Three Effective Ways Of Dealing With Negative Thoughts

Do you find yourself ruminating, catastrophizing, or struggling with intrusive thoughts? Do you want to learn practical ways to silence the inner negative chatter? We all have unwanted thoughts. Discover three powerful practices from three experts to overcome them.

Transcript

I am Anna Seewald and this is Authentic Parenting,

A podcast about growing ourselves while raising our children.

I'm a psychologist,

Educator,

And parent coach.

And on this podcast,

I explore how you can connect to your authentic self,

Practice radical self-care,

And raise emotionally healthy children.

Let's break the cycle of generational trauma for a more peaceful,

Kind,

And compassionate world.

Today,

Three effective ways dealing with negative thoughts.

I have a compilation episode for you.

I want to share three helpful practices from previous episodes to help you with overcoming negative thinking,

The chatter in your mind,

Ruminations,

Catastrophizing,

And intrusive thoughts.

If you enjoy the topic of this compilation episode,

Then listen to my conversation with Ethan Cross in episode 294,

The Voice in Your Head and How to Harness It.

Originally,

I wanted to include a clip from that episode here as well,

But I couldn't find just one clip.

The full conversation is just so good.

I hope you will put these three techniques into practice and find them beneficial.

I always enjoy putting together compilation episodes,

Even though they take more time.

And it was such a surprise to find similarities in my guests' approaches in dealing with negative thoughts.

Turning toward our painful experiences with curiosity,

Openness,

Without resistance,

Or trying to get rid of them,

Or replacing our negative thoughts with more positive ones,

Is key to diminishing their power over us.

Don't believe everything you think.

Please enjoy.

The first practice is from episode 386,

Mind Wondering,

How to Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity with Moshe Barr.

Professor Barr shares a technique called labeling.

When you catch yourself ruminating or having a negative thought that is intrusive,

Give it a try.

He also indicates that working with traumatic memories requires a more serious and long-term approach.

The labeling was fascinating in the mindfulness chapter.

Can you talk about that too?

Yeah,

I also think it's fascinating and we've started research on this in the lab,

But it hasn't concluded sufficiently yet.

It takes time.

So the trick was,

And I'm repeating some things that you've read in the book,

But I'm assuming your listeners haven't read it yet,

So I will be redundant here for you.

The idea,

Well,

A good friend of mine,

Who's an expert in mindfulness,

Dragged me to this first meditation retreat up north in Israel in a kibbutz,

And I was completely clueless.

And like I do with many other things,

Including yoga and squash and all this,

I jump straight to the advanced level,

So I'm always the last one in class,

But still,

I'm always challenged.

I like it.

So I went to this retreat where people usually are much more advanced,

And I was miserable because I really couldn't harness my thoughts.

I couldn't do anything.

My mind always drifted.

So we were cheating.

At night,

We were just taking walks,

She and I,

And talking about science,

Life,

Whatever.

So I told her about this,

And she said,

Here's a trick that we use.

I'm not sure she called it labeling,

But the idea was that you take a certain thought,

And you rate it or you label it in different dimensions.

And the dimensions can be really simple and silly.

So you have a certain thought,

And you can,

Let's say,

Choose three dimensions.

You can say,

Is it about the past,

This thought,

About the present or the future?

You can label it,

Is it about me or about others?

And you can rate it also in valence.

Is it negative,

Neutral,

Or positive?

So you take a certain thought you have.

Let's say I talk with you,

And there's a thought that,

No,

Let's say I'm just sitting here,

And I'm worried about my boss telling me I need to talk with you tomorrow,

Right?

And this thought keeps bugging me.

And let's say I do meditation,

And this thought keeps coming to me.

So I say,

Is it about me or about others?

It's about me.

I don't care about the boss.

In this case,

It's about me,

Right?

Is it past,

Future,

Or present?

This is future,

Right?

So it's me,

Future,

And it's,

I don't know,

Let's label it negative.

You don't have to be correct here,

As long as you label it,

Right?

So it's me,

Future,

Negative.

And miraculously,

This was really shocking for me,

This most thoughts,

If you're suffering from trauma,

And you have some intrusive thoughts from PTSD,

You can't really get rid of it so easily.

But everyday nuisances and thoughts that bother us can be dealt with,

With this method,

Because I almost,

And I said it in the book,

I almost heard this whoosh,

You know,

When you send an email,

And it says,

Whoosh.

So the moment I labeled a thought,

It disappeared.

And of course,

I'm a scientist,

Even though I try not to be a scientist when I go to meditation retreats,

But I can't help it.

So it's like,

Okay,

Let's play with it,

Because the thought disappeared.

Let's try to bring it back.

And in most cases,

I just couldn't bring back the case,

Like,

Let's bring back the thought and hang on to it.

And it just,

It dissipates,

It really dissipates.

And it does,

You know,

It might relate,

And here I'm kind of speculating,

To things that Freud and others talked about when,

You know,

Unsettled or unconsolidated memories.

So when you encounter a new thing,

Or you have a new thought,

Usually,

If it's all okay,

Then you store it somewhere.

It's as if you put it on a shelf in a library,

And it doesn't haunt you,

It doesn't bother you.

But if you are,

If for some reason,

You didn't store it properly,

Maybe because it was a trauma,

Maybe you just,

You wanted to repress everything about it,

Because it was so unpleasant.

And then you didn't make the effort,

Or you didn't do what's necessary to store it properly.

And it just keeps back calling your attention,

Hey,

I'm here,

This thought is telling him,

I'm here,

You have to take care of me.

And you try to push it away,

You try to avoid it,

But it keeps coming back.

And when once you label it,

It's some way,

It is some way of,

It's akin to like treating this thought.

And once you treated it,

It is on the shelf,

And then stops bothering you.

But again,

It's a speculation,

We didn't do studies on this.

But it is a fact that at least in my experience,

And others that practice this labeling,

It does help getting rid of,

You know,

Everyday bothers,

Not something that's too major.

Oh,

I see.

There is the saying,

Right?

What we resist persists.

But when you embrace it,

Yeah,

It diminishes its value,

Or whoosh,

It disappears.

I have to play with that.

I haven't used it in my life.

But yeah,

I guess with traumatic memories,

There is also emotions that are floating that are not felt,

Right?

So that makes it hard.

Yeah,

Emotions are like the strongest glue for memories.

So it's really hard to forget,

It's really hard to stop associating.

You know,

In the lab,

I can make you think about blue squares as scary,

Because I keep pairing them maybe subconsciously,

But very quickly pairing blue squares with negative stuff,

And red squares with positive things.

So I show you squares,

It's like,

Okay,

I like this one more.

Why?

I don't know.

Right?

And I can extinct this,

I can switch.

And then after a little while,

I start pairing the red ones with negative and the blue ones with positive.

And now you change alliances,

You start liking the blue one better,

Right?

So I can change your association implicitly or explicitly with certain stimulus.

But when people saw friends exploding in the war,

Or they see a woman that went through some traumatic experience,

Then it's really not that easy to come and say,

Okay,

Let's associate this room now with something different.

Let's have a party in this room.

No,

The experience was so strong and so negative,

Then it's really,

It will take more than just pairing it,

You know,

With cotton balls and cotton candy,

Rather.

Yeah.

Here is a clip from an old episode from 2018,

With Todd Kashtan.

It's episode 148.

And the name is The Upside of Your Dark Side.

In it,

We talk about how by experiencing the full palette of human emotions,

We develop emotional agility,

And how we can harness superpowers from emotions like anger,

Anxiety,

And embarrassment.

In this specific clip,

He shares a method called diffusion,

Again,

To help you with negative thoughts.

Does your mind have a tendency to catastrophize?

Give it a try to defusion.

You also do some activities with,

You know,

With audiences that you work with.

And I have,

I know of this one particular activity,

I would love for you to do it with us,

Where you ask your audience to condense into one sentence that one nasty,

Ugly,

Negative thought that they have about themselves.

And as parents,

We often do doubt ourselves,

We have this inner critic,

Right?

It creeps in all the time,

Am I making the right decision?

Did I do it right?

Can you walk us through that exercise,

Perhaps?

Sure.

Yeah.

So this is called diffusion.

What we tend to do when we have I mean,

Here's the thing,

We are all every single person listen to this,

You're going to feel lonely,

You're going to be stressed,

You're going to be rejected,

You're going to be ostracized,

You're going to have self doubt,

You're going to fail,

You're going to be disappointed in yourself,

You're going to think about that your parents disappointed in yourself or caregivers were disappointed in you.

This is not going anywhere.

This is part of the human conditions.

Pain is part of the human condition.

Suffering is optional,

Pain is a giving.

So this is a strategy that goes counter to what we typically do when we have things pop into our head that we don't like,

We try to suppress them,

Hide them,

Conceal them,

Push them back.

And what happens is there's a rebound effect,

The more you try not to think about something,

The more it pops up.

So if you found lipstick on your romantic partner's shirt,

If you found the fear gnomes,

The smell of another person on your romantic partner's shirt,

Your mind might immediately move to are they having an affair,

Jealousy,

Disappointment,

And all these emotions and yet you have no idea whether anything you're thinking about has any validity,

But your mind treats it as if it's already true.

So diffusion is different than trying to conceal and hide these kind of thoughts and feelings.

It's about trying to change their function by realizing that our thoughts and feelings that often we don't like are just products of our brain and they're not necessarily true.

So let me just kind of walk you through this exercise because it's quickly,

We'll see how it works on the radio.

So what I'd like you to do is just spend five seconds thinking of a thought that you can't stand when it pops into your head.

It could be something like you don't feel lovable,

You don't feel attractive,

You feel lonely,

You feel as if you are doing things that are beneath you,

You're not appreciated.

Whatever that thought is,

When it pops up,

The one you dislike the most.

Get that thought,

Don't try to disown it or challenge it or try to change it.

Just kind of remember what that thought is.

And what I want you to do,

As Anna just said,

Is condense it down into a few words,

Either I am unattractive,

I am unlovable,

I am uninteresting,

Or the other way around,

I am not interesting,

I'm not attractive,

I'm not funny.

So condense that thought down.

What I want you to do is take 10 seconds.

I'm not going to actually let 10 seconds go by here because that's a lot of dead time on the air.

Take 10 seconds and just sit with that thought.

Don't try to change it,

Just marinate it as if it's the truth.

It's the gospel.

So let's just say it's,

I'm not funny.

For 10 seconds,

I want you to repeat the thought to yourself slowly and not try to change it.

After you do that for 10 seconds,

I want you to add a little bit more to the thought.

I'm having the thought that I'm not funny.

I'm having the thought that I'm not attractive.

I'm having the thought that I'm not lovable.

Just want to add that little bit in the front of it.

And we're getting a little bit closer to more accurate.

It's not that you're saying I'm not lovable.

I'm not funny.

I'm having the thought that I'm not lovable.

And for 10 seconds,

Slowly repeat that to yourself.

I'm having the thought that I am blank.

I'm having the thought that I'm not blank.

After 10 seconds passes,

Let's add a little bit more detail just to be a little bit more accurate to reality.

I notice I'm having the thought that I'm not lovable.

I notice I'm having the thought that I'm not attractive.

So put that in front of your unwanted,

Ugly,

Self-deprecating comment.

I notice I'm having the thought that I'm not funny.

Spend 10 seconds doing that,

Saying it slowly to yourself.

And what happens is the thought doesn't go away.

We're not trying to get rid of the thought.

We're not even trying to get rid of the emotions.

We're just trying to carefully calibrate exactly what's happening.

Your brain has produced the thought and you've noticed it.

And when you do this exercise,

Now here's the thing,

This exercise can take 30 seconds.

Nobody will notice.

When you do this exercise,

What happens is the thought loses some of its sting.

The thought ends up being less provocative.

The thought has less control over you.

The thought is not as powerful and you're changing the function of the thought,

Such as you're just seeing it's just something my brain produces.

Just like you have friends that give advice.

Sometimes it's good.

Sometimes it's crappy and completely useless.

Your brain is no different.

Sometimes it produces things that are completely unrelated to your actual circumstances.

So it's just an example of an exercise that we can,

We have the ability to change the way that we relate to our own thoughts,

Feelings,

Memories,

Images,

And impulses.

But in the moment,

We treat them as if they are reality.

You know,

If you get anxious before you're asked to give a presentation,

When you get anxious before someone says to you,

Hey,

Listen,

Can you tell that story that you told me that was so freaking funny last week?

And your heart might be racing and you might be thinking to yourself,

These people aren't going to be interested in that story.

That was meant for that one person.

In that moment,

You think that the anxiety implies that you're not going to tell the story well.

That you're not in a good place.

That you're a neurotic person.

Maybe,

Maybe not.

Maybe it's just that you got,

You were surprised and when you're surprised,

When someone points their attention at you,

You have a physiological reaction.

Your anxiety goes up,

Your heart races,

Your breath gets shorter.

It does not mean anything by itself about your ability,

Intelligence,

Strength,

Storytelling ability,

Or persuasive skills just because you get anxious.

And so it's just a strategy that you can add to your toolkit about diffusing from unwanted,

Unlikable thoughts.

Yes,

I find it very powerful.

I think if I do this exercise often,

Which I'm going to,

It will be very helpful,

Right?

Oftentimes,

It's the thoughts are crippling and when you create that space between,

Like you said,

The thinker and the thought,

Things are different,

Right?

You still have the feeling,

The emotion,

The thought,

But you can choose a different behavior and move forward and act rather than be enslaved by your emotion and be stuck.

You described it perfectly.

Couldn't have described it better.

And the last practice is from episode 324,

Developing Psychological Flexibility.

I spoke to Diana Hill about adapting to life's challenges skillfully,

Tapping into our values,

Crafting a meaningful life,

Developing acceptance of our uncomfortable emotions and thoughts through the framework of acceptance and commitment therapy.

The practice she shared,

I found it pretty helpful.

So far we have the Rubik's Cube.

We have six sides to it.

So far we've talked about being present,

Values.

Have we spoke about the third side yet?

Well,

We've talked a little bit about thoughts.

We can talk more and these don't go in any order.

They're just,

They're processes.

There's ways of relating to the world,

Right?

So they all interact with each other.

But the other one is thoughts.

And you know,

I think your example of this,

This story about your friend not acknowledging your birthday,

A lot of that happened inside your head.

There was a lot of thoughts that went on.

And some of those thoughts may have been helpful thoughts.

Some of those thoughts may have been not so helpful thoughts.

Some of those thoughts may have been ruminative thoughts.

Some of those thoughts may have connected to past experiences and memories.

And this is just what our head does is it produces thoughts all day long.

And when we practice the skill of cognitive diffusion with ACT,

What we're doing is getting some space from those thoughts.

So here's an example that I often will do with folks with is,

Is what was one of the thoughts that came up for you around?

Do you mind if we keep on using?

Yeah,

Yeah,

Of course.

Yeah.

It's a fresh example.

And to begin with,

I had a birthday party that day.

It's a long story.

And,

And I don't usually check my email on weekends.

And I did check my email,

I received a very unpleasant email from a client.

And I just could not let go of the things that he said in that email.

It was very disturbing.

And I thought it was a spam.

This could not be my client,

Right?

He was accusing me of something.

And it was very startling.

And I'm like,

Wait,

Shall I address this now?

It's the weekend,

It's this long weekend.

And that was already brewing in my mind.

I had a lot of thoughts about that.

And I tried to be present.

And you know,

I went for a walk and did everything that I could not to be absorbed by this email.

And then I had a good day.

But then when this happened,

It was this,

You know,

Cumulative experience.

So I already had this negative sort of state.

And when the friend didn't acknowledge my birthday,

It sort of amplified that action.

If the friend had done this on a different day,

When I was happy,

You know,

In my own happy mood,

That might have not disturbed me so much or annoyed me.

But so I had that background thing going on.

And the thought that was coming to my mind was,

I can't believe it that that was the you know,

I can't believe it.

So how could she not?

I was taken by surprise.

I love that example,

Because you're talking about sort of like the weather systems of our mind,

Right?

So it's like,

It's already kind of stormy in there.

And you're already in a place that maybe was more sensitive to a negativity bias or more vulnerable.

And there's also just the vulnerability of your birthday,

All these different things that kind of contribute to our mind,

Having a tendency to lean one way or the other.

Sometimes I'll give the example of middle of the night thinking when you make up in the middle of the night,

And something is so urgent and feel so crisis and so important.

And you have to figure this out now.

And then when you wake up the next day,

It's like,

Why was I so upset about that?

Right?

Because I was in a different weather system.

I was in the middle of the night weather system,

Which is just evidence that our minds aren't always the thing that we can believe.

Or we can always trust.

And our minds can be really sticky.

So these thoughts can come in and you can get an email,

But you're still thinking about the email,

Even though you're at the birthday party,

And you're still thinking about the friend,

Even though you're in the therapy session,

Right?

So the question becomes,

What do we do with these sticky minds and these thoughts that can be quite unhelpful.

And for a long time,

What psychology has done and what traditional cognitive behavioral methods have done,

Have done things like rationalize or challenge your thoughts.

So you and I could go back and forth around,

I can't believe she did this.

Is that rational or not?

Is that you know,

Should you have that thought?

Or should you not have that thought?

But the nature of that is that the more that you get entangled in the thought,

The more entangled you are,

It's like,

You know,

A bit of a quicksand experience,

You're trying to like,

Figure out the thought and rationalize and you're deeper and deeper in it.

With ACT,

What we do is just acknowledge it as a thought,

And allow it to pass through our mind,

Like you would a weather system.

Like you would,

You know,

A thought if you if there's a sky behind that thought,

And the weather or cloud comes on through.

When I spoke with Stephen Hayes,

Who's he's the co founder of ACT.

I've spoken with him a number of times,

But the last time that I spoke with him on my podcast,

We talked about specifically about thoughts and this cognitive diffusion component.

And one of the things that he said,

Was,

What if you were to pay attention to the space between the thoughts instead of the thought itself?

Just the it's like pay attention to the sky,

Instead of the weather.

And that's another way to kind of look at it.

But I think that it's tricky,

Because the more we try and fight thoughts,

And the more we try and rationalize them,

The more we're going to be caught in them.

They amplify,

They just take you and grab you and you become,

You know,

The victim of your own thinking.

Sure,

We've all been there.

But what could I do a practical exercise?

I think you were about to do with me or share with me?

Yeah,

Yes.

Okay.

So the thought is,

I can't believe what was I can't believe this.

I can't believe she did this or something of that nature.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

So I want you to imagine I can't believe she did this.

And I want you to imagine that we're like written across your hand.

Okay.

And actually,

Sometimes I'll have clients write it across their hand.

I can't believe she did this.

I'm not going to do someone else might see it.

Yeah,

Forbid someone should see what goes on in your mind.

Oh,

My gosh,

Right?

It's a terrible thing.

If someone saw what went on in my mind,

Right?

But these good things going in our mind.

So I can't believe she did this.

And then what I want you to do is take your hand,

And I want to hold it right up to your face.

So it's almost touching your eyelashes.

Uh huh.

How well can you actually read this thought at this point in time when it's this close to you?

I can't I can only see a couple of letters,

Not the whole sentence for sure.

I see.

And then how well could you engage with me on this podcast?

If or at your birthday party?

If you were this close to your thought?

I can't believe she did this.

Oh,

My gosh,

Not very well.

Well,

It would be terrible.

I would have been engaged in anything.

Yeah,

It's blocked,

Blocked.

Okay,

So that's most of the time we spend is we're really just engulfed in our thoughts.

We don't even know that we're having the thought we're just believing it.

We can't really see it clearly.

And it's actually blocking our view.

Okay.

Now here's the next thing that you can do is you can take your hand and you slowly move it out away from your face and pop it right down in your lap.

And now how well can you engage with me in this podcast?

How well can you see me?

How well could you talk to me?

Perfectly fine.

Okay.

Now can you also see your hand over here?

And that thought I can't believe she did if I pay attention to my hand?

Yes.

But if I'm paying attention to you,

I know it's there.

But it's in the background,

Not in the foreground.

Right,

Right.

So yes.

And notice that what we didn't do is we didn't take a Sharpie and like cross out that thought and write a different positive thought,

A positive thought underneath it,

Which is our tendency.

But oh my gosh,

Every time I try and read that positive thought,

There's that crossed out thought right above it.

This says I can't believe she did this.

She's an amazing person.

She's an amazing,

Amazing person.

But I can't believe she did this.

Right.

So that's what we tend to do.

Right.

Or that's what we've been told to do is just replace our thoughts with positive affirmations.

And,

You know,

That sometimes can help.

But a lot of times what it does is just gives us the yes,

But in our own head,

Right.

And we didn't chop off your hand,

We didn't tie your hand behind your back,

Because that would be really frustrating and difficult,

You wouldn't have a hand to work with.

But what we did is just got some space from it.

And you said something important there,

Which is we can choose to pay attention to it.

Sometimes it is helpful and important to choose to pay attention to our thoughts.

For example,

Early on,

When you were talking about planning mind,

It's helpful to have a planning mind and choose to pay attention to our planning mind.

It's not helpful to be in planning mind when we're our child's recital.

When we're a child's recital,

We're in present mind,

Watching the recital,

Appreciating our child,

This is changing,

It's never going to be like this again.

But if we're in planning mind thinking about,

You know,

How am I going to do X,

Y,

And Z at work,

We're missing out.

So our thoughts we can pay attention to,

Or we cannot pay attention to.

But ultimately,

It's us that gets to choose and our values that help us choose whether or not to pay attention to our thoughts.

Very empowering.

I have to remember this.

And maybe even write down some thoughts that come up from time to time just to do it as a concrete example,

Instead of just an imaginary hand.

I think it would be pretty cool.

Thank you for that.

This was great.

So there you have it,

My dear listener,

The compilation episode.

Did you enjoy it?

Do you remember listening to the original full conversations on the podcast?

I will have a link in the show notes to the full episodes so that you can check them out or re-listen.

I am curious which practice resonated with you the most and how do you personally deal with negative thoughts?

As always,

I enjoy hearing from you.

You can send me a note to the email info at authenticparenting.

Com.

You can call the number 732-763-2576 and leave a voicemail.

And as I said before,

I do prefer audio.

I love hearing your actual voice.

And for international listeners,

We have a free tool on the contact page of my website.

It's called Speakpipe.

So head over to authenticparenting.

Com forward slash contact and send me a message.

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Until next week,

I am Anna Seewald.

Thank you so much for listening.

I'll see you next time.

Reviews

One of the most practical and likely to be impactful thought practices one will ever encounter. Tha n you for this consolidation and your work to share it. 🙏