When it comes to how to stop negative thoughts, compulsive thinking, anxious feelings, I’ve read my fair share of books and watched my tons of videos available out there. They’re all sorts of gurus and famous writers that somehow have these things all figured out. I did this not because I’m anxious or have these issues, but because these things can arise in the minds of everybody, sane or not, at any given moment.
Which means that, for your own safety, you should be familiar with why are negative thoughts arising in the mind, what is compulsive thinking and what you can do to stop all of it. Spoiler alert: you can’t do anything. But keep reading, this might be helpful to you one day. If you don’t think that’s the case, I can help you out with your writing. Ok, back to the subject at hand.
Negative Thoughts
The first thing to do when you want to stop a negative thought is to stop identifying it as being negative. Who told you a certain thought is negative? It might seem that way to you, but is it really possible that a thought, a thing that you came up with, be negative? Is it true that you made up the thought? You’re not sure? That’s because you’re not actually thinking. You’re simply having a mental diarrhea. Thinking means exercising your thought process consciously.
Right now, your thoughts, which you categorise as negative, are simply pouring out all of the time. Which makes you believe they’re all negative and bad. Thinking is something that you do consciously. When you’re having a mental dysentery, as in, when all of your thoughts come at you at once, it is very easy to say that all of them are negative.
You think about a God, that’s positive thinking. You think about the devil, that’s negative thinking. There is no such thing. There are no negative or positive thoughts. Either is a conscious thought, or it’s a diarrhea. And no, you can’t stop a dysentery just by stopping your thinking. You can’t stop thinking because you can’t stop the mind. The mind will stop when the heart, lungs and kidneys will also stop. And you don’t want that.
Compulsive Thoughts
The other form of thoughts that bother us humans from time to time are compulsive thoughts. These thoughts are not positive, nor negative, they’re just a lot. You just sit there, trying to look all fine and normal. But on the inside, you are constantly bombarded by these thoughts that you never asked for. They sometimes make sense, sometimes don’t. The only rule is, they’re there, over and over again, telling you the same story.
Compulsive thoughts are like a bad Netflix subscription. You signed up, and then you’re stuck with the same shows that play over and over again, time and time again, until the end of the month. And then, even though you want to change the subscription, there’s no way to do that because the shows will simply stay the same. Which means you’re in for another month of the same programming, and it’s surely exhausting.
How To Stop Negative Thoughts
There’s no way in which you can stop negative thoughts. Because there’s nothing to be stopped. There are no negative or positive thoughts. Again, there’s no way in which you can safely stop the mind. Your mind is like a plane that never lands. It just goes on and on, creating the world around you.
Everything that you live, be it pleasure, pain, desire, tasting an amazing dish, feeling the sun on your skin, having sex, breaking your knee, buying your dream beach house or supercar, everything happens in your mind. All of your life has happened inside your mind. All of your life will happen only inside of your mind.
The only way you can get rid of negative thoughts, compulsive thinking and so on is to stop identifying yourself with these thoughts. Think about dysentery, the physical type. When you’re having diarrhea, the first course of treatment is to stop eating bad food. Something caused this, so you have to stop eating that food which caused it. So happens with the mind and what you consider being negative thoughts.
All you have to do is stop eating bad food. Which, in case of the negative or compulsive thoughts is, you identified yourself with these thoughts, with something which you are not. These thoughts, emotions, feelings that arise alongside them, these things are not who you are. But you believe in them to such an extent that it’s simply impossible for you to see them for what they are. They’re just thoughts. They come, and then they go. Let them follow their course.
