Negative thoughts can become so automatic we don’t even notice their running commentary of our lives. While negative thoughts can serve a purpose – to help us avoid danger and react quickly in an emergency – when they get out of hand, our health risks increase and life satisfaction diminishes.
Dr. Gina Di Giulio, Director of Psychology at Medcan, works with clients (in person or via video visit) to keep negative thoughts at bay. Here are her five suggestions:
1) The mindfulness approach: notice your worries without judgment
Rather than trying to control your negative thoughts, Dr. Di Giulio suggests observing your thoughts as if you are a witness to your own thoughts and feelings like you are noticing cars in traffic.
Once you’ve started to observe your thoughts, you will notice the judgmental or critical commentary that tags along. Judging thoughts or criticizing yourself makes you feel bad and can cause you to worry even more – and can enhance the body’s response to stress.
“Daily mindfulness practice helps with learning how to more readily ‘let go’ of negative thoughts,” says Dr. Di Giulio.
MRI scans show that after an 8-week course of mindfulness practice, our primal responses to stress (knee-jerk reactions) seem to be replaced by more tempered, thoughtful ones. Researchers have also noticed a reduction in the biomarkers of stress and inflammation like C-reactive proteins and cortisol, which are associated with disease.
2) Challenge negative thinking
Sometimes we can worry disproportionately to the actual risk at hand and those thoughts need to be challenged or they’ll take control. Ask yourself questions like: ‘how many times have I worried about this or something similar, and how many times has my worry materialized?’ ‘When it did, was it as bad as I had imagined it to be?’
Reminding yourself about how many times you’ve actually worried about something, and how many times your worries have materialized can be a helpful tool to help examine your negative thinking more objectively, says Dr. Di Giulio.
3) Consider the worst case scenario
Asking yourself “what is the worst that can happen” and “how would I cope?” is also a helpful strategy.
“People often catastrophize and have images about their worries that end with the catastrophe being true. Thinking worries through to the end and asking yourself how you would cope, can be an incredibly powerful tool to help manage worries,” says Dr. Di Giulio. “Worrying underestimates our perceived coping skills, and leads us to believe that we wouldn’t be able to handle our worries if they came true, and in most cases, that is simply not the case.”
4) Journal your thoughts and experiences
Writing your worries down –a technique can help you identify patterns in your worries. Are there any situations that are more likely to trigger your worries? Do you tend to worry about similar things again and again? Also, the act of reflecting on the joyous in our lives can increase one’s happiness. Twenty minutes of journaling at the end of the night about a positive experience can lead to positive thoughts and feelings.
5) Start today
Dr. Di Giulio recommends starting with apps like Headspace and Calm to help guide you through meditation. It might also be helpful to explore some of these patterns of negative thinking with a mental health professional who is trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT is an evidence-based treatment that teaches people how to more objectively evaluate their worries, and change problematic negative thinking patterns.
“Taking the time to observe, challenge, and reflect on the way we think can change the way our brain functions and how we respond to daily interactions,” says Dr. Di Giulio.”With these five simple suggestions, we have the potential to reclaim our calm for good.”
Photo by Naseem Buras on Unsplash