Challenge Negative Thoughts
This is a very important coping skill for sure, and it can be very difficult. It’s about challenging negative thoughts.We all have those negative thoughts that pop up in our head and some of us may have them more frequently than others. There just seems to be a barrage of negativity and unreasonable thoughts.
I like to call these passive negative thoughts and the reason why they’re passive is they just pop up, it doesn’t really take any effort to think about them. They just pop up in our head and then they keep popping up and we ruminate on them.
What we need to challenge these negative thoughts, we have to respond with active positive thoughts. If the passive negative thoughts are just popping up, instead of responding actively and negatively, you have to choose to respond positively.
Negative thought pops up,
“I can’t do this because I’m not smart enough” and your response is “I am smart enough i’ve done this before or I am capable of figuring it out.” Your brain needs to be convinced that it’s wrong, and it doesn’t like to be wrong. You lessen the blows of the negative thoughts by challenging them with positive ones. You don’t have to believe them a hundred percent to be true but it’s just about the action of actively challenging negativity with positivity. A study said that for every one negative thought, it was either seven to nine positive thoughts were needed to counter-balance.
It’s not going to be easy but every time one of these negative thoughts pops up, you decide to let them win by saying “yeah you’re right i’m not smart enough.” That’s an active thought when you’re saying “yeah you’re right.” You can handle being positive when a negative thought pops up.
Honestly I was a big fan of journaling once I realized how much it worked and as soon as the negative thoughts would pop up or if I could remember a negative thought that I keep having, I would journal usually 5 to 10 positive responses to that passive negative thought.
Journaling is a fantastic way to cope, writing down is proven to be a better way to retain information and that’s what you want to do. You want to put that positivity in your head those negative thoughts reduce and they will reduce. It’s just about coming up with a plan of how to challenge them.
If you take anything away from what I said today, do not let negative passive thoughts control your mind the only way you can beat something that is popping up frequently ands passively, is to be active in the pursuit of positivity.
