How to Deal with Negative Thoughts
For when you just can't get your mind off it
Are you a slave to your thoughts?
It’s a provocative question. It makes me uncomfortable. In a society that values freedom so heavily, the idea of being a slave to anything is scary, let alone something within me. Yet, upon further reflection, I think my answer might be yes. Sometimes.
Of course, there are varying degrees to which thoughts control us. Most are benign: thinking about what items we need at the grocery store doesn’t signify any sort of subjugation. It’s the propositions of truth that are the problem. Thinking “I am unworthy of people’s love” can profoundly impact how we go about our lives.
We often believe the thoughts we have without questioning them. They appear from within us; how can they be false? The thought “I am unworthy of people’s love” doesn’t just come out of nowhere. We regard the thought as true implicitly, just by having it.
Truth, as it turns out, is a sticky subject. If you haven’t read last week’s post, you may want to before continuing forward to get a solid foundation for what we’re dealing with. If that’s too much work, I think you will still find some practical value here. Carry on.
If you, dear reader, have had thoughts of unworthiness or other similar ones, I’m sorry. That’s a hard thing to deal with. I know from experience, and still often have them. Let’s learn how to deal with them together today.
We’re going to learn how to get some distance between us and our thoughts. By getting distance, we can evaluate them for how truthful or helpful they are rather than immediately accepting them.
An important aside, before we begin: I believe all humans deserve dignity. With dignity, you are automatically worthy. Now, you may agree with me about everyone deserving dignity but leave yourself out of that equation. If that’s you, we’re going to challenge that. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Let’s get into it.
Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that emphasizes acceptance to deal with negative thoughts, feelings, symptoms, or circumstances. ACT therapy encourages increased commitment to healthy, constructive activities that uphold your values or goals.
You can see that ACT has two main components: acceptance and commitment.
No duh, Ethan, I hear you say. Just trying to be explicit!
Acceptance is all about accepting thoughts for what they are, rather than trying to change them. It’s a new idea for us at Field Notes from the Deep. In the past, we’ve focused on how to poke holes in negative thoughts until we don’t feel them anymore (see here). It’s helpful for some scenarios but not for others. No hole-poking will take place here. Instead, acceptance lets thoughts come and go without latching onto them.
Commitment, on the other hand, is about our values. We become much more resilient when we live and act in accordance with them. Resilience is crucial for maintaining our mental health. So, it’s all about deciding which values to focus on and working to embody them in life.
Today we’re going to focus on acceptance; we’ll explore commitment - including deciding which values to commit to - at a later date.
Acceptance: The Big Six
Similar to cognitive distortions, the big six is a list of types of thoughts that can hook us. These types of thoughts fuse themselves to our minds, causing us to ruminate on them or move toward avoidance behaviors. They’re uncomfortable but they really stick. They are:
Past
Future
Self
Judgments
Rules
Reasons
As you read through the list, think about which ones fuse to your mind the most. Which ones give you the most trouble? How do they make you feel?
Past
Thoughts about the past that fuse to us can be anything that’s happened that we just can’t let go of. It can be an awkward interaction that we desperately wish went differently; a trauma we experienced; an argument we lost, and we finally have the words to win; a time of peace and joy that our life hasn’t been able to stack up with since; etc.
Future
Thoughts about the future that fuse to us are similar, but more aligned with expectation since they haven’t happened yet. Maybe we have an interview coming up we can’t stop worrying about; we think about how much better life will be once we get that promotion; we assume that a relationship we have will sour; or something else.
Self
Self thoughts are ones like the example we’ve been discussing about not being worthy. They are evaluations of our worth or the image we have of ourselves. We are damaged goods; we are unworthy; we are hopeless. It can also go the other direction, making us think too highly of ourselves and causing us to become arrogant, but that’s not the focus right now.
Judgments
It’s not things that upset us but our judgments about things.
-Epictetus
Judgmental thoughts fuse themselves to our minds by telling us how bad things are in the world, with others or within us. They make us obsess over things we can’t control.
Rules
Rules are thoughts like “should”, “ought to”, “need”, “can’t”, and others. They establish things we aren’t living up to, or others aren’t living up to, and make us ruminate on why that’s true. Remember the therapist cliche: don’t should on yourself.
Reasons
Reasons are the why behind the rules we fuse to. Sometimes, the reason can be more distressing than the rule itself. We think we should be able to get out of bed today because that’s what a normal human can do and it’s easy. If it’s easy, and I can’t do it today, that means I can’t do easy things. What can I do if not something easy? I’m hopeless.
A lot of negative thoughts can fit into multiple of these categories. That’s okay. What matters is recognizing it.
If you catch yourself ruminating on a negative thought, even just labeling which of the big six the thought fits into can be really helpful. We know the big six hook us and take advantage of us. If we can blame the hook, rather than the assumption within the thought, it gives us some distance from it. The automatic assumption of truth is weakened.
Let’s go back to our example again: “I am unworthy of people’s love.”
When we have that thought, we can take a moment to acknowledge it and label it as a Self thought. This doesn’t remove the thought; it’s still there. It’s just in the right filing cabinet now. Knowing what we do about how the big six hook us and keep us ruminating, we don’t need to give too much mental space to the thoughts in those filing cabinets.
This isn’t an easy practice. There are many useful tricks for how to successfully put these thoughts in their place. It’s called Cognitive Defusion.
Cognitive Defusion
We’ve already gotten pretty listical today, so I’ll just describe a couple of tools to defuse negative thoughts and give them less power.
External Voice
When you have a negative thought, acknowledge what it is: a thought. Move from “I’m unworthy of people’s love” to “I’m having the thought that I’m unworthy of people’s love”. See what happens? The thought has changed from an assertion of truth to a thing your brain made up, that may or may not be true. Kinda cool.
Passengers on the Bus
This one is more visual.
Imagine you are a bus driver, and all your thoughts are passengers on the bus. When a negative thought comes around with a hook from one of the big six, imagine it’s a boisterous and rude passenger. Now, as the bus driver, are you going to pull over and try to get that passenger off the bus? No. You’re going to continue doing your job, and eventually that passenger will get off. It’s unpleasant but you get through it.
Thanking your Mind
When a negative thought pops up, just take a moment to thank your brain for giving it to you. Get real sarcastic with it.
“I’m unworthy of people’s love.”
Wow. Thanks a lot, brain. That’s really helpful. Thanks.
It adds an element of humor while still doing the job of building that distance between you and the negative thought.
Click here to see a PDF with a more comprehensive list of cognitive defusion tools if you feel none of these are quite the right fit for you. Once you click the link, scroll down to the Self-Help Handouts section, and click on the “Cognitive defusion self-help resource” PDF (second from the bottom).
Conclusion
Did you notice how after saying the word “acceptance” a billion times in the intro, it didn’t come up once in the actual content? While, yes, part of that was due to semantic satiation for me, it was mostly because it’s implicit in all of these strategies.
Think about the three cognitive defusion examples we discussed. In each one, we don’t get rid of the thought; rather, we acknowledge it in some way that gives us a little distance. We accept the thought’s existence. That doesn’t mean we give it power or hold on to it.
Your mission this week is to practice cognitive defusion when thoughts arise. Notice I didn’t say negative thoughts, though. I mean all thoughts. You don’t have to do it for every single thought, but by making it a habit with nice thoughts, it’s much easier to do it when negative thoughts arise.
I have recently been thanking my mind a lot in the car. Normally pretty level-headed, I for some reason get really angry at other drivers on the road. It’s not a problem, just a funny little fact about me. Because it’s a low stakes scenario, it’s perfect for me to practice defusion. Thank you so much brain, I really love being mad at other people for no reason. You are awesome. I crack myself up with some of my responses to the angry thoughts.
Thank you for being here.
I love you.
-Ethan
Let us know in the comments what you think of cognitive defusions! We’d love to hear from you.
This page is not intended to be medical advice. Consult with a psychiatrist or other provider before pursuing any treatment options discussed here.
If you are in crisis, call or text the National Suicide Hotline: 988
Thank you for this article Ethy! I needed it this am 💕
But, people DO drive dumb nowadays … js 😝