Negative Thoughts- How to Stop Recurring Negative Thoughts

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Many spiritual teachings today tell you to get rid of negative thoughts. While negative thoughts are not only attracting bad events into your life, they are also causing you suffering on an emotional and mental level. In this regard, it’s nice to shift your focus from a negative thinking pattern to a positive thinking pattern. But somehow this shift in focus does not really help to resolve recurring negative thoughts.

Why positive thinking is not the solution for recurring negative thoughts and how to stop recurring negative thoughts, will be discussed in this article.

The Problem with Positive Thinking

The teachings of focusing positively are widely spread in the spiritual community. While the teachings do have an effect on the person well-being, they still do not help to really resolve negative thinking. Because these teachings just help you to shift your mental focus from a positive to a negative one. But they do not help you to really resolve negative thoughts.

The problem with that is that practitioners of positive thinking tend to repress negative thoughts to such a degree, that they create a huge polarity of good and bad in themselves. Which then makes having negative thoughts completely unacceptable and evil and the only way to getting what they want is through positive thoughts. But this dynamic is very harmful in the long run. Because anytime you repress a recurring negative thought and not deal with it, it get’s stuck in your energy field which then makes you attract situations and things that do match that. Because anything you repress, anything that is part of your subconscious mind, is still part of your vibration. So it still attracts events and situations to you.

So just focusing positively will not work in the long-run. What you have to do is, you have to look at your negative thoughts, face them and deal with them right away.

The Truth about Negative Thoughts

Negative thoughts in itself are not bad. They occur with the same neutral energy as positive thoughts. In fact, all thoughts are neutral, only your judgment and emotional attachment make a thought a positive or negative one. The only difference between a positive and a negative thought is that a positive thought triggers positive emotions and a negative thought triggers a negative emotion. This triggering happens due to memories, individual judgments of what is good and bad, traumas and even desires you have. If a thought is completely negative for person A, the very same thought might be totally neutral for person B.

In order to understand this process a little better, we can look at this example.

Let’s say you are raised in a household that is very poor and you are now trying to manifest money. A thought like “you can’t be rich”, “money is something you have to work hard for” or “if I don’t succeed I will be as poor as my parents” will trigger a negative emotion which comes from a memory or trauma that is in your way of manifesting that desire. But the very same thoughts might not trigger a negative emotion in a person, who grew up in a rich family where money was always flowing and easy to access who is now trying to get more money, simply because the person has no memory or trauma around that subject.  And the reality is that this thought will not even occur in the rich person’s mind because there is no suppressed trauma or wound that attracts the thought. Because of any trauma, memory or repressed emotion, even though it is subconscious, keeps attracting life situations and events to you because it is still part of your energy field.

That’s why the big purpose of negative thoughts is that they serve you as messengers of your emotions.

Negative Thoughts and Desires

You place desires all the time. Any thought you have on what you like and don’t like is a desire you place into the universe. And as soon as you place a desire, you are starting the process of expansion to get to where you want to be. As soon as the initial excitement of that desire fades away, all wounds, traumas, and beliefs, that are do not match the desire have to come to the surface. They come in the form of negative thoughts that are pointers for the negative emotions you have to resolve inside of you.

Recurring Negative Thoughts

Recurring negative thoughts are pointers to an emotion you urgently have to deal with. It’s basically your mind constantly saying “Hey Linda, can you please look here”, “Hey Tim, I know you are doing well with your positive focus, but what about this emotion right here? Won’t you take a look?”. So the only reason you still have the same negative thoughts over and over again is that you are running away and repressing the emotion that is causing the negative thought.

How to Stop Recurring Negative Thoughts

Now we are going to look at the technique that actually stops recurring negative thoughts. The basic technique is the Letting go technique as explained in this article: How to Let go- The Only Technique You Will Ever Need. What we are gonna do is not really stopping the negative thought, more though we are resolving it at the core of it’s origin, which is in your emotions.

Before you start the exercise, I encourage you to write down all the negative recurring thoughts you have. When you are done with that, follow these steps:

The Process

1. Chose one negative thought from the list.
2. Take a comfortable position. Relax your body.
3. Take a few deep breaths and use the exhale to relax your body even more.
4. Now bring up the negative thought that is bothering you.
5. Focus on that thought and feel any emotions coming up.
6. Now ask the questions: “What emotion is this thought pointing to?”, “What emotion is causing that thought” and immediately tune in to how you feel and observe the emotion coming up.
7.  If an emotion comes up, can you name the emotion? Is it sadness, anger, resistance, or frustration?
8. Try to localize the emotion in the body (exp.: head, neck, arms, legs).
9. Be very specific with the localization and try to describe the emotion using colors, temperatures or even physical states such as (liquid, solid,..). Examples: “a burning sensation around my eyes”, “a cold stream around my belly area”, “huge tension on my shoulders going all the way into my neck”)
10. Now fully feel that sensation in your body and be totally present with it.
11. Relax into it.
12. Bring all your conscious awareness, all your focus and presence to this emotion.
13. (Some emotions are very painful. I encourage you to go with it and stay with the pain. It often get’s worse before the emotion fads away. You can make it 🙂 )
14. Set all judgment aside. Don’t think about how long you should spend with that sensation. Just stay there as long as the emotion needs. (This can take 1 minute, 5 or even 20 minutes, simply be unconditionally present).
15. Stay there until you feel a sense of relief or a fading away.
16. Usually, there are multiple levels to an emotion (and one thought pointing to a bunch of emotions) so the sensation you just felt may transform into a different sensation.
17. If so, repeat that process.
18. Repeat that process multiple times with every emotion that comes up.
19. When you think you are done, bring up the thought again and ask the questions. “What emotion is this thought pointing to?”, “What emotion is causing that thought” and immediately tune in to how you feel and observe the emotion coming up.
20. Repeat the letting go process.
21. When the emotions underlying the thought are fully resolved, you feel a sense of peace in your whole being and there is no emotion coming up when asking the question. You can then slowly come back and open your eyes.

Do this process with every negative thought on your list. Also, I encourage you to check out The Fastest Way To Create Long-Term Peace of Mind: Free 14 Day Email Course.

Echo

 After the practice, go out and live your normal life. Be aware of your thoughts and check if the thought you worked on comes up again. If so, there are probably more emotions to surrender to. If you go into the process again and you can’t really find emotions to surrender to, the thought that came up is just an echo. In that case just go throughout your life and wait a couple of days to see if it fads away.

The only real way out of a painful thought or emotion is in. You can never run away from your thoughts and feelings. So instead of repressing, try to face anything that is causing you pain directly. Facing it, being present with it and resolving it will save you a lot of suffering in the long run.