Stopping Negative Thoughts

How to Stop Negative Thoughts

Break the Habit

Stopping negative thoughts takes patience and training. Since pessimistic thinking is a habit, step one is to catch yourself when these thoughts begin to occur. Once you start to notice them, you can try to verify them to convince yourself that they're not true. Test Your Negative Thoughts.

 

Your destructive thoughts aren't based on reason, but no matter how much you tell yourself that, it's seems impossible to stop them. This is why you need to go a little further and start gathering proof that will convince you that these thoughts are false.
 

Step by Step Instructions to Test Your Negative Thoughts

 

Step 1 - Take a wide category of negative thinking and break it down. Don't begin working on all of your negative thoughts at once. It takes time to learn how to stop them, so start slowly. For example, you may choose to work on your poor body image or the thought pattern, "I am unlucky."

 

Step 2 – Using your wide category, think about all the thoughts that come under each subcategory. Take the poor body image example. Your thought pattern might be something like "I can't wear tight blouses because they accentuate my small breasts" or "everyone pays attention to my cute best friend and not me," or “I’m not pretty." Make a list of these thoughts on a piece of paper.

 

Step 3 - On another piece of paper, write down facts that will negate that thought. For example, for the thought "I’m not pretty,“ you might write that nobody has ever said you weren’t pretty. You can also write something like "I don't judge people solely on looks, so why would they judge me that way?"

See how this is working? Writing down the evidence forces you to view your life objectively and learn how to stop negative thoughts by seeing whether your thoughts are based on fact. A feeling that people think you're not pretty isn’t sufficient. This is the time for cold, hard facts. We've all heard the occasional hurtful remark, but when you put the facts on paper, you'll discover that your thoughts are more illogical than you first realized!

What Now?
It takes time for your irrational feelings to catch up with your rational brain, so you will need to regularly repeat this process to learn how to stop negative thoughts. Eventually, you'll find that it is possible to stop such thoughts, and that your negative thinking habit becomes much more realistic.

Author: A native of the Midwest farm country in Iowa, Marcia Ripperger has lived in a number of locations. She has resided in Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis, Minnesota., Living in rural and metropolitan areas taught Marcia to always look for the best opportunities each community could offer. She now lives in a rural area of Minnesota that has a small city flare and closeness to the land. . Marcia has work in the corporate world outside of her home and has various home based businesses over the years. She holds a degree in business management and is CMOM certified. Marcia is the owner of a Work At Home Choices LLC along with being the founder founder and publisher of " Christian Work From Moms and Grandparents" She is a well known published and featured author through out the internet.