Finding Freedom from Negative Thoughts

Do you find yourself dealing with negative thoughts?  You can find freedom from negative thoughts.  I have been doing a series of posts on the power of our thoughts.  It is important to understand the influence you have on your mind and thoughts.  Your mind is very powerful and it will believe everything you feed it.

My mission is to bring an awareness of negative thoughts so you are able to identify, challenge, minimize, or even erase these unhealthy patterns from your thinking.  If you haven’t had a chance to read my other post you can read them here. The Power of Your Thoughts, This is Who You Are, 4 Steps to Stop Negative Thinking,

The Struggle is Real

I struggled for so many years with debilitating negative thoughts that controlled every aspect of my life.  Through counseling, I realize that I was the cause for the belief system that I had established in my mind.  I started applying what my counselor called Thought Therapy.  (Please do not confuse this with Thought Field Therapy.)  Dr. Pettit taught me that we control the thoughts we think and believe.  If we do not purposefully reprogram our minds it will naturally go to our “default” way of thinking.

Unfortunately, my “default” was negative thoughts.  It is hard to believe that I allowed my own mind to beat me up and destroy me.  It would be great to tell you that I quickly applied his techniques and stuck to them…. but I didn’t.

I kept getting bound up in my own shackles.  It was like I would unlock one false distortion and then another one would pop up.  I would then take back the false distortion that I just unlocked and place it back in my thoughts.  My mind was a hot mess.

Hopelessness and Despair

The number of times that I would lay on my bed and cry is more than I would like to count.  I wanted the thoughts to stop but I just didn’t seem to have the strength to overcome them.  Hopelessness, despair, and a feeling of being powerless overwhelmed me.  Even though I would pray and ask Jesus to help me…. the thoughts would continue to hold me captive.

What I didn’t realize was that I was trying to overcome the thoughts on my own strength.  I needed the anchor that holds my soul together… the one who brings peace within the storm… the hope that never fails… I needed to surrender it to Jesus.  What I needed  was for Him to empower me to overcome this unhealthy thought pattern.

Hope on the Horizon

It was during the process of becoming whole (mind, body, and spirit) that I finally realized that I cannot overcome the “demons” within my own mind.  Yes… I called them demons.  Not that I thought that I was possessed but some of the thoughts in my head were pure evil.  Especially the thoughts of suicide.  Some of you may totally understand what I am talking about.

I found hope when I put my trust in Jesus to heal my mind.   It was not an easy thing to do since I thrive on being in control.  How do I give up control to someone I cannot see?  What I discovered my precious friend, is that when I surrendered control… I gained control over my life.

If you are not familiar with my how my journey of healing began you can read it in the Welcome to Living Life Loved post.

Overcoming Negative Thoughts

Learning to overcome my anxious negative thoughts was a day-by-day walk.  It all started after my sweet Lord showed me that He wanted to pull me out of the pit I was in.  Who would have thought that something good could come out of a house fire?  But that is just like Jesus… taking something broken and raising it to life.

*If you are not familiar with how my journey to wholeness began you can read it at my Welcome to Gracefully Living Life Loved post.

As I applied what Dr. Pettit taught me about reprogramming my mind, along with my Jesus, I started to find freedom from the negative thought patterns.  I experienced the amazing grace I sang about growing up in church as a child.

If you want too want to experience that same amazing grace it is available to you.  All you have to do is choose Jesus.  It is that simple.  Go to my Let Faith Arise page if you want to know more about having a personal relationship with Jesus.

Negative Thoughts

Our default negative thoughts are often related to a distortion that we may or may not realize we have.  Here is a list of the different types of distortions.  Understanding the different types can help you to figure out where you are making inaccurate assumptions or jumping to false conclusions.

David Beck is a researcher and a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine  He has written a best-selling book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.

In his book, he outlines an approach for treating depression.  It mostly focuses on identifying, correcting, replacing distorted systems, and patterns of thinking.

Click on the book if you are interested in previewing or purchasing his book.  The books listed are affiliated links.  If you purchase the book I will get a small commission at no extra cost to you.  That commission is what keeps this blog going.  Thanks in advance!

Types of Negative Thoughts

The distortions listed come straight from Burns’ Feeling Good Handbook (1989).

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking / Polarized Thinking

This distortion manifests as an inability or unwillingness to see shades of gray. The person sees things in terms of extremes – something is either fantastic or awful, you are either perfect or a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is when you take one instance or example and generalizes it to an overall pattern.  Overgeneralizing can lead to overly negative thoughts about oneself and one’s environment based on only one or two experiences.

3. Mental Filter

The mental filter distortion focuses on a single negative and excludes all the positive.  The mental filter can foster a negative view of everything around you by focusing only on the negative.

4. Disqualifying the Positive

Disqualifying the positive distortion acknowledges positive experiences, but rejects them instead of embracing them.

5. Jumping to Conclusions – Mind Reading

Jumping to Conclusions distortion manifests as the inaccurate belief that we know what another person is thinking.  Seeing a stranger with an unpleasant expression and jumping to the conclusion that she is thinking something negative about you is an instance of this distortion.

6. Jumping to Conclusions – Fortune Telling

Fortune telling refers to the tendency to make conclusions and predictions based on little to no evidence, and holding them as gospel truth. One example of fortune telling is a young, single woman predicting that she will never find love or have a committed and happy relationship based only on the fact that she has not found it yet.

7. Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization

This distortion involves exaggerating the importance, or meaning of things, or minimizing the importance or meaning of things.

8. Emotional Reasoning

Emotional reasoning refers to the acceptance of one’s emotions as fact. It can be described as “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

9. Should Statements

Should statements are statements that you make to yourself about what you “should” do, what you “ought” to do, or what you “must” do. They can also be applied to others, imposing a set of expectations that will likely not be met. When we hang on too tightly to our “should” statements about ourselves, the result is often guilt that we cannot live up to them. When we cling to our “should” statements about others, we are generally disappointed by the failure of the others to meet our expectations, leading to anger and resentment.

10. Labeling and Mislabeling

These tendencies are basically extreme forms of overgeneralization, in which we assign judgments of value to ourselves or to others based on one instance or experience.  Mislabeling refers to the application of highly emotional, loaded language when labeling.

11. Personalization

This distortion involves taking everything personally or assigning blame to yourself with no logical reason to believe you are to blame. This distortion could include believing that you are the cause for the moodiness or irritation of those around you.

12. Control Fallacies

A control fallacy manifests as one of two beliefs: (1) that we have no control over our lives and are helpless victims of fate, or (2) that we are in complete control of ourselves and our surroundings, giving us responsibility for the feelings of those around us.

13. Fallacy of Fairness

This assumption is not based in reality and can foster negative feelings when we are faced with proof of life’s unfairness. A person who judges every experience by its perceived fairness has fallen for this fallacy.  They will likely feel anger, resentment, and hopelessness when they inevitably encounters a situation that is not fair.

14. Fallacy of Change

Fallacy distortion involves expecting others to change if we pressure or encourage them enough. This distortion is usually accompanied by a belief that our happiness and success rests on other people.  Which then leads us to believe that forcing those around us to change is the only way to get what we want.

15. Always Being Right

This distortion is the belief that we must always be right, correct, or accurate. With this distortion, the idea that we could be wrong is absolutely unacceptable, and we will fight to the metaphorical death to prove that we are right. To them, it is not simply a matter of a difference of opinion, it is an intellectual battle that must be won at all costs.

16. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy manifests as a belief that one’s struggles, one’s suffering, and one’s hard work will result in a just reward.

I found this information in the article Cognitive Distortions:  When your Brain Lies to You.  You can read the entire article if you are interested.

Decision Time

If you are still with me you are probably feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the information.  Of the 16 distortions listed, I had over half of them before I started my journey.  The question is, are you ready to rid yourself of any of the negative thought distortions listed above?

You can be free of negative thinking.  If you apply the 4 Steps to Stop Negative Thinking and trust Jesus with healing your mind you can experience freedom.  I know this to be true because I have experienced it along with many others that I have mentored.

So what about you?  Have you experienced freedom from negative thoughts?  I would love to hear about it.  Please leave a comment below.

If you felt this was useful information please share it so others can benefit from it also.  Let’s share the love.

Gracefully yours,

A book that you may find very helpful in understanding why you struggle with negative thoughts is called Captivating.  This is the book that really helped me break free from the negative thought patterns.

I have given hundreds of them away to women.  That is how strongly I believe in this book.  Click on the book if you want to preview it or purchase it.