How Negative Thought Patterns Affect Our Emotions

As humans, we have a natural capacity to allow negative thought patterns to affect our moods and emotions.

We are often not present at all.

Instead, we recycle through irrational worries, fear, anger, and even sadness from the past or future state.

We can criticize ourselves, put ourselves down, feel shame, guilt, or unworthy of receiving the good things in life.

These negative thought patterns prevent us from living in the present and hold us back from being in a joyful, happy state.

They create imbalance, worry, and fear about things that are never likely to happen.

When we stop and pause and become consciously aware of what we are thinking about, we then realize the myriad of scenarios we have on instant replay going through our minds.

Often with little relief.

How do you quiet the mind and let go of the fear, worry, and emotional pain you have on instant replay?

Developing the Practice of Mindfulness

Being consciously aware of what we are saying to ourselves helps us recognize negative patterns of thought.

It’s good to then look at where the thoughts are coming from and consider whether it is a:

• Fear, worry, concern, or irrational thought?

• Emotion – like sadness, anger, shame, guilt, frustration, irritation, hurt, hate, disgust, loneliness, feeling unloved or unworthy?

The difference between them is that fears and worries are easier to control and manage using mindfulness practices.

How Mindfulness Works:

For a short time, allow yourself to feel any emotions versus pushing them down, and then gently let them float away, consciously.

You can choose to name the story that keeps coming up for you to help raise your conscious awareness of recycling through the same old thought patterns.

When it comes up for you again, remind yourself that you are telling the same old story and to pack it up!

The more you redirect yourself from painful emotions, criticisms, and fear-based thoughts back to the present moment, these memories and feelings will reduce in intensity and frequency over time.

You can also use positive affirmations to replace negative thoughts and emotions as a pattern interrupt to retrain your thought processes.

You start to become more of an observer to your feelings rather than be disturbed by them.

You can effectively start to disengage from the mental clutter happening and manage and control your emotions more effectively.

Benefits of Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness helps you let go of thoughts and feelings that make us feel trapped in past problems or experiences.

The more you practice mindfulness, the more you can let go and release the things that have been holding you back from leading a happy life.

When you engage in mindfulness practices, you start to retrain your brain and associated neural pathways.

The more you do it, the less you will be bothered by negative thought patterns.

Liberating yourself from negative thought patterns allows us to live in a state of balance, peace, and joy.

Mindfulness enables you to be more present and aware in the moment.

And it helps you gain more pleasure from activities and boosts your concentration.

Mindfulness practice can reduce stress, anxiety, depression and help you cope better with adverse situations.

It puts some space between our thoughts and ourselves to help us break out of conditioned responses.

To respond to situations rather than react.

For mindfulness to work, we need to bring ourselves back again and again to the present moment.

This article was first published in Brainz Magazine