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.
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. To 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. |