Escaping Your Negative Thought Loops (8 min read)

Despite our best efforts, it is so easy for us to kid ourselves into following a path that is against our best interests. Now more than ever, our attention is being shifted from what is right but difficult to execute, towards what is quick and easy. It’s been said enough but laziness breeds complacency and, after a while, we can lose sight of what really matters in pursuit of superficial things.

If we always sway towards the easy option, we can begin to take our situation for granted because it isn’t challenged, or challenging. We need to become aware of  our ignorant behaviours so we can start to consider implementing more productive ones. This is not to say that we must do away with our darker behaviours but, rather, replace the ones which aren’t authentic to us or beneficial to our growth.

To avoid getting tangled in unproductive behaviours, I will lay out a step-by-step exercise you can incorporate into your own life. In a nutshell, the point of this exercise is to heighten your self-awareness so you can increase your responsiveness when these behaviours arise, because they will arise, no matter how much you practise self-discipline. By saying the words ‘notice this’ when you spot yourself following a negative trail of thought, you are bringing your attention back to reality and away from  a fantasy that doesn’t serve your best interests.

The aim of this practice is to catch yourself and alter your behaviours before it is too late. By saying 'notice this' when you feel your negative thoughts bubbling up to the surface, you are stopping it in its tracks, instead of letting it spiral into something that is harder to handle.

This method isn’t wholly original; there is a very similar idea that is found in Buddhist teachings. Not only this, but the author Aldous Huxley also had the same idea in his utopian book, The Island, where the birds of the island (mynahs), known for mimicking sounds, were taught to say “attention” and “here and now” to the inhabitants. When the main character asks a local why they did this, they retort: “you forget to pay attention to what’s happening. And that’s the same as not being here and now”. [1]

Just as the birds remind the humans to pay attention, so does the ‘notice this’ prompt when you say it to yourself; it reminds you to be present in the moment and, thus, ignore any negative thoughts that bloom in the mind.

In the modern Western world, appreciation for our surroundings is something that we are losing sight of because our perceived stresses are warping our perspectives and distracting us from what really matters. With the simple things that we take for granted, developing countries are acutely aware and humble. But what is it that they are doing that we are not? They accept their circumstance. Not only this, but they retain the spirit of revelling in the simplistic yet beautiful moments. Instead of following self-centred pursuits, they seek value in community experiences, such as singing and playing drums in a group. This activity can also serve the same purpose as the birds’ reminder: to remember to have gratitude for their surroundings.

Step One

Before getting to the core of this exercise, there is an important first step. Write down your indulgences. This can either take a few minutes if you are aware of your tendencies, or a few weeks if not. Really take the time to notice your patterns, your behaviour and your vices.

This first step of self-reflection is essential as you need to familiarise yourself with what your low (i.e. unproductive) pleasures are compared to the sustainable pleasures so you can then learn to spot the bad ones before they take hold of you.

Having an influx of pleasures in our lives should serve as a warning that we are letting our negative thoughts hold us hostage, with our only plan being to distract ourselves from facing the negative thought that we are avoiding. Although we may think this is the only choice, we can instead choose to acknowledge that seeking pleasure indicates that there is a deeper underlying negative thought that is unresolved. Once we realise that our pleasures are coping mechanisms, we can work up the courage to unpack the negative thought voluntarily before it spirals into a negative feedback loop.

With this understood, we can move onto the next step, which is to rank these pleasures down from most harmful to least harmful, or highest pleasures to lowest pleasures.

What counts as a low pleasure?

This can be anything that you do in excess, something that once you start, you struggle to stop despite getting less and less in return. A good question to ask yourself is: Am I getting something more valuable back from this experience or am I giving some part of myself away?

If you need more guidance, you could use the words ‘sustainable’ and ‘unsustainable’ to categorise your pleasures. An unsustainable pleasure is anything that dulls your senses: something that makes you feel emptier than you did before. A sustainable pleasure, in contrast, is productive in nature, promoting motivational growth as opposed to making you stagnant and empty.

We latch onto these empty pleasures to suppress our negative thoughts. These thoughts are negative if they derive from our low self-esteem, the insecure side of ourselves. This makes them unproductive as they are a dead-end loop that convinces us that the only escape is to indulge in pleasure.

These low self-esteem thoughts manifest in two ways: mentally (in isolation) or in a real-life situation.

Two Categories

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1. Post-mental thought – If you find yourself reliving a moment that happened to you after the fact. Something that lingers in your mind like an itch you can’t scratch.

For instance, if you are self-critical about a moment that happened to you, you should say or think ‘notice this’ as soon as you realise you’re thinking about the moment, which will help you to start getting off the unproductive trail.

These low self-esteem thoughts don’t have to have originated on the same day either; you may be feeling dejected and embarrassed about something that happened years ago. We all have those late-night thoughts, reliving a moment, fantasising and wishing that we could have done it a different way.

For example, you may suddenly find yourself thinking about an ex and feeling jealous, worthless, making you spiral into wondering what they’re doing. This can become obsessive to the point where you need a strong pleasure to distract your mind from the thought of them. Your low pleasure solution may be to watch pornography which, in the end, only makes you feel emptier.

2. In-the-moment real interaction – This could be any situation where you weren’t being true to yourself, whether it’s speaking negatively about yourself to another or being embarrassed when your true self is revealed.

Another example is when you self-deprecate too much as a defence mechanism i.e. to fill an awkward silence. This is particularly dangerous over time because, if you overuse it, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy where you will resort to low pleasures so as to live up to the character you created.

Escaping Our Negative Thought Loops With The Notice Method

Like all of our behaviour, there is a prime mover, a negative thought that led down the path of negative self-talk. Maybe it was an unmet need, something that was lacking which led you into a negative spiral, or it could be that you were burnt by someone you trusted, and instead of taking it on the chin, you decided to let your bitterness dictate your path.

The aim of the ‘notice this’ exercise is to nip all of these moments in the bud before you go further along the path where it becomes harder to backtrack. The more we recognise these thoughts and the quicker we do it, the greater understanding we will have of ourselves, giving us an awareness of what needs to be worked on.

If you want to speed up this process, over the course of a week (or however long is necessary) write down a list of every negative-thought loop you found yourself going down. To reiterate, write down anything that you did, said or thought that is linked to a negative behaviour. Anything that originates from low self-esteem can be written down, either a pleasure you sought in response to negativity, a low self-esteem thought or a real interaction that rubbed you the wrong way. Your account will be more reliable if you write about them soon after they occur, jotting them down to be analysed at the end of the day.

When you mull over these moments in the day, consider what made you go down that thought trail. Trace the origin of these instances. Were you rocked by a situation because it reminded you of a time in your childhood? You may not even realise what past trauma is affecting you. It can be any moment from your past where you were called out for an imperfection. They say your childhood memories are your most impactful, still evoking strong feelings in adult life when an event reminds you of this past encounter. Say it is an insecurity, the next time you are placed in a relevant situation, if you haven’t come to terms with it, your embarrassment will make you react as you did the first time.            

The key to improving and rejecting negative-thought loops is to try to notice them earlier and earlier, and saying “this doesn’t serve my interests to think about this” until finally one day you notice them right when your intuition flashes, stopping the thought right there in its tracks. Eventually, you will learn to harness confidence and high self-esteem, and decrease the number of low pleasures you act on. In time, you will rewire your brain and notice any negative trails of thought earlier each time.

At the end of this training, you can also begin to write long form about these ‘thought trails’ that keep tripping you up. This is important as a lot of the reasons why we go down certain avenues are obtuse and may be complex to unpack.

Closing thoughts

To conclude, the ‘notice this’ method or the way in which you catch yourself as soon as your intuition flashes is the way to inner peace. If you make it a consistent habit, you will keep getting quicker and quicker at spotting when you are on the unproductive track until, eventually, you will not feel the need to get on the track at all. If you choose to do the extra steps of writing down your pleasures and negative thought trails down, you are even more likely to achieve meaningful milestones of self-reflection.

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Thanks for Reading!

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Brandon Bartlett

Newel of Knowledge Writer

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Sources:

[1] Aldous Huxley - Island