Negative Thoughts

[Peacewithin1]

Why is it so hard to think happy, positive thoughts but so easy to think negative? It's exhausting

[Beevee]

Beating anxiety is about letting yourself think ANYTHING and learning not to react to those thoughts and just leaving them be. If you have negative thoughts, so what? Leave them be and the positive thoughts will return without you striving for them. I never bothered striving to create positive thoughts because doing that is tiring (as you know) and you are unwittingly reinforcing the messages being sent to your brain that the anxiety is a threat which keeps the anxiety cycle going. It's a slippery customer!

Think anything and do nothing about the thoughts. Just be an observer to them and don't get involved with the negative stuff or spending energy trying to think up positive stuff. My advice to anxiety sufferers is always the same. Stop trying to do anything about it and you will get better. Doing nothing actually works.

[Peacewithin1 in reply to Beevee]

Thanks. That's what I do, try to overpower the negative thoughts with positive thoughts and then I feel overwhelmed

[Beevee in reply to Peacewithin1]

In doing what you are doing, you are trying to change an emotion that is completely natural under the circumstances, albeit magnified because your sympathetic nervous system (which controls your fight/flight response) has been sensitised so it triggers fearful thoughts and emotions very easily and grossly exaggerated. The exaggeration usually startles the sufferer who reacts fearfully which keeps the anxiety going. If you learn to react differently by accepting them and doing nothing about them, your symptoms will gradually disappear. It may also help you to know that all those negative thoughts simply won't be there when you recover so don't give them any respect.

[Peacewithin1 in reply to Beevee]

Makes a lot of sense. Thank You

[smjtty]

LIFE CAN GET U DOWN

[Peacewithin1 in reply to smjtty]

So true