Escaping the Negativity Trap

There is a lot of attention paid by health professionals, media, and consumers to the important topics of physical fitness and physical health. Having effective strategies that help us to maintain and maximize our emotional and mental health is equally important. One of the critical components in maintaining our mental health is our ability to manage and/or overcome persistent and intrusive negative thoughts and feelings. We all encounter negative thoughts and feelings to varying degrees on a daily basis. These thoughts and feelings are automatic, involuntary, and often valid reactions to our experiences as we go about the business of our daily lives. However, the fact that our negative thoughts and feelings may be valid does not automatically make them helpful. Quite the opposite. If our negative thoughts and feelings persist, they can quite easily trigger a chain reaction of increasingly negative thoughts and feelings and spiral out of control. We can quickly find ourselves immersed in intense feelings of frustration, anger, pessimism, helplessness, and depression.

Knowing how important it is to manage or overcome negative thoughts and feelings, what strategies can help us to accomplish this?
1. First, recognize that when it comes to our best interests, happiness, and mental health, not all of our thoughts are of equal value. While our initial negative reaction may be a valid one, our reaction can end up being of low value to us if it saps our energy and hinders our ability to think, cope with, and/or resolve whatever situation it is that triggers them.

2. Decide whether the negative thought or feeling warrants taking action. If your negative reaction is valid and is calling your attention to an important problem, and you then take constructive action to either address the cause(s) or to gain support in coping with it, then it will have served a very useful purpose. If, however, your negative thought does not offer you an opportunity to act or prompt any constructive action, then it is of little or no value to you and will  stop you from moving forward with your life for however long it remains the focus of attention.

3. If no action is feasible or warranted, you can take a different kind of action to alleviate your negative thoughts and feelings. You can identify and consciously shift your attention from your negative thoughts and feelings to thoughts that are positive and of higher value. High value thoughts are ones that soothe us, help us to distance or disengage ourselves from negative thoughts and feelings, and lead us to feeling more positively about ourselves and/or our situation. High quality thoughts soothe, motivate, inspire, encourage, predict positive outcomes, and promote our emotional resilience in the face of adversity.

Many of us are able to recognize the negative impact of persistent negative thoughts and feelings on our friends and loved ones, and readily offer high quality thoughts to help them in managing or overcoming them. Assessing the value of our own negative thoughts, and then taking the appropriate steps to address them or diminish their impact, can be just as valuable as a component of our own efforts to maintain and maximize our own mental health and emotional well-being.