How to eliminate negative thoughts from the mind, step by step
Our mind is full of thoughts, we are always thinking, constantly and our thoughts have a great power over our emotions and our actions. Thinking well makes us feel good, but thinking bad or having negative thoughts makes us feel bad. However we can eliminate the negative thoughts of the mind by changing our internal dialogue.
The role of thoughts
We all have thoughts, thinking helps us understand the world around us and allows us to give it a meaning. Although sometimes we are not aware of our thoughts, if we pay attention to sure that we realize that internal voice that accompanies us and that tells us constant analysis of the environment. Thinking is very important for people and we can not avoid having thoughts, through them we quickly interpret the environment and can give an adequate response to the demands of it without noticing it. *
Thoughts have a determining influence on our actions, but also on our emotions. Emotions and thoughts are closely related. Before external events our mind makes a double assessment: on the one hand a thought or interpretation and on the other hand an emotion or way of feeling with the situation. Normally both thought and emotion go hand in hand, when the thought is negative the emotion is negative and vice versa when the thought is positive the emotion is positive. *
Negative thoughts
Sometimes we can have a tendency to negative thoughts, they appear as a kind of warning mechanism: if we interpret it as negative we are prepared for the worst. The problem appears when we generalize the tendency to think negatively, these thoughts gradually become strong in our mind and can become beliefs that we take as absolute truths, forgetting that they are only a subjective interpretation of the situation. And when our beliefs are too negative, they act as a mechanism of internal self-sabotage that limits us and is accompanied by many negative emotions that cause us great discomfort.
Negative thoughts can also lead to what is known as self-fulfilling prophecy and make us enter a loop of negativity difficult to get out. When negative beliefs become strong and are accompanied by negative emotions, we tend to give little adaptive responses that in turn make our negative thoughts come true and reinforce them.
For example, some negative thoughts may be: everything goes wrong, I am not an interesting person, I fall ill to everyone, my life is a disaster, etc. If we have these thoughts and we turn them into absolute truths it is logical that we feel bad and that our actions lead us to failure, for example if I go to a party or meeting I will try not to talk to anyone (I think I do not like everyone) , I will not try to do new things (since I think I am a disaster and everything goes wrong), and in the end my thoughts will be reinforced.
Change your internal dialogue to eliminate negative thoughts
Negative thoughts can be very harmful, but there is a way to eliminate them little by little through the internal dialogue.
- Pay attention first to your external dialogue, sometimes it is the way to become aware of the inner dialogue itself. *
- When you say something negative, try to change it to something neutral. At the moment we will only change our way of speaking. For example: instead of saying "everything goes wrong", we will say "some things go wrong", instead of saying "I am a disaster" we will say "this has gone wrong". *
- For every negative or neutral thing you say, try to say something positive. For example: "I have not expressed myself well in today's meeting, but I have made a
good presentation "" My friend Juan does not listen to me, but my friend Pedro has called me "," I have argued again with my partner, but this weekend we will do something special ", etc. *
- At first it will be an effort but if you change your external language little by little it will change your inner dialogue and you will transform your negative thoughts into positive thoughts.
Celia Rodríguez Ruiz. Clinical health psychologist. Specialist in pedagogy and child and youth psychology. Director of Educa and Learn. Author of the collection Stimulate Reading and Writing Processes.
