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NEGATIVE THINKING MAKES YOU ANXIOUS AND STOPS YOU DOING THINGS

Getting Rid of Negative Thoughts

Firstly, we need to feel threatened in order to get anxious, as summarized in the example below.

The Place of Negative thoughts in the Anxiety Cycle

EVENT ------------> NEGATIVE THOUGHT -------------> ANXIETY ---------------> RUN AWAY
( i.e. Going Shopping, or Bodily Changes)

One of the main reasons for feeling threatened, is thinking frightening thoughts, which then makes you anxious.

If we didn’t think frightening thoughts, we wouldn’t get anxious.

So, how do you tell if a thought is frightening or negative?
Below is a list of features of negative thoughts : —

They...

1. Make things worse than they are. "I’ve never felt so awful in my whole life’
2. Predict the future. "I’ll always feel terrible".
3. Stop you doing things. "I can’t do that."
4. Are often not true. "Everybody must think I’m stupid."
5. Pretend you can read minds. "I know they think I’m useless even though they say I’m O. K."
6. Seem believable; you don’t think to question them.

Here are a few examples of negative thoughts, to give you an idea of what we are talking about.

"Here I'm in the Supermarket — I felt awful last time I was in a Supermarket, and had to run out. I bet it happens again."
This thought sets you up to be anxious — it’s a frightening thought and could easily provoke anxiety.

"I feel my heart beating fast and I’m a bit sweaty when I get like this it’s because I’m frightened, and it gets worse and worse."
This thought is frightening and usually happens when a person gets some minor physical change for no particular reason, and thinks that it’s caused by anxiety.

"Oh God, I bet it’s going to be another bad day."
This thought is just plain unhelpful.

In order to change these negative thoughts, you need to be aware of them, you become aware by monitoring : -

NEGATIVE THOUGHT STOPPING

First you should intentionally think about an undesired thought. Once it is there and recognisable you can make the thought disappear by thinking the word STOP. You can initially shout or say loudly STOP, just to get the hang of doing it. It might take several attempts for it to become effective. Practise will make perfect. Remember to consider thoughts and self evaluation rationally. Negative thoughts and self evaluations may be in the first instance quite plausible. Use a more positive alternative.

IT ALL DEPENDS UPON THE ANGLE FROM WHICH YOU VIEW THE SITUATION

Self Talk

We all have a running commentary of thoughts or "self talk" going on in our heads, in every situation we enter.

Self talk can be seen as either helpful (positive) or unhelpful (negative), only helpful positive self talk assists us, the negative unhelpful self talk will lead us to become anxious and therefore more liable to make mistakes.

Remember the sequence of thought physiological arousal behaviour?

If we think unhelpfully we raise the chances of feeling the physiological arousal caused by the release of adrenalin and we are therefore raising the chance of either making a mistake or avoiding the situation.

Below are some examples of self talk:—

Negative Self Talk

1. Sports (Cricket)

"I really must get this wicket for the team to win. I’ll never manage it, I’ve been bowling really badly, my timing is way out. The men will never forgive me. If only I’d hit more runs we wouldn’t need so many wickets. The last one was a mile out, this one will never do it".

2. Taking an Exam (college, work, interview)

"It really is important I do well on this test to pass the course. Oh God, What if I don’t. I’ll fail it. What on earth will I do then? I don’t have any other skills. I’ll be stuck in the same job for ever, they might even sack me. How will I pay the mortgage? But this all seems so hard, maybe I don’t know anything after all. God I am stupid. This is really a pointless exercise."

3. Paying Bills

"My God, where am I going to get this money from? Why do they all come at once? I’ll probably end up losing the house. I’m already overdrawn and I don’t know what will happen to me. What if they cut the supply off? The baby could freeze to death. My God, this is really terrible. Where am I going to get the money from?"

4. Becoming Ill

"Oh, I feel quite funny, I hope I’m not going to have another turn, this is just how it started last time. I’M sure I am, oh God, I hope not, it was terrible and I feel so ghastly."

Use the relaxation you have learned to reduce the arousal and make yourself a positive achievement guide.

POSITIVE ACHIEVEMENT GUIDE

You can apply this guide to any situation which makes you anxious, where you can see that the anxiety is not helping you. Whether it be riding on buses, complaining about poor service, going to the supermarket or whatever.

1. Start with small steps. Plan daily targets of achievement. Ask relatives or friends to encourage you to achieve them. Encourage yourself to achieve them.

2. Don’t be indecisive. Set your target. Determine to achieve it. DO IT.

3. Develop coping strategies to deal with anxiety. Learn to talk positively about yourself. Re—evaluate. YOU ARE IN CONTROL.

4. Don’t give in to panic feelings you know what they are, treat them with the contempt they deserve. Your objective is to achieve your target.

5. Congratulate yourself on any success, not your feelings.

6. Remember, whenever you find yourself avoiding because of anxiety, question your motives. What is the worst that could happen to you if you go ahead? Is that worse than being anxious all the time?

ANXIETY MANAGEMENT

Homework

1. Practise your relaxation technique, and recording the calmness, before and after relaxation. (make a chart)

2. Monitor your negative thinking patterns and record them in the diary provided

3. Practise thought-stopping if repetitive thoughts are occurring

4. Construct your personal hierarchy

Thoughts play an important part in influencing our feelings.
We say how negative thoughts tend to:-

1. Make us unhappy

2. Make us physically uncomfortable

3. Stop us doing the things we would like to do

Last session, you tried keeping a diary of your negative thoughts, now we are going to change them into positive thoughts.

We saw how negative thoughts are:-

a) Easy to believe

b) Often untrue

c) Spring to our minds un summoned

d) Make things worse than they are

e) Predict the future

f) Are unhelpful and useless

Positive thoughts are different because they are:-

a) BASED ON GOOD EVIDENCE

b) DO NOT PREDICT THE FUTURE

c) PUT THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE

d) HELP US TO SUCCEED

You were asked to record your negative thoughts for homework because to be able to CHALLENGE them you must first be aware of them.

How do we go about challenging negative thoughts?

We ask ourselves questions about them and DISPUTE them.

Sometimes in the beginning it is best if you write the negative thought down, then, as you become more expert at disputation you can dispense with this step, but for the moment write them down.

Then ask yourself the following questions:-

1. AM I PREDICTING THE FUTURE NEGATIVELY?

2. WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE FOR AND AGAINST THIS IDEA?

3. WHAT WOULD MY FRIENDS THINK IN THIS SITUATION?

4. AM I MAKING THINGS WORSE THAN THEY REALLY ARE?

5. DOES THIS THOUGHT MAKE ME SUCCEED?

6. DOES IT MATTER IF THINGS DON’T TURN OUT EXACTLY RIGHT?

7. AM I TRYING TO READ OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS?

Let’s examine some examples and go through the disputation process with each of them.

NEGATIVE THOUGHT:-

"Oh God, I know I'll never be able to handle this situation!"

Now go through the questions one at a time.

Q 1. Am I predicting the future negatively?

Well it’s perfectly obvious in this situation that you are. "I know I’ll never ___ ? How do we ever know anything about the future?

Q 2. What is the evidence for and against?

FOR: None.

AGAINST: We can achieve what we wish, as long as our targets are within reason and we practise often enough. It’s also possible that you managed to handle the situation before you became anxious, therefore if you’ve done it once you can do it again.

Q 3. What would my friends think in this situation?

Well they all seem to manage the situation - they probably think it’s alright.

Q 4. Am I making things worse than they really are?

The fact that the sentence starts with "Oh God" and contains a "never" immediately puts it out of proportion.

Q 5. Does this thought help me succeed?

Most certainly not. It is most unhelpful. Just because you were anxious last time, doesn’t mean you’ll be anxious this time. It stops you doing things!

So, having looked more closely at the statement we can now rephrase it to become a positive and helpful thought:

"I was anxious last time in this situation, however, if I practise my relaxation and accept and ignore any unpleasant feelings of anxiety, I will be able to cope with it."

Let’s try it again:- NEGATIVE THOUGHT:

I get up in the morning and think "It’s going to be another bad day today."

What’s wrong with this?

Q 1. It definitely predicts the future negatively. How do I know it’s going to be another bad day?

Q 2. There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea. There may be difficulties to overcome, what day hasn’t, but that doesn’t make it a bad day. Difficulties can be seen as challenges, opportunities to practise good positive thinking!

Q 3. My friends, and most of the people I know, don’t go around thinking like this.

Q 4. Yes, I’m definitely making things worse than they are. Every day has high and low points for everybody.

Q 5. Definitely not!

Q 6. Nothing’s perfect, even days are a mix of good and bad. So, again let’s turn the negative into a positive.

"Today will be as I make it. There will be highs and lows, everybody has them, I’ll enjoy the highs and deal with the lows when they arise, so it will be a good day."Let’s try another, perhaps a more difficult one.

NEGATIVE THOUGHT: "People will think I’m a fool if I do.............................?"

What’s wrong:

1. It predicts the future, all those with a crystal ball, please step forward

2. There’s no evidence that I look a fool - no-one has ever told me I do. Feeling anxious can’t make me look foolish.

3. Other people I know do this and don’t look foolish, why should I?

4. This won’t help me succeedl

5. Even if I do look foolish, what does it matter - if people think I’m a fool, that’s their problem, not mine. I can’t read their minds anyway.

So the positive might be:

"I’m not a fool, let’s just get on with the task in hand and stop worrying about how I look to other people. It’s irrelevant"

So we’ve now worked through three examples of negative thoughts and how to challenge them.
The key challenges are:

1. Am I negatively predicting the future?

2. What is the evidence for and against this idea?

3. What would other people think in this situation?

4. Does it matter if things don’t turn out exactly right?

5. Does this help me succeed?

6. Am I making things worse than they really are?

7. Am I pretending I can read other’s minds?

CUE CARDS

We suggested that at first you write down your negative thoughts whilst trying to dispute them.This idea of writing things down until you are practised at doing them can be taken one step further and can be immensely useful in the real life stress situations, where you can use the written word to prompt you to think more positively and therefore achieve more. This is what we call using a cue card.

There are two types of cue card and each is of benefit in a different way.

TYPE ONE

If there is a specific situation which you wish to go into but are anxious about, try disputing your negative thoughts about it before entering the situation. Turn them into positives and write these down on a card or piece of paper.

E.g. If you are anxious about going out socially you may dispute your negative thoughts and come up with the following cue card.

I’m in control, not my adrenalin.

If people look at me, so what, they’re probably admiring my clothes.

Just relax, smile and listen, I can do this.

Ignore these anxious feelings, they’ll pass, they have before and they will again.

E.g. If you get anxious at home for no apparent reason you might end up with something like this.

It’s only adrenalin making me feel like this physically, if I ignore it, it will pass.

I’ll just carry on doing whatever I’m doing.

This isn’t going to worry me, I’ll practise my relaxation.

It’s the old fight or flight clicking in again, it’s nice to know it’s still working properly.

I’m in control of my life, not my adrenalin.

TYPE TWO

This type helps you dispute negative thoughts when they occur and is basically just a list of questions we ask when we dispute. When we are thinking negatively it’s often all too easy to forget to do this. Try writing the questions on a slip of paper and when you feel yourself getting tense, or know that you’re thinking in an unhelpful way, get the disputation card out and have a read through, applying the questions to the thoughts you are having.

When you get really practised at using cue cards of either type you can then associate the statements or questions on it with some personal object such as a wrist watch or wedding ring. Then each time you look at the watch or ring you can ASSOCIATE the object with the positive ideas.

Homework Sheet 1

Try challenging the following negative thoughts. Please do this exercise for part of your homework.

NEGATIVE THOUGHT: "I could never travel by plane - I would panic."

FUTURE PREDICTION

EVIDENCE

OTHER PEOPLE’S VIEW

USEFULNESS

POSITIVE RESULT

NEGATIVE THOUGHT: "What’s the point - I’ll always be an anxious worried person."

FUTURE PREDICTION

EVIDENCE

WORSE THAN IT IS

USEFULNESS

POSITIVE RESULT

With this last one you’ll have to use your own challenges, so here goes:

NEGATIVE THOUGHT: "It is terrible to make a fool of yourself in front of others."

CHALLENGES

POSITIVE RESULT

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