Lessening Repetitive Thoughts and Catastrophic Thinking Traps
Four Strategies to Free Your Subconscious Mind
Repetitive thoughts are signs that your nervous system is stuck in a repeating loop known as rumination. Rumination is defined as focused attention on the symptoms of your mental distress and its potential causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions.
Considering that over 90% of daily thoughts are repeating, you can see how this becomes habitual and automatic.
Thoughts like these often are stuck on negative emotions, memories, and fears based on your past experiences.
Why is it so easy to ruminate over the past?
Typically, you are trying to make sense of an experience from the past and, in some way, recreate or explain it in a way that is more empowering than it was.
It is your mind’s way of healing from the residual traumatic memory or emotion.
The subconscious brain is evidence-based and makes assumptions based on past experiences. It is trying to keep us safe from experiencing the same trauma again.
However, if this pattern of repetitive thinking persists daily or constantly, it creates problems in your life. Your repetitive thinking, always signaling danger to your nervous system, can keep you in a fight or flight reactionary mode.
This can make the danger of triggering so real as it connects any current reaction to associated memories.
This can damage your physical health, keeping stress hormones high, heart rate, muscle tension, headaches, and more. Not surprisingly, your mental health suffers as a result.
The time before sleep or waking can often be when these thoughts creep in. It can set the tone for low-quality sleep or difficulty getting and staying asleep.
Aside from the mental and physical health damage, it can develop into catastrophic thinking. This kind of thinking can occur when past fears and negative emotions become so large and in charge of your current state that they begin to project into your future thinking.
Catastrophic thinking is when your trauma parts from the past begin to strengthen into protective mode. Your repetitive thoughts become so powerful that they start predicting worst-case scenario thinking. This can feel overwhelming and cause you to withdraw from external experiences and connecting with others.
The good news is that there are simple tools you can learn and practice to empower yourself out of this catastrophic thinking and overwhelm.
How to Downregulate Your Thinking Traps
Specific strategies for downregulating your nervous system can be effective when practiced regularly.
It can help you increase self-awareness and notice the signs and signals whenever you see the signs of this thinking arising.
The faster you notice the signs of this happening, the easier it is to slow it down and gain self-control.
Strategy one is self-compassion. It is essential to be kind to yourself when these automatic thoughts get triggered. You are not your thoughts.
If negative emotions get triggered, judging yourself as weak or failing is tempting. It is human to repeat thoughts or feelings that are unresolved.
Having compassion and patience with yourself goes a long way to healing.
Collaborating with a certified subconscious healer can help uncover family of origin beliefs you developed by taking on the flaws from the parenting you receive(d). You may have created other collective trauma from COVID, weather, political, or terrorist events.
Beliefs such as I am unlovable, I must be a perfectionist, I am flawed, can contribute to behaviors that lead to self-sabotage, catastrophic thinking, or worst-case scenario outcomes.
Uncovering these limiting beliefs and neutralizing the intensity of these negative emotional patterns is the core of subconscious healing. Coupling rewiring your brain with self-compassion and self-awareness is transformational.
Strategy two is breathwork, shown in countless studies as the simplest way to downregulate the body from fear-based reactions.
Deep, slow, diaphragmatic breath lets your body know you are safe. Learning a few simple breaths to help regulate your nervous system is very helpful. Check out my recent article,
The Art and Science of Self-Soothing Breath for more details.
4–7–8 breath is known to reduce racing thoughts. Even just a few rounds of this can be helpful.
The pattern is to inhale for 4–3–2–1, hold for 7,6,5,4,3,2,1, and exhale slowly for 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. If the hold and long exhale seem difficult, build up to it.
Spending too much time tense and worried can be unlearned through conscious breath practice. This guided work can help to release the repressed memories held in the body and mind, gaining self-awareness and self-healing.
This breath can help move you toward emotional integration and recovery.
Strategy three is called tracing, which is about separating your thoughts from you by placing them in an imaginary frame or bubble outside you. Using your imagination to do this can help diffuse the intensity of it.
This can help you to feel less overwhelmed. You can imagine your thoughts as still or video, whatever comes to mind.
Put it into a bubble outside or on a wall before you. Notice that it is contained outside of you. Notice the space around it and between you and it.
Then, bring your eyes around it 2–3 times, seeing specifically the bubble or frame. Then, look back at the image in the structure and notice how it is changed.
This is a great way to notice that it is an image of your thought or memory.
It is not your reality, just an image at the moment.
Strategy four is called the focus. It is a method where you change your focus with your eyes open.
Put the image of the word that describes your most intense emotion onto a wall in front of you.
Notice there is space between you and the image and between you and the appearance of words, letters, shapes, or just the picture.
Notice the font, the details, and the whole picture. Notice the space between you and around it, behind it.
Notice that you are looking at an image. It is not who you are. It does not define you.
You can see that these methods allow your mind to reorganize your identity around your most intense emotions and memories. This helps you briefly get in touch with its origins and neutralize it so you have more space to create something new.
This is accomplished by bringing up a small part without going into the whole story behind it, which is typically how it works in subconscious healing with a practitioner.
The practitioner gains access to the emotion or memory and the parts of you that it occupies. This is where neurolinguistic programming comes in to help rewire your subconscious mind and reorient how you view this intense emotion or memory.
With these methods, you connect with the origins of your fear and anxiety. This helps to determine the associations your subconscious memories and thoughts create.
This is how you can soften your repetitive and compulsive thinking. Try these practices on your own. However, collaborate with a certified subconscious healer if the emotions or memories are too intense. The tools you will learn will be with you for a lifetime.
To learn more about subconscious healing, check out my articles, Unlock Your Intuition: Discover Your Path to Inner Guidance, Effective Change Comes from Alignment Rather Than Problem-Solving, Negative Emotions as a Catalyst for Change, or Humans Function Better When All Their Parts Operate in Alignment.
If this article resonates and you would like to learn more. Click here to access my free video training on my subconscious healing of imposter syndrome and people-pleasing, a small group coaching course, The Soul Alignment Collective. This course will help you to learn how to find more happiness by aligning with your soul’s purpose.
Buy me a cup of coffee if you would like to show support for my work; much appreciated!
For only $5.00 a month, you can read all my articles, plus excellent poetry, non-fiction, and fiction on all kinds of topics from the thousands of writers this fantastic community offers.
Disclaimer: This is an affiliate link, so a portion of your Medium subscription purchase goes to me at no additional cost to you.
