Negative thoughts always have a purpose
Difficult thoughts and emotions are a universal part of the human experience. There’s nothing wrong with you for having them or feeling them, and it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Negative feelings can naturally serve as the first alarm our body sounds when a situation is not right. Where they become bad for you is when they get stuck in the body, or looping in the mind.
Chances are that some of your negative thoughts have become so habitual, so normal, that you aren’t even aware of them. They’ve become like the background noise of your life.
Which negative thoughts get stuck and mess up the body-mind connection?
The kind of negative thoughts that become problematic are the habitual, repetitive ones that we have become so accustomed to that we don’t challenge them. These thoughts are usually cognitive distortions, or things we’ve come to believe that aren’t grounded in what’s real. They are our attempts to make meaning from confusing situations. Here are some examples:
Here are five common negative thoughts along with the cognitive distortions they represent:
“I’ll never succeed in anything.”
Fortune Telling – Assuming you can predict the future with certainty, usually in a negative light.
“I feel like a failure, so I must be one.”
Emotional Reasoning – Believing that because you feel a certain way, it must be true, without considering evidence or rational analysis.
“I made a mistake; I’m such an idiot.”
Labeling – Using exaggerated, emotionally-loaded language to describe oneself or others based on specific behaviors or mistakes.
“My boss said he liked my presentation, but my coworker pointed out an error I made in it. So the presentation was a failure and now I’ll never get promoted.”
Selective Abstraction – Focusing exclusively on specific negative details while ignoring broader context or positive aspects of a situation.
“They said I did a good job, but they’re just being nice.”
Disqualifying the Positive – Rejecting positive experiences or feedback by insisting they don’t count or aren’t valid.
Negative thoughts vs positive ones: Mind Body Connection In Action
If you’re not sure how your thoughts can affect your body states, try doing the following:
Take one example of a cognitive distortion from the above list and say it to yourself out loud. How do you feel saying the words? What are the body sensations? Does it make you feel at ease, calm, empowered? Probably not. Instead, you probably felt pangs of doubt, distress, or ashamed. These emotions manifested as tightness or heaviness in the body.
The same effect is at play all the time with negative thoughts. They live in our body as emotions. This is how powerful the mind-body connection is!
Effects of negative emotions on the body: how thoughts create diseases
Chronic negative emotions–also called toxic stress–have been shown to shorten our telomeres, a part of our DNA that influences how we age. Stress literally makes us age more quickly. It’s also related to diseases like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and digestive disorders.
Negative emotions that are repressed (and therefore not processed and released in a healthy way) also suppress the immune system. They keep your nervous system in an extended state of flight-or-flight, which depletes the energy you need to fight off pathogens. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are good for you in the short term–they can help you focus on a threat or a demanding task, such as intense exercise, or nailing a client pitch. But when they’re getting released into your bloodstream constantly, it makes it harder for your body to protect and restore itself. Our bodies were just not meant to exist in a state of elevated emotional stress for extended periods.
How can I heal my relationship with negative emotions for good?
Changing well-developed thought patterns takes time and effort. But the good news is, it can be done. Understanding the mind-body connection is the first step. But you can take this even further with our MaKe Healings membership program. You can learn how to relate to negative thoughts and feelings differently and interrupt the pattern that keeps you repeating them. The secret is our unique combination of psychosomatic practices that help you regain control and reconnect to your body. We’ve helped hundreds of people just like you find true, lasting healing from a range of acute and chronic diseases. Head to our Become a Member page to check out some of their incredible healing stories.
Changing well-developed thought patterns takes time and effort. But the good news is, it can be done. We created a way to do just that with our MaKe Healings membership program. You can learn how to relate to negative thoughts and feelings differently and interrupt the pattern that keeps you repeating them. The secret is our unique combination of psychosomatic practices that help you regain control and reconnect to your body. We’ve helped hundreds of people just like you find true, lasting healing from a range of acute and chronic diseases. Head to our Become a Member page to check out some of their incredible healing stories.
