It’s not abnormal to have negative thoughts pop up in our minds. These intrusive thoughts become problematic when we consciously want to free our minds of them. The harder we try to extinguish the negative thoughts from the mind, the stronger the mind unconsciously brings them back to our consciousness; such that we become so worried and act irrationally sometimes.
A classic case of morbid thinking or negative thought is that of a successful midlife landlord obsessed with death thoughts that prompted him to want to trade off his palacious apartment upstairs of his house with his tenant’s basic apartment downstairs to enable free movement of his corpse after his death. Morbid thinking or negative thoughts can be so overwhelming that you start feeling the certainty of their occurrence.
We always desire to have our minds under our control, but often our minds don’t work on the same page with us. You want to sleep, but your mind keeps drifting up and down, repeating some negative occurrences that you are trying to forget back into your consciousness and keep you awake.
Many private homes are wearing perimeter walls higher than prison walls because of intrusive thought of intruders attacking their homes.
Football fans have repeatedly lost their minds to playing back games that their teams lost, thereby devastating them more, interfering with their daily activities, and resulting in a psychological and physical breakdown.
We are always at war with persistent intrusive thoughts in our minds such that we literarily want to carve out the mind from our bodies. Morbid thinking can be traumatic and has great potential to cue depression into our body system.
We always want to suppress or push morbid thoughts out of our minds by coughing them out or by saying STOP to the mind. And if you are like some Christians, you might want to ‘bind and reject the negative thought with the power of the blood’. But psychologists say this approach is not just wrong, but has the potential to make the situation worse.
Research Findings
Wegner et al., 1987 discovered through a psychology experiment that the very act of first trying to suppress a thought made it fight back stronger. Corroborating Wegner et al. theory, Wenzlaff & Wegner in the ‘post-suppression rebound effect’ experiment, 2000, also confirmed that the more thoughts are suppressed, the harder they fight back.
Petrie et al., 1998 studied how thought suppression interacts with emotions. They found that emotional events were the hardest for participants to suppress. “It’s as if the emotional content of a thought makes it even more likely to push back against the attempt to suppress it”.
Research also ascribed difficulty in quitting smoking to thought suppression. Salkovkis & Reynolds, 1994 found that smokers trying to suppress thoughts about smoking have higher cravings than those who had not tried to suppress their thoughts.
Some studies have also looked at people’s attempts to suppress traumatic incidents, prejudices, physical pain, and obsessions. A familiar pattern emerges in many of the studies: the attempt to push away thoughts about pain, trauma, or obsession brings them back with a vengeance.
Take Control
Patients of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) need to consult a professional to manage persistent intrusive thoughts. But if you are not a sufferer of either OCD or PTSD disorders, and you are fixated on a persistent negative thoughts loop, you can help yourself with the following steps.
-Recognize that negative thoughts are just what they are-thoughts and not you. They are not red flags or symptoms. It’s just a thought, not a fact. Always remember that you are not your thoughts, you are temporarily holding onto them
-Feel into them: Oftentimes, negative thoughts are an invitation to explore a pent-up emotion, like grief, fear, or anger. Experts say you should tune into your body and try to pinpoint where you’re holding onto these emotions physically; whether it’s chest, stomach, arms, or legs, then send an imaginary 10 deep breaths to the area to release stress hormones. Medical journals say deep breathing engages the parasympathetic nervous system that activates stress-relieving hormones so you can think more clearly about what’s bothering you and come up with solutions.
-Shake it off: Psych Central.com says that you can shake it off. Just like in the wild, when animals experience a stressful event, they don’t sit and ruminate about what just happened, instead, animals shake out their bodies, and then move on with their day.
-Let the negative thoughts linger, don’t wrestle with them or try to push them away. Don’t look for meaning behind it. Accept that they will pass away with time. However, if the thoughts refuse to go and it becoming overwhelming, it may lead to depression and anxiety; which can cause mental health problems. Therefore, if intrusive thoughts consume your energy, cause you distress, or make it hard for you to do your daily activities, tell your doctor about it.
-Exercise your body: Instead of brooding over morbid thoughts, experts say you should get engaged in exercises like yoga, dancing around your home, shaking out each of your limbs, or any other form of movement you find enjoyable. Research affirms that physical activity promotes stress relief, among other benefits.
Source: Dare Agbeluyi, Chief Publisher.
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