What do I do when negative thoughts and feelings creep in?
Many of my clients have a fear of negative thoughts and feelings creeping in, wreaking havoc, keeping them stuck in depression and unhealthy behaviors. These thoughts and emotions are also painful and uncomfortable and often the response we want to have is to push them away or numb them out of our lives. The only issue is that when we push them away or try to numb them away, these thoughts and feelings have a tendency to only get stronger. So how do we deal with these thoughts and feelings?
Well, first of all, I don’t completely like the work “negative” when applied to thoughts and feelings. Putting the label of “negative” on these thoughts and feelings has a tendency to lead to judgement for ourselves for going to that “negative” place or for not controlling our thoughts better. All thoughts and feelings are information. They tell us what is going on for us and what is important to us. We don’t have to act on this information, but we do have to pay attention without judgement.
We can’t control our thoughts and feelings. What we can control is whether or not we ruminate on and invest in those thoughts and feelings. This is the idea in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT called thought diffusion. When we fuse with our thoughts and feelings we over identify with them, we buy into them, we believe them, we ruminate on them, we use them to beat ourselves up. Overall, when we fuse with these thoughts and feelings, we tend to get stuck and continue to react with unhealthy behaviors.
Instead, to diffuse our thoughts and feelings, we first notice that we are having a thought or feeling. For example, you might have a thought that, “I am not good enough.” Notice that you are having the thought, choose to avoid judging yourself for having that thought, and separate your own identity from the thought.
Some helpful ways to do this or diffusion techniques are to thank your mind for the thought, to see your mind as a separate entity, or perhaps to see your mind as a phone/computer with random pop-up messages. For example, maybe you say something like, “There goes my mind again,” or, “Thank you mind for that thought.” You might also imagine your core identity or Self driving a bus and all of these thoughts and feelings are nasty passengers on the bus. If you wrestle or argue with these passengers they get bigger and more demanding. You have to coexist with them on the bus, but will you allow them to dictate where you go?
It is important to point out that “not being good enough” is not something that can be proven as true. Maybe you can prove that this one time you weren’t “good enough” but that does not mean that you as a person are not “good enough.” Again, though, you would not be any less for having this thought. It is important not to judge yourself for having this thought. Your only job is to try to avoid hanging on the thought, over identifying with the thought, or taking the thought at its word.
I also find it helpful to apply some self-compassion at this point. For example, making sure to give yourself some credit for how far you have come, the struggles that you have faced along the way, and how much you are currently dealing with in your life/schedule.
We often set high expectations of ourselves and beat ourselves up for not meeting those expectations because we are comparing ourselves with others, not taking into account the full picture, and not giving ourselves credit for the obstacles that we (and everyone else) have to face. We compare our lives with other people’s Instagram profiles, even though we know these posts can be staged and only show the highlights of a person’s life. Someone’s Instagram profile doesn’t show the full picture of their life. In the same way, your lowest moments do not fully define you. They are like one small piece of the frame that we can choose to zoom in on but then we wouldn’t see the full picture.