Say Goodbye to Negative Thoughts!

Erika Krull makes a point that runs against instinct. When a negative thought shows up, most of us try to wrestle with it and jam a cheerier thought in its place. In real day-to-day thinking, she says, that rarely works. Our emotions keep a firm grip on those negative thoughts, so the better move is to picture yourself emotionally releasing them. The same letting-go approach shows up in yoga and meditation, where it helps a person stay anchored in the present.

Fixating on the negative actually blocks us from solving whatever is wrong. We end up circling in an unbroken loop of negativity, and that loop breeds stress, anxiety, and depression. Those feelings then chip away at our ability to build a plan and act on it. In a strange way, the negative thinking can keep us stuck inside the very situation that caused the bad feelings in the first place. As Krull puts it, the steady stream of negativity in your head has kept you from any creative problem-solving. But once you name your worry about not being in control, you are finally positioned to drain the power out of that negativity.

The reflex, when negativity hits, is to shove it away. Wanting to be rid of it is normal. Krull proposes something different, closer to what meditation teaches: it is far harder to fight a thought than to release it. Letting go uses your energy better than pushing and struggling. Rather than wrestling the thought, you acknowledge it and then allow it to pass.

She offers an image for this. Picture a sheriff in an old Western town watching a known outlaw saunter down the main street. The sheriff stays polite but firm, calmly steering the outlaw to keep walking, straight out of town. He is confident and unbothered. That sheriff is you, noticing the negative thought and quietly telling it to move along out of your mind.

Persistent negative thinking often grows out of a sense that we have lost control. Krull notes that once you can admit both the negative thoughts and the feeling of powerlessness, you can release them. Thoughts like "I should have fixed this by now" or "We'll never get out of this mess" lose their edge once you stop clutching them. When you don't hold each thought tightly, it carries little influence. It can arrive and then leave. You might still feel uneasy about your lack of control, but the negativity no longer jams up your head.

Letting go also spares you the exhaustion of fighting, which eases stress on its own. A more relaxed mind has room to settle on positive thoughts or an actual solution. Krull describes it as the mind opening and staying loose enough to take in different thoughts. She adds a caution: a newer, more positive thought may need time to take hold, especially if negative thinking has been a long habit. Be patient as you slowly introduce your brain to it. Noticing your thoughts and releasing them keeps you in the present, gives positive thoughts a chance to grow, and frees the problem-solving part of the mind to do its work.

One reader, writing as Bergen, offered a longer reflection on all this. In their view, a life steeped in habitual negativity is among the biggest obstacles to personal growth, both for an individual and for society. Negative thinking undercuts self-confidence and self-esteem, and low self-confidence tends to accompany anxiety, depression, and related struggles. Given how many people carry those conditions, Bergen wonders whether negativity itself might deserve to be treated as its own disorder, or at the very least as a roadblock on the path toward growth.

Bergen admits a certain irritation with relentlessly upbeat people, the ones who seem to never have a bad day. Perpetual cheerleaders, they call them, and the cheer can feel almost unbearable. Yet in their experience, most people land on the negative side of the line, and living inside that negativity does little for growth, progress, or confidence.

To illustrate, Bergen recalls a conversation with a woman they refer to only as "Mom," someone they regard as deeply negative. Mom was describing herself and a close friend. She painted the friend as a "glass half-empty" person and cast herself as "glass half-full." Knowing both women, Bergen saw it differently. The friend struck them as closer to "glass totally empty," and the self-described optimist Mom seemed more like a "drop in the glass." Not wanting to undo whatever small appreciation for positive thinking Mom had, Bergen kept quiet.

As for themselves, Bergen claims no spot among the cheerleaders, but they don't live in constant gloom either. Like most people, they pass through stretches of negativity, some short and some not, without adopting a permanent sky-is-falling outlook. They say they would love to understand how we overcome our own negativity and help others live more positively. What keeps surprising them is how often the most negative people are convinced they are among the most positive, a riddle they confess they still can't explain.

Based on Krull, E. (n.d.). Depression and Letting Go of Negative Thoughts. Retrieved January 8, 2015, from PsychCentral.