6 Questions to Challenge Negative Thoughts
Have you ever considered the power of your thoughts?
We’ve all been conditioned to know that thinking positively is important. We are taught to look at the bright side, keep a positive outlook and think positive thoughts. But as life gets stressful, and it always does, it becomes harder and harder to maintain a healthy outlook. While we all know to an extent the importance of positive thinking, it is commonly underestimated just how much weight our thoughts can carry. Whether negative or positive, our thoughts are constant and overwhelming. Unfortunately, as human beings, a vast majority of our thoughts tend to be negative – often without us even realizing. Negative thoughts are powerful and have the ability to color the way we view the world, how we function in our every-day lives and even how successful we are in our careers. They can be dangerous and lead us down a detrimental path, if not managed or corrected. The good news is that there are many ways to address negative thought patterns and to overcome negative thinking. Keep reading to learn the importance of being intentional with your thinking and questions to challenge negative thoughts.
The power of your thoughts
You may have heard the phrase, “What you think is what becomes of you”. And while that sounds like an exaggerated, sweeping statement, essentially, it’s the truth. The thoughts we have form neural pathways in our mind that eventually change our neuropathways in a more permanent way. The negative thoughts you think repetitively eventually become a part of who you are, happening automatically without your control. Automatic negative thoughts are the thoughts in which we instinctually have, that form habits and eventually change our outlook completely. Negative thoughts truly become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that they have the power to move from negative thoughts to negative outcomes. Automatic negative thinking, when taken at face value and believed by the mind, can lead to negative perspective, negative actions and attracting negative outcomes and circumstances. On the contrary, however, infiltrating your mind with positive thoughts can have the same effect in a good way.
Think of your thoughts as if they are seeds. If you plant the seeds, give them adequate water and sunlight and nurture them with attention and effort – they will inevitably grow. Our thoughts are the seeds that we plant in our mind and the more we nurture them, believe them, give them attention and continue to focus on them – they too, will grow. The thoughts you give the most time and attention to are the ones that will grow, develop and become more habitual or dominant in your mind. Considering this fact in your daily life will help encourage you to acknowledge and control your thoughts, to begin reframing negative thinking.
What can negative thoughts lead to?
Unfortunately, negative thoughts can be incredibly impactful and dangerous to your well-being. Negative thoughts and automatic negative thinking can lead to more serious mental health issues such as depression and anxiety; both of which lead you to then plummet further into negativity, creating a cycle of negativity. If you are struggling with negative thoughts that have now led to anxiety, depression or other mental health conditions – there are ways to help yourself get out of it.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most commonly effective modalities of therapy offered to help challenge negative thinking, to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Part of the core practice in CBT is to address cognitive distortions, in order to receive tools to properly cope and also learn how to break irrational thought patterns. Cognitive distortions are defined as, “an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety.” In other words, cognitive distortions are thought patterns that are often inaccurate, not based in truth and are negatively biased. In CBT therapy, your specialist will work with you to pinpoint your cognitive distortions and replace negative thinking with an alternative perspective. When processed and worked through with a mental health professional, negative thinking and the mental health conditions that are a result can be managed and improved greatly.
Questions to challenge negative thoughts
Part of controlling your thoughts and eliminating the thoughts that will lead down a negative spiral, is to challenge them. Because negative thoughts are often more based in perception, feeling and assumption, they can often be disproved with the right work. Challenging negative thinking is tedious and difficult work, but if practiced consistently can rewire the way your brain processes life and all of its complicated circumstances. One way to challenge negative thoughts, is to ask yourself a series of questions. Each question intentionally targets your negative thought from a different perspective. Imagine your negative thought as a boat floating carelessly on the ocean. If you were to begin drilling holes into the sides of the boat, eventually it would sink. The questions to challenge negative thoughts are the holes being drilled into the boat. They find flaws in the thought, target it from different perspectives and eventually make it sink.
Here are some helpful questions to help challenge negative thoughts:
1. Am I confusing a thought or feeling with a fact?
In our minds, we often decide that our belief or the way we feel is what dictates how true something actually is. This is a flawed mentality, as feelings and beliefs are not always based in fact or truth. Just because you believe something to be true, does not mean that it is. When you notice negative thoughts creeping into your subconscious mind, ask yourself if it is truly based in fact or if an irrational thought or emotion inspired you to feel the way you’re feeling.
2. Am I jumping to conclusions or resorting to worst case scenario automatically?
Often in the case of negative thinking, you default to the worst-case scenario without having any facts to support it. This typically looks like a person assuming that everyone around them is thinking critically about them or that the outcome of any situation is going to be negative. The reality is you never can truly know what another person thinking and the best way to challenge yourself jumping to conclusions, is to ask the person their perspective. Give yourself the opportunity to find evidence to support another view.
3. What is evidence to support my negative thought and what is evidence against it?
Sometimes the most effective way to challenge negative thoughts is the find evidence to either support or contradict it. Take inventory of the facts in the situation. Rarely does the evidence support your automatic thought and often the evidence goes against and disproves your automatic negative thought. For example, a person preparing for labor and delivery may fear that they “can’t handle” the pain or that it will be too much for them. A way to challenge this thought would be to look at other times you were faced with hardship or physical discomfort – how did you handle it? Do you actually have a low threshold for pain or are those thoughts fed by fear? Looking at the evidence that is either for or contrary to your belief is a very effective way to replace your negative thoughts with positive ones.
4. Is there another way to approach this negative thought?
As with any situation, there is always multiple perspectives and many ways to look at the same situation. You can present a situation to a group of people and each could see it differently; there is beauty in that! Sometimes if you are thinking negatively about something, challenging the way in which you are seeing it is an impactful way to view it. Just as there are always two (or more) sides to every story, there is always a different way to approach a negative thought or feeling.
5. If I look at this situation through a more positive lens, how is it different?
It can be extremely useful to put a positive spin the way you are viewing a situation, even though that can also be difficult to do. Replacing your negative thoughts with a positive mindset, can often change the situation altogether. Automatic negative thinking is natural and common, and fighting it can be an uphill battle. But the way in which we see things, whether positive or negative, can shape the way we view the world and therefore changing our trajectory.
6. Will this matter a year from now? How about five years from now?
This may sound cliché and also sometimes frustrating, but it is a helpful practice to challenge your negative thinking with this question. It is easy to get caught up in the moment, especially when your negative feelings and beliefs take over and flood your mind and body. But attempting to pull yourself out of the moment, by thinking about the future, can be just what you need to harness some healthy perspective. If you have a negative belief or thought, asking yourself if it will truly matter long-term may help you to see that it is much smaller and not worth the energy and negative impact of your automatic thought.
The takeaway
Though it can be overlooked, the importance and weight of our thoughts can make or break so much of our life and well-being. Our thoughts impact our subconscious mind, impacting our view of the world, thus impacting our experiences and how we are able to succeed in life. Taking control of your thoughts, infiltrating your mind with positive thoughts instead, can have more of a positive impact on your life than you may realize. After reading this, we hope you have some helpful tools in challenging your negative thinking.
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