Thoughts come and go. At stressful moments, many thoughts will float around in your head. These are usually thoughts with the doom scenarios and most of the time they will give you more stress. At pleasant moments, positive thoughts will pass. For example, you look forward to an event and only thinking about it makes you smile. At sad moments the thoughts will be negative. But is this thought really true?

Negative thoughts

For me, It is the negative thoughts that demand the most energy. Once they are present, they dominate all other thoughts. It is therefore a difficult task to counteract the negative thoughts. What I do when this happens I write down the negative thoughts on paper. This can be es very confronting, because these thoughts can  contain the ugliest things. Something is emotionally, because of the confrontation. It may be that you are very angry for a moment, or cry for a few minutes. Another way to deal with negative thoughts is to let them “float” through your head and do with them. You sit on a chair, as it were, and look at a screen on which the thoughts can be seen. You don’t have to do anything else with them.

To challenge

In therapy I learned to challenge thoughts. You write down the negative thought and look for evidence for and against the thought. You usually find that the arguments prove the thoughts are not realistic. After you have listed the arguments, you form a new realistic thought about yourself based on the arguments. Then you can write the correct thought on a post-it note and stick it to  your mirror. In this way you can remind yourself every day that you are a valuable person.

Positive thoughts

Negative thoughts are snowed under by the negative thoughts in my head. The positive thoughts can actually make you feel better. But then how do you let the positive thoughts prevail over the negative ones? First of all, you could challenge or write down your thoughts. If you notice a positive thought about yourself as a result of an event, you can “store” that feeling in your head. If there is another moment when you can only think negatively, then you can bring out the event, the feeling and thought that you had with it.

You are in charge of your thoughts. Don’t let them be in charge of you!

Love,

Ghyta