What are ways you can reset to derail constant negative thinking?

Thank you so much for reaching out with your question. It's such a great question because so many of us experience these types of thinking traps. Especially if we have recently experienced something negative. It's common for our brains to rehearse for the next disaster, and it is a very normal response to anxiety. In fact, it's a great survival instinct and a strategy that has allowed us to evolve over centuries. Each of us have a part of our brains called the amygdala which are solely responsible for scanning the environment for things that look like, feel like, or seem like something we may have experienced before. Think of it like this, our very distant animal ancestors who were more senstive to danger were more likey to survive. They developed what we now recognize as anxiety as a survival technique to avoid dangerous situations. In this sense, anxiety is a very necessary emotion. However, this is modern day, so our anxieties and stressors are much different. Instead of avoiding predators we are managing social media pressures, complex jobs, and a very fast paced world.

Sometimes things can trigger our anxiety so we try to avoid them, but this can be a problem especially if those triggers are normal parts of life like going to work or meeting new people. Why is it important to know this? Because understanding what is happening in our brains is the first step toward learning how to manage it. These responses to negative experiences are not unusual, its just your amygdala telling you that you may be experiencing something negative.

Once you understand that you can ask yourself a couple of questions. (1) Why am I rehearsing for something bad when nothing bad has happened yet? (2) Do I have all the facts of the situation? Does my reaction match the situation? In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) it is common to work on thinking traps. These are the thoughts that pop up in our brains immediately without much prompting. These thoughts tend to be negative and rooted in anxiety.

The first step, is to recognize whether this is a thinking trap or not. For example if you text a friend and don't get an immediate response you might think, "they don't like me, and they are ignoring me because they don't want to be friends". You can first ask yourself: "Does this match the facts?" All you really know is that you sent a text and didn't get a response. Once you recognize that this is a thinking trap you replace the negative thought with a positive one. "Just because I didn't get a response doesn't mean they don't like me. Maybe they didn't have time to respond, or maybe they aren't good at answering texts". Reframing your thoughts can be difficult at first but with practice you will find it easier and eaiser to do. You have the power to create positive thoughts to counter the negative ones....from there you get to decide which ones to listen to!