A while ago I wrote about the different forms of negative thinking and how they can affect you. I mentioned that I would do another blog post on how you can challenge those negative ways of thinking and try to see things from a logical view point, so that is what this blog is all about. I'm also going to mention an App that I use to help with my anxiety and I highly recommend you downloading it to help you as well. But I'll get onto that later.
So as mentioned in my previous blog, there are lots of different ways in which we think negatively, and these negative thoughts and feelings are not exclusive to those with anxiety, everyone has these thoughts, but I suppose those who suffer with anxiety think them a little more often than others. If you want to take a look at the different ways in which you think negatively in detail look back at my old blog. I'll link it at the end of the blog for your ease of reading.
So that way that negative thinking works is that you have an automatic thought which is a self criticism, these automatic thoughts could be things like, 'I never do anything right', 'I'm always late', or 'I'll make an idiot of myself.' for example when you think you're going to be a little late for something. The first thing you need to do with these thoughts that you feel is work out what kind of thought distortion/negative thought it is. So, the 'I'm always late' thought is overgeneralisation, and the thought 'I'll make an idiot of myself' is labelling and fortune telling. Once you've worked out what the type of thought distortion is you can attempt to rationalise everything, you effectively substitute the illogical negative thoughts for something that is more rational and objective. You evaluate the horrible self criticisms that automatically fill your thoughts when something doesn't quite go the way you want it to or when a negative event occurs.
The App I mentioned earlier is so useful when attempting to do this. The App is free for the basic package of it and this feature is part of the free bit of the App. It's called Pacifica and there's loads of other features but I'm just going to talk about this one for now. So you basically can write thought records of your negative thoughts, the example of the right is from when I was doing a module at uni called Performing Shakespeare. What you do to start off with is writing down your thoughts, everything that you're feeling at that current moment in time, so this one is all about me worrying about failing and not doing very well in the module. I was finding it hard to learn my lines quick enough basically. So the stuff highlighted in red and crossed out is my original writing, What you do next is click and highlight every negative work and thought, so you have to look and see in your own thoughts what thoughts are negative or inaccurate, You then tap the negative thoughts and change them into more balanced thoughts rather than the negative ones and those thoughts are the ones highlighted in green. If you haven't got this App and you suffer from anxiety I would highly recommend it. It's such a good thing to do. I will probably write another post on the App itself. By the way, I'm not sponsored to write any of this!
One way to evaluate those negative thoughts if you're not very confident to do so or don't really know how to is by asking yourself a load of questions to evaluate the thoughts and make you think differently. These questions can include:
So as mentioned in my previous blog, there are lots of different ways in which we think negatively, and these negative thoughts and feelings are not exclusive to those with anxiety, everyone has these thoughts, but I suppose those who suffer with anxiety think them a little more often than others. If you want to take a look at the different ways in which you think negatively in detail look back at my old blog. I'll link it at the end of the blog for your ease of reading.
So that way that negative thinking works is that you have an automatic thought which is a self criticism, these automatic thoughts could be things like, 'I never do anything right', 'I'm always late', or 'I'll make an idiot of myself.' for example when you think you're going to be a little late for something. The first thing you need to do with these thoughts that you feel is work out what kind of thought distortion/negative thought it is. So, the 'I'm always late' thought is overgeneralisation, and the thought 'I'll make an idiot of myself' is labelling and fortune telling. Once you've worked out what the type of thought distortion is you can attempt to rationalise everything, you effectively substitute the illogical negative thoughts for something that is more rational and objective. You evaluate the horrible self criticisms that automatically fill your thoughts when something doesn't quite go the way you want it to or when a negative event occurs.
The App I mentioned earlier is so useful when attempting to do this. The App is free for the basic package of it and this feature is part of the free bit of the App. It's called Pacifica and there's loads of other features but I'm just going to talk about this one for now. So you basically can write thought records of your negative thoughts, the example of the right is from when I was doing a module at uni called Performing Shakespeare. What you do to start off with is writing down your thoughts, everything that you're feeling at that current moment in time, so this one is all about me worrying about failing and not doing very well in the module. I was finding it hard to learn my lines quick enough basically. So the stuff highlighted in red and crossed out is my original writing, What you do next is click and highlight every negative work and thought, so you have to look and see in your own thoughts what thoughts are negative or inaccurate, You then tap the negative thoughts and change them into more balanced thoughts rather than the negative ones and those thoughts are the ones highlighted in green. If you haven't got this App and you suffer from anxiety I would highly recommend it. It's such a good thing to do. I will probably write another post on the App itself. By the way, I'm not sponsored to write any of this!One way to evaluate those negative thoughts if you're not very confident to do so or don't really know how to is by asking yourself a load of questions to evaluate the thoughts and make you think differently. These questions can include:
- Have I had experiences that suggest that this thought is not true all of the time?
- If a person I care about had this thought what would I say to them?
- Am I jumping to conclusions?
- Am I blaming myself for a situation that is not completely within my control?
- Are there positives in myself that I'm discounting?
These are just a few questions you can ask yourself but I'm sure once you get the hang of it you'll be able to come up with more. I know how hard it can be to fight those negative, automatic thoughts and rationalise them all, but the App is super helpful. I've been using it for about five months now and it's helped me enormously, so I would highly recommend downloading it and giving it a go. It does a step by step walk through of everything as well which is awesome. I hope this has been helpful for you guys and helps you in some way to fight and rationalise those negative thoughts.
Stay awesome.
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