Forget About Positive Thinking

Hi! I'm Caroline, a psychologist from Amsterdam. This is my eighth post!
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Picture of me frowning by Mark David

Forget About Positive Thinking

People often get the advice to stop thinking about negative things and to ‘think positive thoughts’ instead. I often hear the phrase: “I try really hard to think positive.” I imagine someone clenching their fists and pressing their eyes shut and shouting to themselves: "Everything is great damn it!". I think it's almost impossible to try and force yourself to think positive thoughts instead of the negative ones that are occurring to you.

Absinthe Drinker by the great Pablo Picasso

Here’s what I think works better than repeatedly attempting positive thinking:

1. Choose to latch on or not. It's impossible to stop your thoughts. But you can learn to choose how much you grab hold of unhelpful thoughts that occur to you. Ask yourself critical questions about your negative thought, like do I need to do something with this now? Maybe you can let it just be there.

2. Redistribute your attention. Whether or not you've decided that the negative thought is indeed useless to you at that moment, you can decide not to give it 100% of your attention. It's there, but what else is there that you can give at least part of your attention to? A good way to do this is by doing something that engages you, that demands your attention so you're not fully focused on the negative, like doing something creative or social.

3. Question its importance. People who suffer from too much rumination are usually people who take themselves, their thoughts and their feelings very seriously. It can help to question how important your negative thought is. Does it really matter? Is it a question that really needs an answer? Is it worth suffering for? Is it a realistic worry? Is there evidence for it? Is it helping me right now? See if you can create thoughts that are less black-and-white but more realistic, and more helpful.

Drawing by Amanda Oleander

Here is a (fictional) example to illustrate the use of these three tricks:

A man named Gregory is terrified that his wife will cheat on him, and keeps having negative thoughts about this, like:
How can I find out if she is? How can I prevent it from happening? What if she suddenly leaves me out of the blue?
He spends a lot of his time sitting in a chair, checking her e-mails, imagining different scenarios in which the betray can unfold. He tries really hard to think positive, by telling himself to let it go, and to remember that she loves him and bad stuff like that will never happen. It's a constant fight in his head between these two unrealistic extremes: It will all go wrong versus Everything is and will be okay.
Here's how he could apply the three tricks to think less negatively when he is sitting in the chair one day:

1. He asks himself: What am I doing right now? Do I need to find out if she's cheating on me or prevent it right now? Is it even possible? She hardly even uses her e-mail. He puts the phone away and just sits there for a moment.

2. He gets up out of the chair, grabs some ingredients and starts making a cake. The thoughts continue, and the cake will not even be very good, but the thoughts are slightly more in the background, because his attention is also on baking. He enjoys the smell of the butter and grated lemon zest.

3. He comes up with thoughts that are more realistic and more helpful than the ones that keep going in circles in his mind: I will never be able to know how things will go. Do I keep suffering like this, with the illusion of control, or can I accept that it is pointless and just enjoy each day that we have together? I can't control what my wife wants, or does, or thinks, or feels, no matter how hard I work on it. Why do I think it's so likely she will cheat on me, even though I have no evidence for it? Is this really even about her love for me? Maybe it's about my love for myself.

It's a small step, but with practice Gregory's firm belief in disaster starts to crumble. And so can yours!
Writing things down can help with this process.

The Optimist by Laura Graves

What do you think? Feel free to share you thoughts, questions and experiences on this subject in a comment.