Always thinking negatively: What do you do about it?

The glass is always half empty. Nothing ever goes right or is ever going to succeed for you. Starting something is hard, bringing something to fruition is hard. You always worry and you keep thinking about events in your life that haven't gone well. This is a path that is difficult to walk, because negative thinking takes an awful lot of energy.

To ensure that you think less negatively, or even stop thinking negatively, in this blog I will discuss negative thinking, its causes, consequences and solutions

Why do you think negatively?

Negative thoughts can be particularly troublesome when you’re suffering. Something is indeed not going well, which leads to negative emotions and negative thoughts. These two can reinforce each other.

Especially since the future is often determined by things that have occurred in your life, you can think very negatively about the future. If mostly bad things have happened to you you can become very cynical about the chances of something good happening to you and so you get stuck in those negative thoughts.

Fear of the future is therefore also a predictor of negative thoughts[1]. If you feel that you are in danger, for example because of a reorganization at work or because your partner cheated, this can cause you to have a lot of negative thoughts about those parts of your life.

You don't have to think negatively about all parts of your life. Negative thinking is often linked to a particular part of your life. For example, you may be optimistic about recovery from surgery, but think negatively about getting a promotion at work[2].

Effects of negative thinking

When you think negatively for a long time, it can have all kinds of consequences such as:

• Depression[3]
• Anxiety
• Sleeping poorly
• Not living in the here and now (no mindfulness)
• Reduced self-confidence
• High sense of stress[4]

Now, negative thinking doesn't always have to be negative. In fact, doing something with the negative thoughts can help you develop yourself and perform better in the area you think negatively about[5].

However, if you don’t do anything about it and negative thinking turns into a kind of constant worrying, it can lead to all the negative consequences mentioned above.

Stop negative thinking

As you can see, there are a few ways to stop negative thinking.

First, you can do something with those negative thoughts. For example, getting angry at yourself is a motivating emotion to change something about your situation.

For example, you think you can't do something. You get mad at yourself that you can't, and then you take a course or read a book so you can master the skill. By mastering that skill you stop thinking negatively.

However, sometimes things don't go so easily and that's when you need other ways to stop negative thinking.

Also watch this video on stopping negative thinking:

Mindfulness to stop negative thinking

As you can see, mindfulness is something you’re less good at if you think negatively a lot. Your thoughts are constantly elsewhere—in the future or the past—rather than on what you’re actually doing right now, in the here and now.

Practicing mindfulness can already help you think a lot less negatively. By applying mindfulness meditation you can think a lot less negatively by training yourself to be more in the here and now with your thoughts.

Beliefs and negative thinking

Another way to reduce negative thinking is to identify its root cause. For example, are you afraid of losing your job? If so, it’s wise to examine the beliefs that are causing that fear.

Finding out about your beliefs and making sure you have a good basis for incorporating healthy ones can be done very well with a so-called Socratic conversation. In this conversation the why question is repeated a number of times so that you can get to the core of your beliefs and/or find out that they are not based on anything.

In that case, you immediately have a good empty foundation for incorporating beliefs that actually help you think positively.

Stress and negative thinking

Stress is also a major source of negative thinking. In this case, it is important to identify stress triggers. In doing so, you can also identify which beliefs are causing stress.

For example, you keep a journal about what causes you to suffer from stress. Like working overtime for your boss.

Next, write down why you are actually going to work overtime, what belief causes you to keep doing this if this overtime is not a one-time thing, but rather something that bothers you a lot.

Unhelpful beliefs that only cause more stress you can then check to see if they make sense.

If you don't know why you get stress or anxiety from something, for example, a hypnosis expert can help you with regression. With regression, you go back under hypnosis to the moment when your subconscious mind figured out that something has to happen a certain way and that it is not right otherwise. When you have to do something, it can cause stress.

These kinds of "it has to be this way and that way" beliefs often arise in childhood, which can sometimes give you strange beliefs that don't make sense at all. After all, as a child you understand less about the world than when you are older. With adult knowledge, you can evaluate those "childish" beliefs to see if they are still correct and this alone can make you suffer less stress.

Self-confidence and negative thinking

Negative thinking also has a negative impact on your self-confidence, and low self-confidence, in turn, feeds negative thinking. It is therefore very important to boost your self-confidence if you struggle with negative thinking.

You need this self-confidence, for example, to correct things that are not going well. For example, you need self-confidence to believe you can learn something new so you don't talk negatively about yourself in terms of intellect.

There are all kinds of ways to improve. One way to improve your self-confidence is to listen to daily hypnotic suggestions during self-hypnosis. Initially, the hypnosis expert will talk to you about your feelings and how you think about yourself and the situation you are suffering from.

Following this conversation and other issues raised during the session, you will receive hypnotic suggestions. First, you practice the hypnotic suggestions and self-hypnosis with the hypnosis expert after which you can use them at home.

For example, hypnotic suggestions can take the following form:

"You are able to develop yourself."

"You can do anything and nothing has to."

"You are good enough."

"You have limitless creativity."

These are just examples. Depending on the topic of your negative thoughts, a hypnosis expert may give you other suggestions.

Life stages and negative thinking

You may remember that as a child you actually had relatively few worries, but in adolescence or during adolescence you began to think more negatively. Especially when you become independent, you may be cynical for a while because you find out that your parents don't know everything either and sometimes just can't help you.

You suddenly realize that the responsibility for your success in life truly rests on your shoulders, and this can cause some people to start thinking negatively.

Usually this is a phase that passes because you also realize that you have everything in you to make your life a success or at least have a certain minimum lifestyle.

There are other times when negative thinking can be normal for a while, such as after a layoff, divorce or when losing a loved one. If you find that this is having too much impact on your life and you feel it is bothering you for a very long time, you can always ask for help.

Would you like to know exactly how hypnosis works and how you can use it to help yourself or others? Then join a free online masterclass or sign up right away for one of the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands’ training programs—ask about the online options.

Pin this infographic as a reminder:

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-have-negative-thoughts-And-why-do-they-only-think-negative-about-others

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770572?journalCode=cdpa

[3] https://journals.lww.com/nursingresearchonline/Abstract/2000/07000/Negative_Thinking_Mediates_the_Effect_of.3.aspx

[4] https://sigmapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1547-5069.2004.04061.x

[5] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.10094