How To Stop Negative Thoughts, 16 Research-Backed Tips

Negative thoughts spiraling out of control again? Here are 16 ways to deal with them, according to research.

Negative thought patterns are like unwanted guests in our minds which creep in and leave us emotionally drained.

Each of us has moments when negative thoughts engulf us as we experience fear, despair, self-doubt, confusion and even jealousy.

It’s easy to fall in negativity trap especially when trolls rule social media, stress in our personal life spills onto our work; oh and not to forget about a mean co-worker or the emotionally detached spouse? And of course the house loan!

So as you can see, one life and too many problems can throw us into a whirlpool of negative thoughts sucking out all optimism.

But how do we stop falling into this spiral of negativity? How do we counter our negative thoughts which makes us insecure?

This post provides research based recommendations, about understanding your negative thoughts patterns, how these impact your life and finally how you can tackle these unhelpful thoughts effectively.

Table of contents:

What Are Negative Thoughts?

What Causes Negative Thoughts?

Why Negative Thoughts Affect Us?

Common Negative thoughts

How Negative Thinking Impacts Health?

Why Are Some more prone to Negative Thoughts?

16 Tips To Overcome Negative Thoughts

Can you Completely Stop Negative Thoughts?

What Are Negative Thoughts?

According to research negative thoughts mean thinking in a pessimistic way about yourself and the things around you. Although everyone has negative thoughts from time to time, when these thoughts start to greatly impact how you see yourself, the world, it can be a problem and usually might be a sign of a mental health issue like depression or anxiety.

What Causes Negative Thoughts?

Negative thoughts can spring from various sources, such as stress, worry, and distressing life events. It is common to experience negative thoughts occasionally but when it occurs frequently it begins a cycle of negative thinking is often tied to depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and schizophrenia.

The more we let these unhelpful thoughts, the more persuasive they become. Our brains get stuck on the same old neuron pathways, causing the negative thoughts to arise again and again.

Why Negative Thoughts Affect Us So Much?

Psychiatrist Grant H. Brenner, co-founder of Neighborhood Psychiatry, has told psycom.net that our brain has a natural bias for threat detection; humans survived through ages thanks to their instinct for smelling danger.

The perception of danger has programmed our brain to give more weightage to negative thoughts than positive ones.

For our brain negative thoughts are more powerful as they are somehow connected to our instinct for survival.

On the other hand, positive messages or thoughts are not as impactful as they don’t challenge us, infact they take away the stress.

A research claims that for one negative thought we need at least 5 positive ones to push our thoughts patterns towards a more optimistic trajectory.

Examples of common Negative thoughts

Here are some common negative thoughts patterns, which many of us experience.

• Nothing good ever happens in my life.
• I will never lose weight.
• I’m not good enough/capable enough.
• I’ll never be happy.
• I’ll never get married.
• I’ll never be rich.
• I am getting old.
• I hate him/her.
• I have no energy.
• I can never do anything right.

How Negative Thinking Impacts Your Health?

Various studies have shown that recurring negative thoughts creates a never-ending cycle of self-defeat leading to issues like low-self worth and inferiority complex.

Negative thinking reinforces negative outcomes in your mind and can become truly prophetic should you choose to believe such thoughts.

The impact of negative thoughts on our health can be serious. It can lead to depression, added stress, and anxiety. It can also cloud your everyday decision making.

It’s true our brain, gravitates more towards negative thoughts, but obsessing over such harmful thoughts can have severe ramifications.

According to psychologists, people who are continuously on a negative spiral can’t enjoy things, as are constantly worried about something or the other.

Why are Some People More Prone To Negative Thinking?

Why are some people more prone to negative thoughts, Dr. Brenner says, “Having negative experiences in childhood, as well as adulthood, may strengthen, confirm, and/or create sticky expectations that the world is a negative place..

Such expectations can come up as negative thoughts, which are defenses against disappointment and other reactions, as well as simply accommodating to the way the world really seems to be.”

For example, you are more likely to internalize pessimistic or negative point of view if your parent(s) had similar thought process while you were growing up.

How To Stop Negative Thoughts: 16 Tips

Identify Your Negative Thought Patterns

Below mentioned are 16 best tips to stop you from spiraling into the negativity trap. You can consciously create a system where you acknowledge your negative thinking and work towards dealing with it effectively.

1. Maintain a Thought Journal

Journaling is a good way of monitoring your thoughts. So dump your thoughts in a journal to observe what’s going on in your mind.

Lay bare all doubts and confusion in your mind by writing a list of all your negative thoughts and emotions. Be as descriptive as possible about everything that’s bothering you.

A. Your fears

B. Insecurities

C. Events that happened in past week/month/year

D. People who you feel wronged you.

E. Situations that impacted your mind

F. Unpleasant childhood events

2. Label Your Negative Thoughts

Labeling or naming your negative thoughts helps you be aware of what’s going on in your mind. Here are some common negative thought patterns we all get affected with.

A) Catastrophic Outcome:

You always assume the worst possible outcome without even taking into account some more probable and less depressing possibilities. This mostly happens when anxiety overpowers logical thinking.

B) Negative Self-Talk:

When you’ve a strong inner critic you view yourself as a complete failure in every situation. So observe how you speak to yourself.

If you constantly engage in negative self-talk like, “I’m stupid” or “I’m good for nothing,” your confidence gets affects and you tend to doubt yourself all the time.

C) Jumping to conclusions:

You jump to conclusions when make negative assumptions about a situation or about other people.

D) Previous negative experience:

If you had a negative experience in a certain situation, it is natural you’ll react negatively if faced with an identical situation again. 

Acknowledge and Evaluate Negative Thinking

3. Confront Your Thoughts

The process to curb your negative thinking begins with acknowledging that you fall frequently into the negative thought pattern.

When you confront or challenge such unhelpful thoughts, you learn to look at situations more logically.

With time and practice, you’ll learn to tackle your negative thoughts more rationally.

4. Replace Negative Thoughts with a Positive One

Focusing on the positive side of a situation can help combat the negative thought patterns. You could also replace your negative thoughts with a positive one but there is a catch.

Psychologist Rachel Goldman, suggests that replacing negative thoughts with overly positive ones won’t be helpful. Speaking to Very Well Mind, Goldman says that you should replace such thoughts with something that shows self-compassion and is neutral in tone.

Like if you’ve thoughts like “I’m a failure”/”I’m going to fail,” you shouldn’t replace it with something like “I know I’m going to succeed..  instead .. replace it with something like ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it, but I’m trying my best.'”

Another helpful technique, she recommends is to consider what you’d say to a friend in this situation.

5. Understand That Your Thoughts Are Not Facts

Dr. Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap has claimed that 80 percent of our thoughts have some sort of negative content and we often believe our thoughts are true.

But your thoughts are not facts and you don’t have to believe everything your thoughts tell you.

Some researchers have found that people who are happy with their lives question their thought process and are acutely aware of negative thought patterns. They have successfully managed to change the way they think.

Practice Mindfulness To Combat Negative Emotions

Mindfulness helps you to take control of your emotional reactions to circumstances. It allows the logical part of your brain to function better and be adaptive to situations. With mindfulness you become more self-aware and think rationally.

6. Practice Meditation Or Any Calming Activity

A common mindful activity is meditation and can be done daily by focusing on your breath through exhaling and inhaling deeply, and keeping your eyes closed for 5 minutes.

With meditation you can view your thoughts as an outsider and become more aware of your current state of mind and what emotions are guiding it.

7. Be Self-Compassionate

Various studies have shown that being compassionate and kind to yourself helps your brain positively in confronting disruptive thoughts that adds to self-critical behavior.

Giving yourself some positive pep-talk each day like, “I’m trying my level best,” or “I’m being too hard on myself,” can help a great deal to elevate your self-worth.

When you practice self-compassionate behavior, you learn to love yourself and understand your self-worth.

8. Engage in Self-care, Affirmations and Gratitude

When you work towards self-compassion, engaging in activities like self-care, affirmations and gratitude can be of immense help.

Caring about your mental health is as important as your physical one. Self-care is engaging in all things that make you happy.

Affirmations are powerful positive reinforcement to help you glide through any negativity.

When you practice gratitude you focus shifts to all the good things in life.

10. Develop a routine to counter Negative Thoughts

Routines give your mind a purpose and as they say an empty mind is a devil’s workshop so you have to keep your mind occupied by following a routine.

Try to develop a morning routine as well as a night routine where you have limited time for distractions and negativity.

Additionally create some personal goals for your mind a purpose.

Manage Negative Emotions By Managing Expectations

11. People Will Fall Short Of Your Expectations Sometimes

As humans we all have our level of expectation. When things don’t go as expected or when someone falls short of our expectations we feel disappointed.

But understand you cannot control everyone or every situation. There will be someone who will have a different point of view and there will be times when things will not go as planned.

12. Complain Less

If you constantly find faults with others or constantly go on whining about things or situations it will naturally make you a bitter person and increase negative energy in your life.

13. Stop Comparing Yourself with Others

It’s easy to fall into the comparison trap where you might feel someone has a blessed life compared to yours.

But what we don’t realize is that person may have his own struggles. His life may not be as rosy and perfect as it seems.

If you are comparing yourself to others use it as a motivation to better yourself.

14. Remove Toxic People From Your Life

Toxic people who manipulate you emotionally are not doing you any favors, they only contribute towards negativity in your life.

You must really think long and hard if you want them in your life at all. This could be anyone a friend, a relationship you are in, your relatives.

Of course it’s easier said than done, so if it’s not possible to remove them entirely limit your interactions with them.

15. Learn To Say ‘NO’

Sometimes saying no is okay. Say a resounding NO, when you feel you are being taken for a ride.

This could be a friend who never returns things she borrows. Your colleague, who expects you to do her share of work or a penny pincher relative who expects you to pay each time you meet.

If you try to please everyone despite knowing they are taking your advantage, it will only increase your anger and frustration.

Value and surround yourself with people who love and support you unconditionally.

Don’t Attract Negativity From Social Media

16. Stop Believing in the Instagram Life

You know social media can be a double-edged sword.

It is an amazing tool of information but it fuels discontentment also.

You may ape your favorite celebrity, just because you came across some pretty images on Instagram.

But most of the perfect images you come across in social media are curated or meticulously planned to give you an illusion of the perfect life.

In reality, no one has the perfect life, we all have issues we’re dealing with.

Instead of being dissatisfied with your life try to limit your time spent in social media and don’t believe in everything you see.

Lastly, can you Stop negative thoughts completely?

Our thoughts have tremendous power over us. They guide our feelings, and set the mood for our day. They even affect our physical health.

So yes, there will be moments when you’ll be filled with negative emotions such as self-doubt or jealousy but the trick here is to know how much you are letting negative thoughts affect your peace of mind.

You have to rationally analyze your thoughts and remember that thoughts aren’t facts. Also if you frequently spiral into a loophole of negativity it is never late to seek help in form of therapy.

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