10 Common Negative Thought Patterns and How to Overcome Them
We all have worries, down days, and extended funks. If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, maybe you go back to seeing the sunshine quickly. Unfortunately, far too many of us get bogged down with overwhelming anxiety and stuck in what seems like never-ending negative thought loops that can lead to depression. Author Debbie Hampton describes 10 problematic thought patterns and offers advice on how to manage them.
With practice, you can quiet the negative scripts in your head and train your brain to respond to situations calmly and objectively.
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. It’s not uncommon for someone with anxiety to also suffer from depression or vice versa. Globally, more than 300 million people of all ages have depression and it’s the leading cause of disability worldwide per the latest numbers from The World Health Organization.
That’s a lot of anxious, unhappy minds.
Depression and anxiety are complex illnesses with a basis in brain neurochemicals and thought patterns with many other contributing factors such as life events, childhood, physiology, and genetics. If you are dealing with depression or anxiety please talk to your health care providers to determine the best treatment for you.
Negative thought patterns can play a big role in causing and worsening depression and anxiety. It is within your power to change your thought patterns which, in turn, can improve how you feel and function. Here’s how:
Negative Thoughts Lead to More Negative Thoughts
If you expect the worst, criticize yourself, or focus on the bad, you’re reinforcing this kind of thinking in your brain every time you engage in it.
What you pay attention to, think, feel, and imagine shape your physical brain through a process known as neuroplasticity. When you repeat a thought pattern over and over, the connections between neurons strengthen and that type of thinking becomes the norm for your brain.
If you panic about every little thing, your brain is going to forge and strengthen those pathways, making it more reactive and anxious. If you expect the worst, criticize yourself, or focus on the bad, you’re reinforcing this kind of thinking in your brain every time you engage in it.
These negative thought patterns become the “filter” through which your brain interprets the world and determine your experience of everything that happens. Eventually, you could find yourself trapped in a downward spiral of anxiety, stress, depression, which your brain is continually perpetuating.
10 Common Negative Thought Patterns
Quite often, we are unaware of our own troublesome thought patterns. You learn these in childhood from caregivers, social institutions, and life experiences. They become part of your subconscious belief system, below your conscious awareness, and are largely negative or fear based. These subconscious scripts determine how you respond to the world, act in relationships, and think of and talk to yourself.
But you can become aware of your beliefs and question their authenticity and appropriateness for you today.
Ask yourself if a belief about you or someone else is helping or hurting. Is it what you really think and want to believe or is it some remnant from your past?
Some common mind traps, which you may recognize, are:
1. Black and white thinking: “Nothing ever works out for me. I'm doomed."
This type of thinking includes words like “always” and “never,” and seeing things as either right or wrong, good or bad, with no gray areas.
2. Mind reading: “Everybody thinks I’m boring.”
Mind reading is making assumptions about other people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors even though you don’t know what other people think.
3. Fortune-telling: “There’s no point in even trying. It's no use. I can’t do this.”
When you predict an outcome and believe it as fact, you are fortune-telling.
4. Overgeneralizing: “This relationship didn't work. I'm never going to meet anybody.”
Overgeneralizing is predicting that a negative will always be true in the future based on an experience you’ve had in the past.
5. Minimizing: “I got the report done on time, but anybody can do that.”
Minimizing is discounting the positive or undervaluing your accomplishments.
6. Maximizing: “I totally froze on that one question in the interview. I blew it.”
The opposite of minimizing, maximizing is exaggerating the importance of a negative event and letting it overshadow the good.
7. Unrealistic expectations: “I should keep going, even when I’m sick.”
Expecting perfection or demanding more than what is reasonable from yourself is a negative habit many of us have.
8. Should statements: “I should be able to do this by now.”
Using “should”, “ought”, or “must” statements can impose unrealistic expectations and undue pressure on yourself and others. They impose rigid rules and judgments.
9. Personalizing: “He looks mad. It must be something I did wrong.”
Personalizing is taking responsibility for something that is not your fault. It’s also thinking that other people's actions or moods are in some way related to you.
10. Catastrophizing: “I’m not going to get the job, then I won’t be able to pay the bills, and I’ll lose the house.”
Catastrophizing is overestimating the chances of disaster and focusing only on potential negative outcomes. It’s expecting something unbearable or intolerable to happen.
How to Stop Negative Thought Patterns
To not get pulled down by your mind, you've got to change the automatic, subconscious scripts playing in your head. At first, this is going to feel like trying to swim upstream, but with persistence and time, it can be done. Here are four steps to take:
Become Aware of Your Thought Patterns
The first step in making your mind your ally is to become aware of your thought patterns, feelings, and reactions as they happen, a process known as mindfulness. Being mindful is not only being aware, it's being aware of your awareness. It's paying attention to your mind on purpose and waking up from a life on automatic.
Challenge Your Thinking
Distance yourself from and question your thoughts and beliefs. Analyze thoughts objectively from all angles. Is this really what you think or is it an inherited belief from your past? Drop the story lines usually running in your head and any personal emotional investment in the situation for a minute. Try on different points of view and zoom out. Have the intent to give your mind guidance, like a wise, caring parent. Control it instead of it controlling you.
Be Kind
Extend kindness and compassion to yourself and others. Ultimately, the goal is to help yourself, not hurt yourself with your thoughts. Ask yourself if a belief about you or someone else is helping or hurting. Is it what you really think and want to believe or is it some remnant from your past?
Decide, then Decide Again
After examining your thoughts mindfully, consciously decide what you want to believe and think, how you want to behave, and who you want to be. Hold that image in the forefront of your mind and move forward taking the appropriate actions. Deciding isn't a one-time thing. The priorities upon which you decide have to be considered and honored in the little choices you make every day, and revisited as things change and new information becomes available.
With practice, you can quiet the negative scripts in your head and train your brain to respond to situations calmly and objectively. Over time with neuroplasticity, you can actually change your brain and life for the better.
About the Author
Debbie Hampton recovered from a suicide attempt and resulting brain injury to become an inspirational and educational writer. She is the author of Beat Depression And Anxiety By Changing Your Brain and writes for The Huffington Post, MindBodyGreen, and more. On her website, The Best Brain Possible, she shares lifestyle, behavior and thought modifications, therapies, and mental health practices she used to rebuild her brain and life to find joy.
If you liked this post, you may also like:
• How to Make Peace With Your Anxiety
• Building Your Mental Muscle: 5 Dos and Don’ts
• The Benefits of Writing with a Chronic Illness
The posts on this blog are for information only. They are neither intended to substitute for a relationship with your doctor or other healthcare provider, nor do they constitute medical or healthcare advice of any kind. Any information in these posts should not be acted upon without consideration of primary source material and professional input from one’s own healthcare providers.
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