4 Clever Tricks Your Mind Plays on You to Make You Feel Low
How to counteract these tricks to elevate your mood.
Your mind can have an instrumental impact on your emotions.
If you perform badly when giving a presentation, you might engage in self-defeating thoughts, which will make you feel like it’s the end of the world.
On the other hand, if you get a good grade in an exam, you’ll feel like you’re invincible and can achieve anything.
In my late teens, I noticed that my thoughts and perceptions impacted my mood greatly which would affect my entire day.
At present, working as an assistant psychologist, I notice these same ‘mind games’ that occur in the people I work with (who are often dealing with low moods, anxiety and stress) which influences their wellbeing and mood too.
We often don’t realise the impact that our mind can have on us because:
- We don’t address the tricks our mind plays.
- We continue with life and let it impact on our emotions.
- Often, these ‘mind tricks’ are very automatic and go unnoticed.
And while these tricks do occur automatically, which can make us feel low, there are simple changes we can make to address them.
Here are four different tricks our mind plays on us that impact our emotions and how you can change them.
1. It Creates Negative Images
The more negative images you create in our mind, the more dejected, depressed and unhappy you’ll feel.
Research published in Frontiers in Psychiatry found that negative mental imagery induced stronger negative emotions.
In contrast, studies have found when individuals are probed to generate positive, mental images, there is an increase in positive emotions. Individuals in these studies also perform well on a behavioural task after these positive images are generated.
When your mind starts to develop negative images or situations, such as visualising yourself performing poorly in a presentation, it has a massive knock-on effect on your emotion.
And, above all, it affects your behaviour too.
Essentially, the more positive images you create, the better you will feel.
“Change your mental imagery, and the feelings will take care of themselves.” — Maxwell Maltz
How to change:
- Identify the negative images your mind is creating and your emotions — Whenever you are feeling low, stop for a moment. Ask yourself, am I visualising negative scenarios? If so, write them down and write down your emotions too.
- Write down an alternative positive image — if you see a negative image of you performing badly in your next football match, write down a positive scenario of you scoring a goal or making a crucial tackle.
- Read this scenario again and again — repetition of this image will help it stick in your mind.
- Visualise it — see yourself scoring the goal, imagine the celebration you’re going to do, imagine the fan reaction.
- Note down how you feel now.
This process not only helps you identify the negative images and emotions but it also helps you create more positive images which, as research has shown us, helps with boosting your mood.
2. It Overthinks Scenarios
“We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.” — Anthony Hopkins
We’ve all been there.
One tiny thing happens in your day and you start to overthink the whole situation or you are about to go and do something and you start to think the worst of things.
For example:
Say you’re about to go on a first date. You might start overthinking scenarios and think — “Will they like me?”; “I’m going to mess this up”; “What if they’re not interested in me!”
All these thoughts come racing to your head and before you know it, you’re not feeling too great.
Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a former Professor of Psychology at Yale University, who spent most of her career researching the effects of overthinking on mood regulation, found overthinking contributes to severe depression, anxiety and generates poor solutions.
Although overthinking does have a significant impact on our mood, the good news, is that we can reduce it.
How to change:
- Write down your ‘overthinking phrases’ — when you start to overthink make a note of the different thoughts and scenarios going through your mind. Draw attention to these thoughts.
- Replace these thoughts — Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Catherine Pittman says, “Telling yourself not to have a certain thought is not the way to not have the thought. You need to replace the thought.” If you tell yourself that you need to stop thinking of worst-case scenarios, you’re going to still think of these scenarios. Instead, if you tell yourself AND come up with more positive scenarios, you’re going to think of positive thoughts which will reduce your overthinking.
With the first date example:
If I tell myself, “I need to stop thinking I’m going to mess this up”, I’ll continue to think that I’m going to mess the date up — it’s not out of my head.
Instead, I can say to myself “I’m going to meet them, see how the date goes and be open to different conversations”.
Now, I’m not thinking of different, irrational, unrealistic thoughts.
Replace these thoughts to stop overthinking.
3. It Plays The Blame Game
When something bad happens, you might immediately blame yourself in a self-defeating way.
You might say to yourself, “It’s all my fault. If I hadn't have done X, this would’ve never happened!”
Studies have shown that self-blame emotions are highly frequent in individuals with depression, indicating that self-blaming is linked to low moods.
Blaming yourself for things entirely out of your control is not uncommon, but this is definitely a trick your mind plays that can make you feel unhappy.
How to change:
- Enhance your awareness — Clinical Psychologist, Jonice Webb says, “Self-blame has a lot more power when it happens automatically. Once you realise you’re doing it, you can take control of it.” Bring these self-blame attributions to the conscious to help you tackle them.
- Use self-compassion — Once you notice your self-blame, replace it with self-compassion. Be kind to yourself. Sharon Martin, a licensed psychotherapist mentions, “respond to it in a positive and caring way, like something you’d say to a friend.”
We often give brilliant, kind and nurturing advice to a friend, so instead of blaming yourself, respond in a nurturing way to yourself too. Use this kind voice on yourself, not just your friends.
4. It Expects Negative Feedback
In 2016, a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found individuals who rated their expectations about being liked by peers as more negative had greater depressive symptoms.
This is called negative expectancy bias and is a trick your mind will play on you that is frequently linked to a depleted mood.
It involves thinking that any feedback you obtain will be negative.
If you’re obtaining feedback on an essay from your teacher, a negative expectancy bias phrase may look like, “They will probably disagree with the arguments I am making and not like the structure of the essay. They won’t like it”.
You’re assuming that the person isn’t going to like the essay, so you think negatively, which makes you feel miserable.
How to change:
- Think of positive feedback — this sounds like a no-brainer. When you start to think of negative feedback, immediately think of one positive feedback as a counter.
- Make a list of the positive feedback you are receiving — this is a fantastic way to draw your attention to positive feedback. Write down the positives and when you start to think of negative feedback, look back on these positives to remind yourself you’re doing great!
Final Comments
Sometimes, your mind has a very clever way of creating thoughts that can deflate your mood.
Quite often, we don’t address these mind tricks and continue with life, not knowing what’s affecting us.
Instead of ignoring these mind games, you can tackle them to help you feel better and more positive.
Just keep these four tricks in mind as the more you notice them, the more you can take action against them:
Our mind will create negative images.
Our mind will overthink scenarios.
Our mind will play the blame game.
Our mind expects feedback to be negative and critical.
Looking at the positive side of things underlies changing these mind games. As Winston Churchill said:
“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”