11 Simple Steps to Short Circuit Negative Thinking
#5 Kill All or Nothing Thinking
As you may know, we are all hardwired to respond more intensely to negative information than to positive information, which is a dangerous proposition in the time of coronavirus.
Nearly every day the news and social media are drowning us information about petty politics, disturbing images, death tolls, economic destruction, which are triggering fear, anger, depression and anxiety within us all.
Regardless if your passive or actively paying attention, the current negative news cycle has a very material physiological impact upon our brains and bodies. In particular, it activates the sympathetic nervous system and thereby release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
Many Americans are trying to manage their negative emotions through poor coping choices like the increased use of substances like alcohol.
In describing negativity bias, Daniel Kahneman, the highly influential, Nobel-prize-winning psychologist, cites a quote from a major paper titled “Bad is Stronger Than Good.”
“Bad emotions, bad parents and bad feedback have more impact that good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones.”
Given that we are all prone to negativity bias, I wanted to share 11 habits I’ve employed to short circuit negative thinking, channel my emotions and ground myself within a broader and more reasonable perspective.
11 Tools to Help Manage Emotion During a Pandemic
I spent the last ten months doing cognitive behavioral therapy and participating in group sessions. As I’ve navigated the challenges related to the current pandemic, these techniques have really helped me manage my emotions and consciously improve my overall outlook. I hope they can help you too:
1. Check in with Yourself: Do you stop and ask yourself “how you are feeling” a few times a day? It’s so easy to get sucked into negative thinking today that it is a good idea to check in with yourself regularly. Just identifying the source of stress and emotional discomfort usually takes some of its power away.
2. Question the Source: Ask yourself: Where are my emotions coming from? Is there a specific trigger that led me to feel this way? If you can pinpoint the source of the discomfort, you give yourself the opportunity to inject some reason and logic, effectively short-circuiting the negative thought patterns.
3. Reduce Exposure to Negative News: As I mentioned, news and social media can do significant damage to our mental state right now. I know this first hand. At the beginning of the pandemic, like many others, I would sit for hours with the news on in the background. When I started to check in with myself, I realized that I was ending these days in a very negative mental state, anxious and full of fear. So, I turned off the TV and pivoted to reading and writing. It’s shocking to me how much happier I am now. If you absolutely must watch to receive critical updates, set a time limit. Schedule a half hour a day with a hard stop.
4. You Can’t Control Everything: Many are so stressed, anxious and angered by the coronavirus pandemic we cannot control them, and we have been stripped of some of our regular daily comforts. As humans, it is natural to want to be in control. We like to tell ourselves that if we just do X and Y, then everything will turn out just how we want. The reality is that we have very little control over anything. Buying hand sanitizer or toilet paper isn’t going to change our circumstances and likely not any outcomes of this pandemic. Focus on using your limited reserve of energy to control what you can, namely your own actions, what information you take in and how you react or respond to the actions of others.
5. Kill the All or Nothing Thinking: If you’re like me, you can go from zero to catastrophe in one second flat. All is not right with the world today and bad things are happening, but you’re not Chicken Little and the sky isn’t falling. Try to derail catastrophic thinking by hitting pause and injecting some reason. The sun will rise tomorrow and expecting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will do nothing but darken your day. Do you really want to consciously make yourself unhappy?
6. Keep Everything in Perspective: It can be very easy to lose your center today. One thing that has helped me in the past is to make a gratitude list. Write down everything that you are thankful for today and keep the list close at hand for a quick reminder when you feel down. Another way to take a step back is to consider this question: What will you think when you remember this experience 10 years from now? Do you think you’ll be as scared or depressed then as you are right now? Probably not. You will have moved on with your life, and this experience will look like a fly on the ass of an elephant.
7. Phone a Friend: The phrase “social distancing” always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s “physical distancing.” We can still talk to whoever we want, whenever we want. We often feel most comfortable opening up to and sharing our vulnerabilities with our true, close friends. When we are feeling down, anxious, fearful or in a panic, discussing our feelings with these friends will helpthe emotional charge to dissipate, and their empathy can help to easy the very real burden that you feel.
8. Channel Your Feelings: At this point in the coronavirus lockdown, we all have substantial levels of pent-up emotion, anxiety and energy. One of the healthiest things to do is to focus your feelings on something creative. Take up a new hobby, paint, build something, document the quarantine through photography, learn a new language or crank out articles you’ve always wanted to write (like me). When we channel our energy into productive, goal-bound activities, it brings us some comfort and fulfillment during a time when we need it most.
9. Brush Off Others’ Stress and Anxiety: This is probably most important for those currently working remotely in high stress jobs during this period. Remember that the emotions and anxiety others share with you are not reflections of yourself, but rather reflections of what is going on inside of them. We often forget that everything is not related to us.
10. Take Care of Your Body: In times of stress, this one is usually the first to go. Diets fly out the window and drinking resolutionsswirl down the drain. I can assure you from personal experience that neither of these temporary salves will leave you any better off. They tend to only make you crave more, as you build up dependency. Get some periodic sun and exercise outside if you can safely. Proper diet combined with enough sleepand exercise and make a world of difference to your mood.
11. Cut Yourself Some Slack: Listening to my peers in therapy today, everyone seems to desire to emerge from their quarantine cocoon like a majestic spring butterfly unfurling their wings for all the world to see. Many people have taken on admirable projects during this forced break in the action, but it was not a requirement of the pandemic. There will be no post-quarantine performance review. It has been a challenge for some of us just to make it through the day. Pat yourself on the back when you do and take it easy.
###