The surprising ways negativity might be undermining your happiness

There are a number of ways that negative thinking might be making you unhappy, and this is how you reshape those thoughts.

by: E.B. Johnson

Negative thoughts are an unavoidable part of the human experience. This type of thinking can bog us down, and make it hard for us to operate in day-to-day life or make the big decisions that really matter. If you want to find your way back to happiness again, you have to learn how to challenge and replace your negative thoughts and emotions, but that’s a challenge that takes time and a lot of hard work on the inside.

Contstant negative thinking (also known as rumination) isn’t healthy, and overcoming it is a process that takes a conscious awareness and a committed effort. Negative or unwanted thoughts undermine your self confidence and leave you plagued with insecurities. Rather than allowing yourself to be distracted by what isn’t, you have to learn to focus on what is — and learn how to live a happier life by understanding your negative emotions and how you can reframe them.

Where do negative thoughts come from?

Negative thinking is fear-based, meaning it stems from our insecurities and those things in life which wounded us or made us hesitant.We are born as a blank slate and form our beliefs and opinions over time, based on the examples set by our caretakers and the experiences that comprise our lives.

All of theses things come together to form the foundation of how we interact with the world, and it is through these experiences that we form our ideas of self and ability.Negative thinking can develop in a lot of secret and hidden parts of ourselves, but it’s our responsibility to dig deep and try to understand where it comes from. While our experiences can contribute to our negative patterns of thinking, the quality and state of brain can contribute as well, hindering our positivity with vengeful mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.

The different types of negative thinking.

Negative thinking is also referred to as cognitive distortion in the psych world. These cognitive distortions are simply the ways in which our mind convinces us of something that isn’t quite true. Inaccurate in almost every single way, these thoughts reinforce our negative thinking and keep us stuck. To overcome them, you have to understand them.

1. Polarization

When we trap ourselves in a polarized way of thinking, we start to see things as only “black or white”. Polarized thinking means all or nothing; it means having to be perfect or being a complete failure. There is no middle ground when our thinking is polar. Those with polarized thinking place people and situations in either / or categories. There is no shade of grey when it comes to the way they view the world, and even the most complex of circumstances are meaningless to them. There’s only extremes when everything is either one thing or another. One of the most toxic forms of negative thinking, this can also be one of the most difficult to accept, reframe and overcome.

2. Filtering

Those who filter their thinking actually magnify the negative details they find in situations or people. Rather than seeing the good in a situation, they filter out all the positive and focus — with a magnifying glass — on all the negatives. They’re fixated by their disappointment and they expect that same fixation from the people around them. These are the people that pick our a single, unpleasant detail and pick at it until it’s a major irritation. They like to dwell on things that make them unhappy because it gives them a sense of power of justification in their victimhood. Their reality is dark and it’s distorted. Being around them feels like an energy-suck.

3. Emotional reasoning

This distortion of emotional reasoning is when a person believes that their feelings are automatically right and true — no matter what. The problem with this, of course, is that (as humans) our emotions are not always justified and often come from a place that is different from our actual outside circumstances. When our emotions take over entirely, this is emotional reasoning, and it blots out all rationality or logic we might have seen from a different perspective. Those who engage in emotional reasoning are not people who can be reasoned with. This is because emotions do not come only from our brains; they also come from our hearts, our souls and our past experiences.

4. Personalization

When you believe that everything others do is a reaction to you, you are personalizing your thinking. This type of thinking takes you to an obsessive place, where you start to compare yourself to others in a way that is not only unhealthy, but self-defeating as well. Those who engage in personalized thinking often see themselves as the cause of everything bad, even if they clearly weren’t the cause of it. Sometimes, this kind of self-flagellation can stem from a place of low self-esteem, but beware: it can also come from a need for attention or a need to manipulate the emotions of others.

5. Overgeneralization

This is a common cognitive distortion, and one in which a person comes to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single pieces of evidence. It doesn’t matter to this person if the evidence is flimsy or lacking in validity, when a bad thing happens once, they expect it to happen over and over again. A single event becomes a never-ending pattern of self-defeat. Overgeneralization is a cycle that has to be broken, lest it overcome us and skew the way we view ourselves and the world and people around us.

6. Catastrophizing

People who catastrophize expect a disaster to strike — no matter what. This type of distortion is also known as magnifying and is a bit like filtering. Those who engage in this type of negative thinking can simply hear about a problem and quickly build a catastrophe on top of their what-if’s. They always imagine the absolute worst and no matter what assurances they receive, they just know that only bad is going to happen.

7. Fallacy of change

This is the belief that with enough outward pressure, you can change or control another person’s behavior or choices. This extremely toxic sort of negative thinking is common in relationships with a high level of codependence or emotional dependency, and can also be seen commonly in those who have experienced heartbreak or trauma in the past.

The subtle ways negativity undermines happiness.

There are a number of subtle ways that negative thinking undermines our true happiness and opportunity. From serious impacts to our physical health, the impairments in the way we see ourselves and make decisions — reversing the effects of your negative thoughts patterns requires realizing and accepting how they are undermining your ultimate potential.

1. Inability to shift perspective

Those who find themselves mired in negativity are (more often than not) those who find themselves struggling to shift their perspectives when it matters most. Our perspectives are important, but it’s even more important that we realize that these points of view can be flawed. In order to grow, transform and achieve happiness — we have to be able to shift how we see ourselves, and how we see around us. When we’re stuck in a negative cycle of thinking, this becomes almost impossible.

Negative thoughts have a funny way of taking over our minds and becoming the focal point of our lives. They’re all-consuming, but that consumption can leave us stuck and unable to achieve the goals we set for ourselves and our futures. A negative state is one that is frozen, and unable to make the leaps it needs to pursue important opportunities and horizons.

Finding true happiness requires us to adjust the way we see ourselves, and it requires us to process the emotions that make us uncomfortable. In order to become the person we need to be, we have to learn how to resolve the warped ideas we develop and transform them into something good and beneficial. We can jump-start this process by cleaning up our thoughts and the way we obsess and focus on the things in our lives. Shifting our patterns equals shifting our perspectives, and that’s a powerful, powerful thing.

2. Rise in cortisol levels

Cortisol is a hormone, and one that plays a major role in not just our brain chemistry, but our lives. It regulates a wide array of vital processes, and helps us manage the way our brains function. It also has a lot to do with our immune systems and our metabolisms, and plays a pivotal role in the way we respond to stress.

The effects of cortisol are far-reaching and they start in the brain. When we’re feeling stress, our body releases cortisol which causes an increase of white matter in the brain. This white matter, in turn, makes is hard for our neurons to operate and makes them respond less efficiently than they do in healthy grey matter areas of the brain. In short, cortisol makes it hard to function when you’re feeling pressured or stuck in a negative loop.

Likewise, cortisol can take a heavy-handed toll on our blood sugar levels, and the our blood pressure. For pregnant women, cortisol can have some really damaging effects during gestation, and it even influences memory control, water balances and the cells that regulate aging. Controlling cortisol comes down to pinpointing our diurnal rhythms and managing the way we process and handle the pressure of day-to-day life and our negative emotions and thoughts.

3. Damaging cognitive function

Thought we might realize that our emotionally charged thoughts are damaging, it’s not always clear to us just how damaging they are. This is because chronic negativity actually damages our cognitive function and the way we process and make decisions. Negative thoughts don’t just undermine our wellbeing, they literally change the way we think and — sometimes — it’s in the worst possible way.

Negative thoughts actually trigger our limbic systems, which take over and man the controls when we find ourselves overwhelmed by stress or uncomfortable situations. This, in turn, leads to energy being diverted away from our prefontal cortex, which normally manages things like functioning and organization. In the simplest of terms, that means you can’t make decisions as efficiently as you might otherwise; and this can spiral into a serious and long-lasting problem.

When our pre-frontal cortexes are compromised, it can cause to become foggy and succumb to our over-the-top emotions that leave us feeling stuck and scared. It’s imperative that we learn how to break free of this fog, and recalibrate the way we process stress in such a way that we can benefit from it rather than faltering. Small techniques like gratitude journaling and mindfulness practices can help us prevent this fog, but it takes a little effort every single day.

4. Internalization and obsession

Because our negative thoughts are so easy to focus on, we can often become obsessed with them, internalizing all the negative events around us until we’re consumed by the idea that everything is always bad (no matter what). Unable to see anything but darkness, we guide our lives into that darkness, detonating our closest relationships, dreams and goals in the process.

Negative people are pessimists, and with this pessimism comes the obsession with all things bad. The pessimist is a person who believes nothing good can happen, and they’re a person who obsessed about all the things that went wrong — rather than the thousands of small things that went right. They’re never happy, and that’s because they allow their thoughts to get in the way of what they deserve. Negative is the only thing they know and it’s the only thing they acknowledge in any aspect of their lives.

It’s when we get caught in these obsessive thought patterns that we find ourselves struggling with the numerous physical and mental effects of our negative thinking. From raised cortisol levels to damage to the way you process information and make decisions — allowing negative thinking to take over our lives is one of the worst and most damaging things we can do. While all emotions and thoughts have a relevant place and time, it’s all about balance. When we bring balance to our thoughts, we bring balance to our lives.

5. Stuck in the comfort zone

It’s a fact that we don’t always like to face, but it’s one that’s true nevertheless. Growth happens not inside the walls of our comfortable delusions, but out in the great wide world where things are big and uncomfortable. If we truly want to grow, we have to push ourselves beyond the things that we think we do, and we have to put action to the better parts of our nature that push us to be more.

Pushing ourselves beyond the bounds of our comfort zones allows us to find new strengths within ourselves that we did not know we had. When you are navigating uncharted territory, you are forced to resourcefully dig within in order to find the coping skills you need to thrive. Over time, these becomes strengths which we can call on in every other aspect of our day-to-day lives.

Get outside your comfort zone by starting small. Leave your negative fixations behind for a little while, and focus on new horizons that reveal new opportunities and unexpected gifts. Look for classes, courses and group meets that allow you to expand your horizons and friend circles. Little-by-little, you’ll find yourself opening up and transcending the negative thoughts that had you chained to a future that was neither authentic or fulfilling.

How to transcend our negative thoughts.

Our negative thoughts can seem scary or intimidating, but they can be tackled and redirected with a little understanding and know-how. Once you’ve learned how to identify you manner and patterns of negative thinking, you can start to reframe those thoughts by challenging them and the beliefs that reinforce them.

Recognize the thought-loop before it starts

Once you know what kind of negative thinking you commonly engage in, you can start to recognize the triggers that bring on those defeating thought-loops. Stop the negative thoughts before they start and be honest about what brings about the worst reactions in you. Try to eliminate the factors in your environment that contribute to your negative beliefs and feelings and replace them with more positive factors that can help you channel that energy into something more efficient.

Ask yourself probing questions

Just as you would challenge any would-be politician, challenge your own thinking and beliefs with probing questions.When you find yourself slipping down the rabbit hole of negative feedback loops, ask yourself the hard questions and really try to get to the bottom of why you feel that way. Question the experiences you’ve had and the assumptions you make; question your reactions and the way you view the people involved in the situation.

Distract yourself

Negative thoughts don’t seem to happen one at a time, they seem to happen in a cluster or a swarm. When the negativity gets too strong for you to handle, switch off for a little while and give yourself the distance you need to calm down with a little distraction. Get yourself stuck into an activity that takes your mind off of the bad thoughts and redirect your energy into something more positive. Talking to someone is a good distraction, as well as going on a hike or traveling somewhere new.

Replace the negative with something rational

Rather than thinking about what you aren’t, try thinking about what you are. Negative thoughts are often irrational and based in distortions of reality. When we replace those thoughts with positive ones (which are based on real, verifiable strengths or virtues that we have) we can combat the negative thoughts in a way that is more productive. Instead of thinking, “I’m ugly,” look through flattering pictures or focus on the parts of your body that you adore. Those are things that exist right here, right now. They are real things that we can celebrate, but we have to have the courage to see them.

Release your judgements

More often than not, our negative thoughts are a judgement; a judgement of ourselves, a judgement of others. We are one judgey species. Rather than comparing yourself to others or constantly comparing your life against some ridiculous ideal, let go of your hangups and be more at ease with who you are and what you have. When you notice that you’re judging yourself or someone else negatively — stop, and try to look for something positive or redeeming that can help you see them (and yourself) in a different light.

Practice gratitude

Gratitude is one of the fastest and easiest ways to challenge and undo our negative thinking, but it can take a little time to get right and it always takes a bit of creativity. Feeling grateful can have a big impact on your happiness and can seriously affect your positivity. Noticing the things are going well makes it possible for you to stay present in the moment and overcome whatever obstacles life has to throw at you. Keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to start and writing just a few things in it each day is an easy way to get back in touch with the things that you’re grateful for.

Putting it all together…

Negativity comes in many forms, but all of them can take a serious toll on our lives when left unadressed. From overgeneralization to polarization, negative thought patterns create extreme stress in our lives and affect everything from our cognative ability to the way we view ourselves and the world around us. Managing our thinking is the only way to create the future we envision for ourselves and achieve our goals. That takes determination, however, and it takes a little conscious effort each and every day.

Learn to understand your negative thinking and the shape your most self-chat takes. Spend time with these thoughts and come up with healthy ways you can reshape them into attitudes and beliefs that are more in line with who you are at a core level. Living in the light and truth of our authentic selves is hard and it takes letting go of the baggage that has held us tied down all the years. Reframe your negative thinking and learn how to use it for good by asking yourself the tough questions and having the courage to take charge of your own happiness.