Article for August, 2007

Changing Our Negative Thoughts

A. B. CURTISS is a board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist, a licensed marriage-family therapist, a certified hypnotist, a massage therapist, and the award-winning author of nine books including BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESSION.

We all have negative thoughts that pop up now and then. They are little cause for concern unless we focus on them. When we focus on negative thoughts too long we can trigger the fight-or-flight response whose whole duty is to prepare us for action. We end up in a high state of alarm that we call stress.

When stressed it’s hard to ‘catch our breath’ because breathing is more shallow. It’s hard to swallow, our hands may sweat, our heart beat speeds up and our hands, our head, or even our whole body may start to shake. Stress is hard on the body and can deplete our energy leading to feelings of helplessness and despair. Long term stress can increase your risk for some health problems, like depression. Stress triggers changes in our bodies that can compromise our immune system—making us more likely to get sick. People who live high-stressed lives generally aren’t able to fight off illness as well.

How your brain works: Learned association

Thinking a negative thought instructs your brain to get in touch with other negative thoughts and then you are in danger of triggering the fight-or-flight response. This is because the brain works by learned association (think “black” and the thought “white” will fire up; think “salt” and the thought “pepper” sparks up.) A thought that is triggered will cause similar, associated thoughts to spark up, like attracting like.

Learned associations determine your feelings and other responses, like your mouth watering when you think of lemons. Your mouth wouldn’t water at the thought “lemon” unless you had some prior experience (association) with its juicy, tart flavor.

Stopping negative thought

We can stop thinking the negative thoughts by choosing to think neutral thoughts instead. When we think the first negative thought, it is learned association that causes our brain to remember all the other negative thoughts we have stored. As one negative thought sparks up another, we get more and more down on ourselves. Anxiety triggers the fight-or-flight response and causes stress chemicals to flood into the brain. This can quickly turn into depression.

Instead of a stressful thought, we can think a neutral or nonsense thought. If we are able to change our thoughts and pay attention to something else other than the negative thoughts, it is as if we are giving “instructions” to our brain to pay attention to something else. The brain’s communication can change just because we decide to change what we are thinking.

Since a human being can only pay attention to one thought at a time, (we have only one attention), while you are thinking a neutral thought, you cannot at the same time think a negative thought that causes the brain to produce stress chemicals. As you concentrate on a neutral thought, the negative feelings may lessen.

This is the reason a soccer player can break a bone during the heat of a game and experience no pain until afterwards. Her concentration on the game distracts her from receiving the signals that are supposed to alert them to the pain of their injury.

Brainswitching

How do you brainswitch? Just choose a nonsense or neutral thought in advance, to have “at the ready” whenever a negative thought hits. It could be a mantra, a repetitive word like yes, yes, yes, a nursery rhyme like “Row, row, row your boat,” or even a neutral word such as “Green frog” that you concentrate on instead of concentrating on the thought “I am feeling fat” or “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Anything works. The last time I used the technique myself for an early-morning attack of depression, I just repeated a line of “Hiawatha” over and over: “By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water, stood the wigwam of Nokomis.” It took less than five minutes and I was back to sleep.

Yes, it takes a little effort at first to concentrate on your neutral or nonsense thought. But you can immediately lessen the pain this way by continually interrupting the negative thought. If you break up or eliminate this thought, you interrupt a negative feedback loop to the emotional areas that are running in high gear, taking away some of the fuel for the negative feelings.

When you feel yourself sliding into some negative thinking, immediately start saying your chosen exercise repetitively, over and over to yourself. Continually substitute it for the negative thought. You’ll soon get the hang of it.

Brainswitching seems almost too simple. But the exercises do work! Yes, it takes a bit of concentration. But it gets easier as you do it. When you find yourself stuck in negative thought, just grab onto to your chosen positive thought or nonsense song and that will begin to situate you in the neutral thought patterns instead of the negative one. The pain will lessen. Then, as soon as the edge is off the pain, get into some physical activity or chores and ease into your regular schedule. It can be done! Green frog. Green frog.

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