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Writer's picture Connor Whiteley

5 Ways to Deal With Negative Thought (Cognitive Psychology)


cognitive psychology, negative thoughts, mental processes, cognition

Today’s psychology episode dips into cognitive psychology as we are dealing with negative thoughts but social psychology as well because some of these ways to deal with negative thoughts are to do with social factors.


All in all, today’s episode of The Psychology World podcast is on How to Deal with Negative Thoughts because let’s face it we all have negative thoughts sometimes but sometimes these negative thoughts can become problematic. Leading to depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.


Therefore, I guess that this psychology podcast episode looks at clinical and abnormal psychology as well.


Here are five ways to deal with negative thoughts.


Challenge Your Thoughts:

A lot of our thoughts and especially our negative thoughts are wrong because of various biases that you can read about in Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition and it’s because of these why we need to challenge our thoughts. To see if we are correct and there is a problem or to see if we are incorrect.


For example, if I think I’m a bad psychology student then I need to think and question this assumption and by looking at my grades I’m not a bad student but I’m only okay when it comes to essays.


Thus, the takeaway point is to question your thoughts to see if you’re right and only if you’re right should you be concerned about this thought.


Focuses on Strengths:

Thankfully, we all have our strengths and; not so thankfully; we all have our weaknesses and it is our strengths that we must focus on.


For instance, if my negative thought is that I am a bad dancer; I am; then I can focus on my strengths of being a good writer, publisher, marketer and student.


In other words, focus on your strengths because I bet you- you are great at a lot of things that other people are not.


Practice Gratitude:

This is especially important if you’re criticising yourself because you have failed to do a number of things that you needed to do today and if you are punishing yourself.

But the important thing to remember is that to deal with these negative thoughts you need to be grateful to yourself instead of punishing yourself.


Such as: today I wanted to write 4 chapters of my Clinical Psychology book, do some audiobook recording and some other things.


However, I didn’t do a few of these things so the negative thought of why didn’t you do this when you need to came to mind. But I practiced gratitude and at least I did some of these things. Plus, I had other things going on today.


In other words, cut yourself some lack and thank yourself when you accomplish something.


Release Judgement and Find a Positive:

To put it simply, try not to judge people and try to find a positive in the mess because if you try and find a positive then this will help your mental processes be positive.


Plus, I’m not saying don’t acknowledge and try to sort out the negatives in a problem but do them in a positive manner and don’t judge people for their mistakes as this only leads to

negative thoughts.


Note: I know that this is a lot easier said than done!


Seek Out Professional Support:

I know that the week that this post was written in is Mental Health Awareness week 2020 and I must stress that it’s important if your negative thoughts continue and you’re struggling with life then please seek out professional support for help.


And no it does NOT make you weak for seeking out help.


I fully believe that it means you are a strong person as it takes a lot of courage to seek out

professional help.


I hope that you have found this podcast episode on cognitive psychology useful.

If you want to learn more about psychology, then please consider signing up to my newsletter to receive psychology news and your FREE book.


Have a great day,

Connor.

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