Why It’s So Easy To Engage With Your Negativity
And how I break away from it.
In this article, I explain how I manage to coach myself out of my negativity and lean towards a more positive thinking process that helps me tackle my issues with a more clear head. This might help others, but as always, if you are in pain and feel you need help, speak to a medical professional.
Why It’s So Easy To Spiral
Listening to your negative thoughts is effortless because they’re inside your head. They’re your thoughts, so they are just there, all the time. They’re not something you can walk away from if you wanted to — and actually, on the surface, you don’t want to.
If you see a fight happening outside how likely are you to look away?
Exactly.
That’s because we find our negative thoughts entertaining.
It doesn't matter how self-sabotaging they are in the long-term — when you engage with them, you are literally amusing yourself with them at that moment. You pick short-term gratification even if it is causing you to have strong negative emotions of worry, anxiety, or fear. And your brain will choose that over boredom, every time.
Not only that, but we are more likely to focus on the negative side of things over the positive. Psychologists call this negativity bias. It means that as humans,
“Negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones.” — Verywellmind.com
That’s why the media love to focus on the negativity of the news, by using heavy language associated with fear, horror, and disaster. Because they know that people will be hooked.
The problem arises when the pattern of thinking above becomes habitual. You no longer just engage out of entertainment, but out of a very well practised habit. This means you won’t even think about whether or not you want to engage with your negative thoughts — you will just do it because that’s what you have grown accustomed to doing.
In essence, you lose control of your thinking this way, which is why it can impact your mental health.
Yes, a lot of people openly welcome misery, and some deal with it much better than others. But overall, the happiest people don’t accept negativity. Instead, they work very hard to actively cut it out.
I used to become overwhelmed with all feelings of worry, anxiety, and fear about my future, and dwell on past events that hurt me — holding on to grudges, and not letting myself get over them. I decided I no longer wanted to feel this way and so started looking into ways to help myself feel better.
My son, a few months old at the time, motivated me because I did not want him to know what it is like to feel unhappy. And the best way to teach someone about happiness, or anything else, for that matter?
By practising what you preach.
Identifying Emerging Negative Thoughts
You have been entertained by negativity for goodness knows how long, so you need to find something more positive that is just as or more “fun” in order to make you choose to engage with that instead.
But first, you need to be able to tell when you’re about to go into a negative train of thought. The idea is to stop yourself from engaging very early on, and this potentially means depriving yourself of the entertainment you crave.
This brings about a sense of constant awareness of your feelings.
When you feel that cloud over your head; when you feel something isn’t quite right; when you don’t know what’s wrong but something is — you start to explore. You become curious about this feeling and you inadvertently let negativity into the room. You let it list the reasons why you’re not feeling good until you feel much worse.
It is the initial feeling of unbalance and discomfort that needs nipping in the bud before the door opens. It would be amazing if it was as easy as literally not paying attention to those thoughts as soon as you feel that heavy presence.
Well, that’s what I try to do. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but a lot of the time it does because I have practised for years — and I feel much better for it.
Disown The Thoughts You Don’t Want
One thing I have learned over time is that your thoughts aren’t who you are. When you treat your thoughts as a separate entity to you, you create distance between yourself and your thoughts, thus making it easier to tell yourself “I don’t have to listen to this bullsh*t.”
A study reported in 6seconds.org describes how people perform better when they are able to recognise and name their feelings:
“Naming emotions seems to bridge the gap between thoughts and feelings. The step from “I am this…” to “I am feeling this…”, or even, “Michael is feeling this…” means that we are not that emotion exclusively. And also reminds us that the emotion is temporary.”
I went one step further by naming all my negative feelings Ursula — and who wants to talk to Ursula?
When you disown those negative thoughts you are empowering yourself — and this will enable you to be more selective of the thoughts you do want to own — the more optimistic ones.
Breaking the Negativity Pattern
The idea is to literally change the subject in your mind before it’s too late.
This done over a long period of time can help to overall increase your average state of happiness. By heightening that happy bar, you’ll gain perspective and a more clear head that will help you to tackle each issue causing the low mood feelings — without the spiralling.
We all know a few strategies for coping with our negative thoughts before they escalate, but many fail to practice them because they don’t yet seem worth the effort.
Since your thoughts are in your head, it is extremely easy to let them take control of your emotions. This, added to the fact that your previous line of thinking was also habitual means that you have to break that pattern.
And that’s not easy. I’d almost compare this to addiction because you have to literally fight off the habit of engaging.
Practising mindfulness is one of the best ways to distance yourself from your negative thoughts. It is about taking yourself out of your head and coming back into the room to face the here and the now. When you’re in your head, you are usually dwelling on past events or uncertain future ones— neither of which you can control.
But you can gain control of your thinking right now, and you can be in control of the present moment. These are various techniques listed in Helpguide.org:
“Basic mindfulness meditation — Sit quietly and focus on your natural breathing or on a word or “mantra” that you repeat silently. Allow thoughts to come and go without judgment and return to your focus on breath or mantra.
Body sensations — Notice subtle body sensations such as an itch or tingling without judgment and let them pass. Notice each part of your body in succession from head to toe.
Sensory — Notice sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. Name them “sight,” “sound,” “smell,” “taste,” or “touch” without judgment and let them go.
Urge surfing — Cope with cravings (for addictive substances or behaviors) and allow them to pass. Notice how your body feels as the craving enters. Replace the wish for the craving to go away with the certain knowledge that it will subside.”
I also find that listening to music brings me back to the present moment and helps me to restore a calm sense of self. A study of 60 adults with chronic pain carried out in 2006 found that:
“Music was able to reduce pain, depression, and disability.” — Harvard Health publishing.
Taking deep breaths literally changes your mood because it calms your body, which can then work on calming your brain.
“Those things that happen when you are stressed, such as increased heart rate, fast breathing, and high blood pressure, all decrease as you breathe deeply to relax.” — University of Michigan Health
Looking for a silver lining also helps you change your pattern of thinking. Whenever you think of a pessimistic thought, try to simply look for a positive one that compensates for it. For example, if I complain about how I had a bad day because the line was so long at the supermarket, I’d remind myself of how privileged I am to afford the food I bought. This would avoid me starting a long list of negative thoughts that could cause me to feel overwhelmed with worry or fear, and instead, I’d feel empowered.
There is always a silver lining somewhere — you just have to be open to looking — and that requires you to break the stubbornness of engaging with negativity.
Exercising these will only enhance the power within you to break the negativity cycle. When your thoughts become more positive overall, it’ll be much easier to catch yourself complaining early.
Positive self-talk, according to many sources, is closely linked to success. For example,
“One study on athletes compared four different types of self-talk (instructional, motivational, positive, and negative) and found that positive self-talk was the greatest predictor of success.4 People didn’t need to remind themselves how to do something as much as they needed to tell themselves that they are doing something great and that others notice it as well.” — Verywellmind.com
You’re not changing past events, but your reaction. When you change your reaction positively over a long period of time, you’ll find that your circumstances will change, too.
It’s a beautiful catch-22 because as your circumstances change, you’ll enhance that positive thinking even more.
Lastly, we want to focus on overcoming the escalation of negative emotions — so this is why I personally try not to complain to others about anything that can lead me to spiral for the purpose of a sympathetic ear. It is actually counter-productive and can lead to feeling worse. In addition, it’s not fair to set an expectation on others to be supportive of your complaints.
This brings me to my next point.
You’re Not Suppressing Your Feelings
There is a notion that in order to get over negativity, validating your feelings is a must, and sharing them is a form of therapy. This is true to a certain extent — but this can easily be misinterpreted and become more self-destructive than not.
I myself used to get offended when my husband wouldn't comfort me when I complained and wallowed in my own pessimistic attitude about how the world was against me. He challenged my thoughts and told me to think about how to overcome them — because in the end, we are responsible for our reaction, regardless of our circumstances.
Have you heard the saying “it is okay not to be okay”?
Let me tell you, that’s not true.
The saying actually means that it is okay to acknowledge that you’re not ok. It is a good thing to become aware of your feelings because then you can do something about them.
But in that precise moment, you don’t need to engage them more. You need to come out of that spiral before it’s too late — and deal with what is causing those negative feelings later, when you have gained control of your thoughts.
So yes, you need to validate your feelings, but not in the way you once thought.
It is said that working through your fears and becoming logical about your feelings can help you tone them down. This is absolutely true. But it is only when I managed to distance myself over a period of time from my negative thoughts that I could start tackling the more deep-rooted issues without them taking over my mind.
Takeaway
The potential for happiness is in everyone.
Some know how to channel it more than others, and just like anything else, it is the practice of it that fulfils it.
Challenge your thoughts — remember that you can disown them.
Using different techniques to work on breaking the stubborn negative thinking will help you gain control of your reaction to events and situations, and it will bring a whole new sense of inner peace. I know I have felt the difference.
Practising mindfulness has benefits on your mental and physical health. Breathing exercises calm your body which can help to calm your mind. And looking for silver linings will make you feel better about your current circumstances.
It isn’t easy — you’ve got to really push yourself to not accept the negative self-talk. But it’s worth it.
In this instance, I ask that you take an attitude of entitlement. You are absolutely entitled to your own happiness — so go forth and take it, because there is an abundance of it.
Sylvia Emokpae is passionate about self-love and motherhood. See more work like this.
