31 Dec How do we reduce negative thoughts so we can have better discussions not hurtful arguments?

Negative Thoughts

When it comes to arguments, we are sometimes transported back to a bad experience we had arguing with our partner or our parents. This experience can provoke various negative feelings and thoughts about ourselves, our partners, our parents, or the person with whom we are arguing at the time.

It’s not easy to manage an argument when we have negative thoughts. These thoughts and feelings seem to eat us up, creating bad feelings and poor experiences with the people who upset us. We can also spend more time thinking about negative thoughts than anything else, getting anyone down.

So, how do we reduce these negative thoughts so we can have better discussions and not hurtful arguments? It’s easy: We need to replace these thoughts with something else. But how can we do this?

When we argue, brains can take one of two paths: the automatic primal route or the higher conscious executive route.

Ancient thoughts

Automatic thoughts happen when we feel threatened. These trigger parts of our brain that regulate our emotions, the amygdala, into an automatic state based on our experiences as to whether we should fight, flight or freeze. This is an intuitive, unconscious response we have adopted over millennia to help us combat any perceived or imaginary danger. Even if there is no Sabre-toothed tiger in the room, we still get these same feelings and thoughts when we feel threatened or cornered.

Executive Thoughts

The other thought process is when we use the higher conscious part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, to process thoughts when we need to think about highly cognitive thoughts consciously. This is the “executive” or “entrepreneurial” part of our brain for when we have more complex thoughts that we can use positively.

Changing the way you think

So, when it comes to changing how we deal with perceived or imaginary negative thoughts, we need to change how we currently think about responding to these situations.

To improve our thoughts and how our mind works, we need to think about four things:

1. How relative are these thoughts to my situation now?

2. How much weight am I going to put in thinking about this thought?

3. How important is this thought at the moment?

4. How long am I going to think about this thought?

For example, if you start to think about negative thoughts and feelings triggered by an argument, think about how relative these thoughts and feelings are to the situation you are in at that moment. Are the thoughts and feelings there because of the situation or because they have taken you back to a time before then? Then, think about how much weight you are going to put on these thoughts. Then, think about how important these thoughts are to your situation, and finally, how long you want to “hold” on to thinking about those thoughts.

If you start to give a negative thought more weight and importance over time, you will feel worse over time and find it harder to change how you feel the next time you have an argument or how you feel towards that person.

So, how do you change the way you think about negative thoughts when they come up in an argument or at any other time?

When these negative thoughts come along, you start to notice they are there:

1. How relative are these thoughts to your situation? Think about how relative they are to your situation and start to replace them with a more positive experience to resolve the argument. (How and what would change for you if you looked at a positive outcome?)
2. How much weight are you going to give them? Think about what weight and importance you are going to put into these negative thoughts. (Are they important to you and your situation? If not, go back to thinking about what is important and how much weight you should put on the important positive experiences.)
3. How long do you want these thoughts to last? Lastly, think about how long you want to make negative thoughts last. We sometimes keep coming back to the negative feeling and running it around our heads just to say how bad our experiences were. Try to put less time into thinking about the negative thoughts and more time into the positive experiences you’ve gained – and there will be some, however small!

What Next?

If you complete the same process for positive thoughts as you have for negative thoughts, you will notice a change in how you handle difficult situations and start to feel better about yourself and your thoughts. If you have negative thoughts and they start to pull you down, think about how important they are and why you are putting so much time and effort into keeping them going.

How you talk to your partner will change.

If you start to think this way about arguments, you will notice a change. The arguments will then become discussions and make you and the other person feel more energised about how you talk to each other and how you feel about yourself.

Take time out regularly to change your thoughts.

Another way to change your thoughts is to start noticing what you are thinking about and how you are feeling at certain points in the day (e.g., waking up, breakfast, midday, lunchtime, mid/late afternoon, arriving at home, the last thing before you go to bed).

One way of doing this is to try to be more present in your thoughts at these various times. If you are waiting somewhere, say in a traffic jam, walking to work, or waiting in a queue, think about what you are thinking about and how you are feeling. Start to notice and change those negative thoughts by putting less importance on them and more importance on how it would feel if you had a different outcome; put some positive emotions on the outcome, and start to feel and see how that outcome/situation/argument could end differently. If you feel yourself getting into those easy negative thoughts (they are easy to pay attention to as that is what you are used to doing), draw yourself out, take a couple of deep breaths and think about the positive outcome you want.

Give the positive outcome/thoughts the attention they deserve, that you deserve by putting some time into the positive thought. Keep the positive thoughts going for a few minutes or longer. If negative thoughts come back into your head, think about whether you really want to pay attention to them or want to put more time into having those positive thoughts stay with you and your situation.

If you keep this up, you will start to feel better about yourself and the arguments you have.

A talk by Brendon Burchard inspired me to write this article.

Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash