Why We Tend to Embrace Negative Thoughts More
Negative thoughts are notions or ideas we conceive which will not lead us anywhere good on our well-being scale. Yet, we can’t help but encounter them and more so, indulge them.
Doing this doesn’t always mean we chose them intentionally as buddies to occupy our mental space if that’s all we got. Because there are assumptions that negative thoughts often directly spring from either boredom, loneliness, aloneness, lack of social skills, lack of loved ones, or lack of better things to do or think about — as if we create them for ourselves. However, so much as these factors can contribute to negative thinking, there’s always one thing we miss out on that could also give rise to such a force. A traumatic experience and familiar pain.
For people who have had a rough childhood, brought up with adverse methods by their parents, and left to now cater for parts of themselves they lost while going through it, embracing negativity is the only language they know. Simply because it provides them with a familiar sense of safety and shields them from further harsher realities of life as it unfolds.
What can be done about it?
So, I guess you could say embracing negativity, especially by this category of people, for instance, gives a sort of placebo effect. Where negativity serves as the first line of action for every perceived threat and tricks the mind to think it’s normal. Even with the potential goods. Trauma has a way of letting one soak in the negativity first, before accepting the good in their lives. You can say that such a tendency helps them get comfortable — before it either gets really comfortable or uncomfortable.
Firstly, it helps to acknowledge that this is the case with you. Questions like do you use negative thoughts as a crutch to scale through both the good and bad occurrences in life? Is that the standard through which you plot life’s graphs? If yes, then it’s a huge step towards a better approach.
Secondly, ask yourself why you may be doing so. Could there be an underlying traumatic event that occurred or keeps occurring in your life to make you believe that things have to get worse first before they get better?
Were you perhaps made to think negatively as the first line of response due to past confirmation of certain bad omens?
If yes, then at least you know the root cause now.
And lastly, do you want to get better with your approach to handling such difficulty or “bad” occurrences when they arise, moving on?
If yes, then there are some practical ways to accomplish this:
Spending more alone time will help.
Having a one-on-one with ourselves helps us clear our heads. It helps us evaluate ourselves without outside interference. By spending more alone time, you can catch your mind drifting when it does, the stillness enables you to course-correct by remembering your initial zeal to change.
Spending time with the right people.
There is a quote by Albert Einstein which explains that what placed us in a bad situation won’t get us out of it. If you’ve constantly been surrounded by people that under-appreciated you and thus marred your spirit, it becomes hard to course-correct with those same people in your life. The best bet is to shift from them and disengage spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, if possible, from that caliber of people for growth to take place.
Real-time reflection/ meditation
It helps if we can talk to ourselves really quickly when negative thoughts abound. It is that split second-ish when we pause to reflect whether what we are thinking is our “default” mode or what we should really be thinking and depicting afterward. This moment of breath-taking helps us retrace our steps and handles things better than we were wired to.
Meditation works similarly. In a situation where we are left to deeply evaluate our core of being in a state that feels like oblivion. It’s indescribable until you’ve plunged into the deep state of truthfulness and manifestation of your being than can be denied. This practice when done consistently helps to remind the spirit and amend it for the broken words and maladaptive thinking it’s been conditioned with.
Negative thinking isn’t necessarily what we choose to do. It’s imposed on us as a way to begin processing whatever we go through in life as a default mode. No one just wants to sit down and think negative thoughts. No one wants to indulge them either. But when you’ve been placed on autopilot mode for too long, it can become somewhat second nature to think negatively first before anything else.
Embracing it just makes it easier, but a better approach would be to constantly give life a chance that it would accommodate us with both the good and not-so-good at times. And bask in the belief that it can only get better no matter what. Because at the end of the day, we’re truly the ones who can change our inner world or settings while relying on the outer world.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
