Positive internal thinking Continued

Last topic we talked about the thought process and internal thinking we do on the daily bases. Well today lets look more into that negative side that comes up so unconsciously and how it affects us. We tend to think our thoughts are just thoughts, but they are not and have been shown to affect our brain chemistry. That is why research has found that optimists, who have a positive self-talk and belief in themselves, have better physical and psychological health than those of us that tend to be pessimistic with a negative self-talk. 

Very often the quality of our self-talk has been influenced by our parents, friends, peers, media, school, etc., when we were younger. We can get into a loop especially with chronic stress in which the self-talk is mainly hypercritical of ourselves. It can influence our self-esteem, levels of confidence and our relationships. Our self-talk is influenced by our beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world in general.

Some of our negative self-talk can be in the form of Automatic Negative Thoughts. These ANTs can just pop into our heads and can also be just below our conscious level. Usually when we are not stressed we have a ratio of 2:1 positive to negative thoughts, however when we are under chronic stress our thinking becomes more negative and, while these negative thoughts would help us to deal with a physical threat to our well-being thousands of years ago, they are absolutely unhelpful when dealing with the psychosocial stressors we encounter in our modern world. In fact the type of negative thinking that the fight/flight response triggers makes complex problem solving more difficult.

To help to reduce our stress it is important to identify these Automatic Negative Thoughts, and take action to deal with them. 

We will continue this conversation and thought reviewing another post. Give feedback and tell me how this topic makes you feel.