Every day you have thousands of different thoughts, many of which you will not be aware of. These thoughts are based on beliefs, narratives, biases and your own perceptions.
At times these cognitions can become maladaptive (unhelpful) and trigger difficult emotions and unhelpful behaviours. Negative thoughts can feed into the next lot of negative thoughts, and you can end up falling into constant rumination and negative assumptions, assessments and predictions.
These thoughts might be about yourself, others or the world. They can be influenced by previous experiences and your current physical state. When you feel stressed and tired, you’re likely more susceptible to being consumed by more negative thoughts. Your core beliefs can also govern much of your thinking style for better or worse.
Thoughts need to be effectively manged to help support you to live a life that is true to your values and goals and overall wellbeing. Unfortunately, they can often hold you back and cause you to fall into a negative spiral.
You can’t turn off unhelpful thoughts, but you can decide what thoughts are worth paying attention to. This doesn’t mean pushing down or ignoring unhelpful thoughts. It means acknowledging them but also learning to take them less seriously.
This doesn’t have to be done with every negative thought, but it’s important to develop this skill when trying to combat the frequent thoughts that lead to difficult emotions and negative behaviours.
Some unhelpful thinking styles would include:
Overgeneralisation – “Every time I do X, I always fail.”
Jumping to conclusions – “He didn’t talk to me, so he must be upset with me.”
All or nothing thinking – “If people don’t agree with you, then they’re against you.”
Catastrophising – “If my back pain gets worse, I won’t be able to move properly. I’ll have to take time off work so will lose my job and won’t be able to pay my bills.”
Emotional reasoning – “I feel sad so my life must be sad.”
These negative thinking styles are more likely to occur when you feel stressed, tired and run down. Before you react, give yourself time and space to rest, relax and get a quality night of sleep.
By using the 4 C’s you can learn to manage these thoughts more effectively.
Catch the thoughts that are negatively affecting you. You can’t manage it, if you’re not aware of it.
Check if you have been caught up in an unhelpful thinking style.
Challenge by looking at what evidence you have both for and against these thoughts.
Is this thought a belief or assumption (subjective guess or assessment) or is it a fact (objective and true)?
Change the thought by choosing to view things in a more helpful way. Is there a different way to view or reframe a situation or problem that might be more helpful?
Many of your problematic thoughts are just thoughts rather than facts. They are only one possible idea and are often biased. These thinking errors can be upsetting and uncomfortable and can trigger uncomfortable emotions and negative behaviour. By identifying them, challenging them and learning to let go of them, you can make a choice to focus on something more positive. This will help loosen the grip these unhelpful thoughts have over you. Deciding what helpful thoughts and behaviours are worth focusing on is equally important to knowing what unhelpful thoughts are not worth focusing on.
I encourage my clients to do this in a calm and stress-free state as well as being self-compassionate and non-judgemental.
This type of cognitive restructuring and metacognition (thinking about your thinking) is a constant work in progress for us all. This deeper work will help support your positive behaviours and your ability to experience life to the full, with more meaning, connection, joy and happiness.
Click here to get in touch to find out more about James Shirebys life coaching service