A thought creeps in repeatedly means it starts exercising great influence on you. Your feelings are determined by the nature of thoughts either you entertain within your mind or they coming to you without your permission. Nobody wants to develop a negative feeling and put himself/herself down. So, you need to challenge your negative thoughts if you want to feel great. Every emotion is associated with a corresponding thought. If I say that I feel sad, there should be an associated thought behind this feeling. It is easy to find the associated thought by completing the statement: 'I feel sad because I think .........' The completed statement could be: 'I feel sad because I think nobody loves me.' Here, the second phrase is the culprit that causing the feeling. How to change the negative thought that coming to you without your permission? Yes, it is very hard to say 'no' to such thoughts. Even if you know that such negative thoughts are not helping you in any way, they simply come in, only to cause more distress and eventually to take you towards depression if not handled appropriately in time. |
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Be In Charge! When you are in danger, either you can fight back to dominate the danger or run away from the danger. When it is a negative thought that is causing stress, you cannot run away because the thought is inside your mind and wherever you go, your mind follows you, eventually, the thought as well.
Some people find temporary relief by causing distraction. But, it is hard to distract your mind every time the thought coming to your mind, and also it won't guarantee a permanent escape from the negative thought. So, the best strategy is to fight back.
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Be in charge? But how? Psychotherapists rely on Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) in order to help clients to fight back the negative thoughts by challenging their negative thoughts. The negative thoughts would be logically tested with reality so that the paranoid mind gets clarity on the meaninglessness of such thoughts, which many clients admit as 'crazy ideas' or 'stupid thoughts' once they see the real picture.
Another method of fighting back is by simply replacing the associated negative thought with a counter script which is a positive one. 'I feel happy because I know that everybody loves me' would be a counter script to the previously stated negative statement.
Hypnosis or hypnotherapy is another alternative in order to register positive ego strengthening script into the mind. Guided imagery methods are yet another effective and powerful method to get rid of the negative anticipation and worries. When you are in danger, either you can fight back to dominate the danger or run away from the danger. When it is a negative thought that is causing stress, you cannot run away because the thought is inside your mind and wherever you go, your mind follows you, eventually, the thought as well.
Some Tips to Challenge Negative Thoughts
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© 2011 Dr. MG Lazarus www.proventherapy.com |