
A habit of avoiding such negative people and avoiding their negative effect on us can improve our life beyond any measures, usually making us feeling better about ourselves, becoming more productive and successful, eliminating signs of depression.
Don’t be a Negative Person
If we notice difficulties in establishing our own social life, creating and keeping new relationships, it can be a sign of us being a “negative person”. In such a case, we should very seriously look for ways to eliminate this quality in our own attitude. Our success in eliminating it can significantly improve our own lifestyle and happiness, as well as eliminating our own signs of depression.
There is no person around us – from our boss to our kids – who is looking for negative complains or critics. Everybody is looking for improving something suggestions.
For example, many people have a habit of coming to their boss and criticizing something in the work process or a final product, without suggesting how to improve the situation. Sooner or later such “activity” will damage their reputations, careers, relationships.
Before we have any practical solutions for improving the subject of our attention, it is better keeping our opinions for ourselves till such improving suggestion is formed and tested at least in our minds. Then we can express ourselves, but never before that.
Following such approach can improve both our careers and relationships with our kids, as well as anything else in between.
Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs)
Automatic negative thoughts are the ones that enter our mind throughout the day in response to often insignificant events around us. They can sabotage our relationships, reduce our performance at work or school, destroy our self-esteem, make us feel bad about ourselves and create signs of depression.
Nobody is safe from ANTs. Everybody in the family, including children and elderly grandparents, is vulnerable to infestations by them.
ANTs can multiply. If we are in a difficult relationship or in a negative work environment, ANTs can mate with our spouse’s or co-workers’ ANTs, and then create a real problem for us. They can steal our happiness, ruin our life, create signs of depression.
Examples of such negative thoughts are -
* “I am a loser” * “S/he never listens to me” * “S/he never calls me” * “Everyone is mad at me” * “S/he’s always in a bad mood”.
Usually ANTs make us see and focus only on the negative aspects of situations, even when there are plenty of positives. If we focus only on our failures or the times when we have been hurt or sad, we start feeling lousy. We definitely need to always remember that our thoughts often lie.
These negative thoughts have a habit of coming to our minds during nights and keep us from sleeping for hours, making us tired and having signs of depression.
Research shows that “Fortune Telling” negative emotions are one of the most damaging us. They are defined as ones when we are predicting the worst, even though we don’t know what is going to happen.
We all have these kinds of negative thoughts in our brain if we have ever said or thought anything like:
* “My sales presentation isn’t going to be successful.” * “I just had a biopsy. I’m sure it’s cancer, and I’m going to die.”
The problem with “Fortune Telling” is that our mind is so powerful that it can make what we think happen. For example, when we think we won’t do well on the sales presentation, we most likely won’t prepare for it well, increasing the chances of failing.
Obviously, being under stress and signs of depression make our ability to prepare really well even lower.
Another type of negative thoughts many of us are often occupied with are “Mind Reading” ones.
This happens when we think we know what people around us are thinking about us, even though they haven’t ever told us, and we haven’t ever asked them. These thoughts usually are like -
* “The boss thinks I’m stupid.” * “My girlfriend is mad at me.” * “My neighbor doesn’t like me.”
If we have such thoughts, it is helpful to keep in mind the rule that at 13 we worry about what everybody is thinking of us. At 40 we don’t care what anybody is thinking about us. At 60 we realize that nobody is thinking about us because people think only about themselves.
How can we comfort our emotions, removing negative thoughts
If we want to control our mood, emotions and signs of depression, we need to focus on what we like about our life. If we are struggling in school or at work, we should take it as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and do better. What we focus on really matters.
On our Positive Thinking page we suggest training ourselves to look for something positive or even funny in most troubling situations – they are usually there, if we learn to look for them.
Follow this link for this very useful page. We should always remember that our feelings and thoughts can lie, and they very often do. If we feel that someone doesn’t love us, we shouldn’t believe that feeling. We need to check it out, looking for evidence.
Some experienced therapists are suggesting to write out our negative thoughts whenever we feel mad, sad, or nervous, and then write down what we should say to that ANT to kill it. As soon as we write down the truth, it diffuses negative feelings, and we start feeling better, killing any signs of depression.
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