According to scientists we have around 12000 to 70000 thoughts a day, most of them are negative thoughts.
When I think of my own thought pattern this rings true, but how do you control your thoughts if they turn negative, how do you address them.
For me when It comes to thinking I have a few ways of resolving to self-care when intrusive thoughts come up.
During a day I can go from I’m feeling great to suddenly have a thought that comes from fear or not feeling good enough, and being empathic, I worry and think a lot about others.
If I let the negative thought run its course, it can turn from me feeling great to end up crying most of the day. So, I have a few steps to help me get through them and get back to the happy place I was before the thought occurred.
For me it depends on what thought it was.
If it was a negative thought worrying about something or someone, I have to accept I can’t do a lot, since its out of my control, and I have to convince myself that if I have to worry I cant worry until there is something concrete to worry about, a problem that arises now not a problem that might arise in the future.
If it’s a negative thought about myself, that’s where my self care come in.
- Step one, take a deep breath, and I tell myself it’s going to be okay.
That normally does the trick, but if it doesn’t and the thought keeps running wild.
- Step two, listen to music take my mind somewhere else, listen to feel good music or look at puppy videos.
That normally takes my thought process to the good, I have a little laugh, or I sing along to a song that reminds me, of the good things. If this still doesn’t help
- Step Three, I address the thought deeper, I delve into and I feel it. Obviously it was something that wanted to be addressed, and I tell myself its okay not to be perfect, I’m human and I make mistakes, and I’m not always In control, then I just work on that and try to do my best in the future.
It wasn’t that long ago something happened, and I ended up having to deal with step 3.
I had a friend I’ve known for years, and we fell out of contact. He had fallen in love with me, and I didn’t have the same feelings, but naïve as I was, I hoped we could still work through it and be friends. But it turned out it was a lot more difficult then I imagined.
He ended the friendship with removing me from social media and telling me before hand he was leaving, it left me in a state of anger and not really understanding why, since it was so sudden. It came from a little argument about something he didn’t agree on.
Close to Christmas I contacted him again, after not having talked to him for 6 months.
It didn’t end well.
He wrote me a long list of the ways he thought I was a bad friend, and treated people badly, that message left me crippled for a day. The thoughts I went through sent me into a state of constant tears.
I started thinking of the friends I’ve had over the years, the ones I had lost, the ones I had argued with. I turned to my friends help and asked them if it was true. Was I a bad friend?
They all told me it wasn’t true, and he was just trying to upset me, with him clearly being angry still.
It was hard for me to accept the comforting words from my friends, I couldn’t let the thought go, that maybe I was a bad friend.
So, I had to use step 3, I went inside the thought, felt it through, cried it out, felt the loss of my friend, dealt with that loss, and then I told myself.
“Fay, you aren’t perfect, and that’s okay, sometimes you meet people who aren’t a match, sometimes you go different ways, you have different views, you cant please everyone, sometimes people fall through the cracks and you can only let them go, even if you care for them, you did your best, you have to trust that”
I took a deep breath I got up from my bed, and I felt a lot better. The thoughts were going away.
It took me years to find the self-care to deal with negative thoughts, and sometimes its still hard, depending on how I feel generally and what the thoughts are.
When I went through my breakup, it was hard to use those steps, I had to use them over and over, and it took me months to get back up again.
When we lose something in our lives or our heart breaks, its not just the thoughts we have to deal with but heal the broken heart and having to deal with a loss, so it’s a lot harder to manage good self-care then.
What I have taught myself is to trust in the better, trust that one day it will get better, and that’s what gets me out of those moments of feeling pain for a longer period.
I have a saying
At the end of the tunnel there is always light
I say that sentence to myself over and over until I believe it
When I think back to 10 years ago, I didn’t have the same self-care as I have now, and when I felt negative thoughts, it was crippling. It put me in a state of depression and took me months to get myself out of it.
The ways I dealt with bad thoughts back then, was inflicting pain on myself, that was the only way the thoughts could stop.
I would pinch my own skin, until I felt the thought go away for just a second, until it came back and I would pinch my skin again, if it continue, I would bang my head into the wall, until I felt a little better, but doing these things, also made me feel shame, having to resort to inflicting pain on myself, and it was a vicious cycle of bad thoughts.
I think in those times, I taught myself to accept that I wasn’t perfect and learned to see the beauty in the small things, try to direct my thoughts to something beautiful instead. Like looking at the sunrise outside my window, watching my hamster do silly things in its cage, or the biggest thing that got me through the worst moments was my gaming. Distract myself with thoughts I couldn’t deal with by playing video games. It got me through the worst of it, and I managed to pull myself up slowly in those moments.
I have better self-care now, because of the therapists Ive had in my life, but also the things I taught myself.
I see myself in a different light then I did back then. I don’t try to be so perfect all the time and have accepted that no one is. But for me the most important thing, is to try, to be the best version of myself I can be, and if I fail, I get back up and try again.
I’ve recently developed a mantra I got from playing games, it’s a meme we use from a song called go Agane. It came from a streamer on twitch.
So, when I fail, I tell myself that, I get up and Go Agane.
In my past I didn’t have the same view, I couldn’t accept if I wasn’t perfect then I wasn’t good enough, and shouldn’t be aloud to be around, and wasn’t worth taking any more breaths.
Well past me, I’m still here, and kicking ass.
Its all in the power of how you control and deal with your thoughts.
Its okay to have bad thoughts, we all have them, but how you deal with them is how you come up on the other side, feeling stronger before it brings you deeper down.
How do you deal with negative thoughts ?
Missfaylyn 