Strategies to Challenge Negative Thoughts: What Actually Works

Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed with negative thoughts. It’s like they’ve taken over my mind, and I can’t focus on anything. The weird part is, these thoughts are about things that haven’t happened—and probably never will—but they still stress me out so much.

I wasn’t like this before. I used to feel pretty balanced, but now it’s completely out of control. I thought maybe I was overworking myself and just needed some rest, so I took almost a week off to do nothing. But it didn’t help. The thoughts are still there, and I’m not sure what to do anymore.

Has anyone else been through something like this? How do you deal with it? How do you stop negative thoughts from taking over? I’d really appreciate hearing what’s worked for you.

Negative thinking can often cloud our judgment, dampen our spirits, and hinder our progress toward personal growth and happiness. I remember a time when I found myself trapped in a cycle of negative thoughts that seemed to overshadow any positive aspects of my life. However, I made a conscious decision to break free from this mindset and actively work towards overcoming negative thinking. In the following paragraphs, I will share five bullet-point tips based on my personal journey that can help you overcome negative thinking and embrace a more positive and empowering mindset.

Practice self-awareness:

• Recognize when negative thoughts arise and be mindful of their impact on your emotions and behavior.
• Challenge negative thoughts by questioning their validity and seeking evidence to counteract them.

Reframe negative thoughts:

• Replace negative thoughts with positive or more realistic ones.
• Focus on the opportunities for growth, learning, or finding solutions rather than dwelling on the negativity.

Cultivate gratitude:

• Regularly practice gratitude by consciously acknowledging and appreciating the positive aspects of your life.
• Keep a gratitude journal or engage in daily exercises that remind you of the blessings and joys around you.

Surround yourself with positivity:

• Seek out positive influences, supportive relationships, and environments that uplift and inspire you.
• Engage in activities that bring you joy, such as hobbies, spending time in nature, or pursuing creative outlets.

Practice self-care and mindfulness:

• Take care of your physical and mental well-being through regular exercise, proper sleep, and healthy habits.
• Engage in mindfulness techniques, such as meditation or deep breathing exercises, to stay present and centered in the moment.

By practicing self-awareness, reframing negative thoughts, cultivating gratitude, surrounding yourself with positivity, and prioritizing self-care and mindfulness, you can gradually overcome negative thinking and embrace a more positive and empowering mindset. Remember, it takes time and effort, but with consistency and dedication, you can break free from negativity and create a more fulfilling and optimistic outlook on life.

I mean how do you build resilience to overcome anxiety. I think anxiety is stopping me from living life to a true potentional. Feels as if anxiety is making me scared to face my goals. Something within me gets triggered and I lost hope to face them. But i can’t live life like this way. I need to find a game plan to beat the odds

Just look for a win anywhere.

You woke up today? Win. Got out of bed? Win. Made the bed? Win.

I think a guy fully fleshed out this idea in atomic habits, but TL;DR identify anything that could be called a win, and celebrate that.

Try practicing daily gratitude and affirmations. It really works for me. I used to feel the same way back then, but when I started this practice, it helped me become more confident, and those negative feelings and thoughts gradually faded away.

You can change the way you think—but you have to work on it. I find it very helpful to write out my fears and then address them this way. Most of the time my head immediately goes to the worst case scenario, and I have to consciously interrupt the thought with reality. Thanks for posting this.

I would advise you to consider therapy sessions.

I'm familiar with the regular pattern of CBT. Try to 'catch' the negative thoughts, then challenge them. This is effective a lot of the time, because a lot of negative thoughts are irrational.

But sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are grounded in reality. So just dismissing them might not only be ineffective, but might also be a bad idea.

A lot of CBT resources don't acknowledge this possibility though. So I'm a bit stuck. What's a good way to deal with this?

"How do you build resilience to overcome anxiety? I think anxiety is stopping me from living life to a true potential. Feels as if anxiety is making me scared to face my goals."

I hear you. And to help soothe anxiety (and negative emotions in general), in addition to meditating, I recommend being open to seeing negative emotions as worthy, valuable and supportive friends.

Anxiety is loving guidance (although it probably doesn’t feel that way right now) letting you know you’re focused on (and pushing against) what you don't want. It’s a necessary part of your emotional guidance, like GPS in your car. But the more you fight it, you keep yourself stuck.

Anxiety's intention is to empower you to be the person you want to be, by letting you know when you're thinking about what you don't want, so you can gently shift your focus more to what you do want. It's also wanting to help you give yourself more soothing compassion, acceptance, and understanding.

• So instead of saying, "I'm dealing with anxiety," (which is valid). It's more accurate to say, "I'm receiving guidance in the form of anxiety, letting me know that I'm focusing on what I don't want, and not taking care of myself."

Whenever you feel stuck, it's because you're pushing against and judging where you are and how you feel. You're practicing a limiting belief that negative emotions are bad or wrong; when they're not — they're simply helpful guidance. It's understandable why you push against your current circumstances, but ultimately it doesn't help you free yourself.

All emotions are equal and worthy. But most people unknowingly create a hierarchy for their emotions (i.e. positive = good; negative = bad), but then you make it harder to feel better, work together with and control your thoughts and emotions. So the solution is to build a friendship and harmonious relationship with the "negative" side of you. Negative thoughts and emotions are here to support and empower you to move forward and be your best self.

Anxiety represents the belief that you won’t meet a standard to be supported. Anxiety is your insightful and supportive friend, letting you know you're not treating yourself with as much compassion, acceptance and appreciation that you deserve.

Anxiety is letting you know that you're practicing inauthentic and unrealistic expectations of yourself. So the more you allow yourself to respect your needs and be authentic, then you listened and followed anxiety's advice, and so it naturally goes away.

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Fear doesn’t hold you back. Fear indicates that you’re holding yourself back by focusing on what you don’t want. Fear is a symptom of the problem (i.e. judgment); not the problem itself. It’s here to help; not hinder.

Fear is your employee/ co-worker, reporting to you that you’re focusing on limiting beliefs. Most people want to fire fear for doing its job, but then you would never get the information you need. It’s like if you programmed your car’s GPS to never tell you when you’re going the wrong way, then you could never get to your destination. (And fear doesn’t tell you what direction to take; it’s simply telling you what thoughts you want to focus on.)

Asking, “How do you get rid of fear?” is like asking, “How do I get my GPS to stop telling me I’m going the wrong way?” The answer’s simple: Turn in the direction you want to go. Focus more on what you want and why you want it. Judge less; accept and appreciate more.

When you focus more on what you want and caring more about how you feel, then you will start to feel better. That will naturally build up more confidence in your ability to understand and work with anxiety and your negative emotions, and you will start feeling more comfortable and forward movement.

CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy:

Your negative thought itself doesn’t matter if you let it pass. We can’t get rid of negative thoughts and sometimes they protect us so it’s not all bad.

If you attach EMOTION to the negative thought that’s when it becomes a problem. How you feel about the thought will lead to a behavior.

It’s a voice. It’s not the voice limiting you - it’s the part choosing to listen that is limiting you.

There are other voices.

Listen to all of them…then make choices.

Most true introverts are hardwired to be hard on themselves…

Just watched a YouTube video this morning where the therapist suggested what she called “bridging” comments; not trying to shut off or immediately course correct the negative comment but essentially debate the negative comments with something less negative. The end goal being building up your tolerance for uncomfortable things or thoughts. My therapist doesn’t use this exact vernacular, but she does say the same thing. Make baby steps and celebrate the small wins.

Also I agree with @ that trying new things (even if they’re small and on your own) can help you build up confidence to keep pushing your limits.

I am currently in a depressive episode / mental crisis.

I'm feeling incredibly lonely and isolated, forgotten etc.

I just want to talk about what your solutions for self soothing in these situations are.

It seems counter intuitive to me to "soothe" loneliness without other people, but I'm out of options and so full of anxious negative energy that I have to do SOMETHING.

My strategies include:

• I used to drink to numb the pain, I stopped drinking alcohol 3yrs ago and will never go back.

• I go to a local bar and have made some friends there being a local. The downside is this environment only exists at night, and honestly hanging out with drunk people is meh. It's like a 1/50 chance that some interaction I want happens. I am waiting around for lightning to strike again because I honestly cannot understand what I did right / wrong and I'm desperately trying to figure it out.

• Sometimes I can exercise myself to a point of exhaustion, which is good, and I often feel good afterwards too. The issue is that it doesn't last long and the next day I am now sad AND tired/sore.

• I have been better about containing it when around other people, but sometimes when I am alone I completely lose my temper and scream. I am terrified of other people seeing this part of me... but honestly sometimes this release of intensity is one of the only ways to let go. Especially in situations where I feel I am being treated poorly, taken advantage of or otherwise disregarded. Most people don't care about this, and when I express this pain they view me as childish, which is a very negative cycle that I cannot seem to break yet.

I don't think they are entirely wrong either, I kind of understand why it's "childish" but I also feel like that's some really fucked up victim blaming for anybody who understands that stuff like this comes from childhood neglect and trauma.

My executive function is in the shitter. I have so much to do and I cannot focus on anything

One thing that has become clear is that I am just coping not really dealing with anything. This is where people tell me I need to "do the work".

I have reflected on the failed relationships. I see where I made things worse, I see places where I was being reasonable and my partner had already given up / checked out. I have taken steps to self-parent, to encourage myself when I get down and to speak compassion in the face of self-doubt and self hate.

I just... can't hold it back alone. It's like I am running a marathon and when I get to the end, they tell me it's in fact 40 miles not 26.4. Every time, the princess is in another castle.

The measure of success is not your high points, its how much you are able to pick yourself off the ground and keep going. I don't care about the end state, where I end up. I just need help getting up. I need someone OR SOMETHING to help me learn how to believe in myself again. It does not have to be a person. Maybe its that I lack a purpose.

Eventually I get back up but each time I fall and burnout it feels like it takes longer, more energy. It hurts more to battle these demons that feel like they are winning.

I want to rewrite my story, I do not want to live in perpetual victimhood. The only thing I want is to not want... to focus on myself in the present. I think I want to stop caring about other people... which feels wrong and like some kind of spiritual death or betrayal of my morals.

Isn’t figuring out what other people are thinking just how you survive? Like if you know their thought process you can keep them from hurting you more easily.

I would strongly suggest looking in to Carl Jung Shadow work integration.

Hey man, first off, I think you’re already in a super solid place of figuring this out bc 1) your conscious awareness is super high (you know the kinds of thoughts going thru your head), and 2) you know changing those negative thoughts is the answer—and you’re right.

Best way I’ve found to change negative thoughts is to find a NEW replacement thought about the subject that 1) feels good to you (most important), and 2) makes so much logical sense to you that it’s easy to keep repeating to replace the old thought.

For example, you mentioned the inner voice calling you lazy. (First off, that’s not your thought, that’s a thought you picked up from someone else that you started repeating to yourself.) So one new perspective that worked for me to change that is something I got from a friend.

Think of it like this: it’s not laziness; it’s purposely relaxing. And guess what? Relaxing is good for us and everybody deserves it for being a human on this planet. Whenever you find that voice say you’re lazy, remember that no, you let yourself relax bc it feels good and bc it comes with a lot of beneficial advantages (better ideas, clearer thinking, new perspectives, more creativity, more mental bandwidth to deal with things, insights to figure anything out, etc.). And then you won’t feel guilty when you do it and can actually get the benefit from it.

Do that replacement with as many negative thoughts as you can. We all will face negative thoughts til the end of time (it’s part of life), but from my experience once you get the handful of big ones you’ve been dealing with for a while replaced (and lean into enjoying your life more with a priority on your happiness), I found that I get bumped way less frequently and when I go, I recover faster too.

You got this and you’re closer to what you want than you might think!

I used to be constantly plagued by negative thoughts. It got to the point where they were genuinely affecting my day-to-day life.

Then life got really busy, and I simply needed to get things done. Almost by accident, I started setting aside a specific time each day (2 pm) to deal with whatever negative thoughts were coming up.

Whenever one popped into my head outside that time, I'd mentally say, "Noted. We'll deal with this at 2 pm."

Surprisingly, that was often enough. The thought would lose its urgency, and I'd get back to what I was doing. Then, when 2 pm rolled around, most of the things I'd been worried about had either resolved themselves or no longer felt important.

I've found this approach surprisingly easy to stick with and much more effective than trying to fight the thoughts in the moment.

Has anyone else tried something similar? Does this resonate with you? Or have you found other ways of managing persistent negative thinking that work even better?