These 4 Ancient and Modern Ways Will Help You Eradicate Your Habitual Negative Thoughts
On fighting your bad emotional habits with Stoicism and cognitive therapy
I wish I knew a long time ago what Tara Bennett-Goleman knows about emotional habits.
She says there are three ways to fix our bad emotional habits: at the thought, emotion, or behavior level.
She outlines specific strategies for addressing emotional habits at the thought level.
There’s also some relevant Stoic doctrine that can be helpful. They’re laid out below.
Have a conceptual understanding of schemas and their triggers
We all have schemas that are like little storage units.
They archive ingrained ways of thinking, acting, and feeling we learned in the past.
They’re emotional habits. And once triggered, we start to think, feel, and act according to these schemas.
So first, we have to be aware that schemas exist. Have an understanding of the most common ones and their characteristics (I’ll write an article about it later on).
Once understood, you can begin to be aware of which ones you have.
Empathize with your schema once you recognize it
Don’t call yourself out when you learn about your schemas.
Be gentle with yourself but accept the fact that you have it.
Perception
Physical definitions
Epictetus, teacher of Marcus Aurelius, says, “It is not things themselves that trouble us… but our thoughts about those things.”
One powerful tool that Marcus used was giving physical definitions to things that happened to him.
Look at the object itself as it is in its essence, in its nudity, and tell yourself the name which is peculiar to it.
This [Imperial] purple is sheepskin soaked in the blood of a shellfish. Sexual union is the rubbing together of abdomens, with the spasmodic ejaculation of a sticky fluid.
It’s an exercise of defining objects objectively.
Focus on reality without giving what’s in front of you any subjective or value judgments.
What you can and cannot control
Here’s an article about it and here’s another article.
It’s taking inventory of things you can and can’t control, then separating them between good and bad. The fact of doing this is a powerful way to manage your thoughts from spiraling out of control.
Use comparisons wisely
Goleman differentiates between downward comparisons and upward comparisons.
A downward comparison is where you see how you match up to someone who is worse off than you. It makes you realize how well you’re doing relative to how bad things could be. Not a bad way to look at things.
Upward comparison is where you compare yourself with someone doing better than you. Not a very healthy way to see things. It’s only going to make things worse.
Downward comparison can be a great way to counter schema thoughts.
Use counter-thoughts
Counter-thoughts are thoughts you’ve prepared in advance to fight negative ones.
If you’re about to do battle and take on a challenge, you can prepare yourself with counter-thoughts.
There’s a Stoic doctrine for this as well. It’s called premeditatio malorum. It means premeditation of evils and troubles that may lie ahead.
(I wrote an article about it here if you want to learn more about it).
Talk back and get fed up with your thoughts
There comes a time when you get fed up with all those nagging thoughts in your mind telling you to do this or that.
So, give those thoughts a fight. Talk back to your thoughts and take a stand. Get angry, acknowledge it, and don’t push the thoughts away. Tell them you’re going to do the opposite of whatever they’re telling you to do.
2-step exercise on challenging the negative thoughts in your mind
Goleman breaks down a simple 4-step process for attacking our negative schema thoughts.
- Become mindful. You don’t have to meditate and get all spiritual. Whip out a journal and note the negative thoughts, as they start to arise. Otherwise, afterward.
- Challenge the thoughts with the above strategies.
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