Podcast 002 Transcript: Overcoming Repeated Negative Thinking Patterns

Hi!

Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about overcoming the thought patterns and some of the chronic negative thinking patterns that can become a part of our everyday thoughts and feelings, that can keep us stuck in a negative cycle that perpetuates the way that we see our lives and the way that we feel that we can show up and operate in our life every day.

One of the things that can be difficult to overcome, is this sense, or feeling, that we can’t break the negative cycle of thoughts that seem to bombard us. Sometimes these chronic thoughts can go round and round in our heads, to the point where we are unable to think about or focus on anything else. Sometimes, these thoughts can be so debilitating that they can stop us from getting on and doing the things that we would like to be doing and they certainly can affect our emotions and how we feel as we go through our day.

Negative thinking can become a chronic condition that affects how we feel about ourselves!

For many people who have experienced

• long-term abusive situations

• who may have been in narcissistic relationships

• who may have grown up with some person or authority figure having told them that they are somehow not good enough

• that they are somehow incapable of achieving what they want to achieve in their lives.

• being told that their dreams or desires are not something that they will be able to achieve. That they don’t have the right to achieve those things.

• that somebody-elses thoughts, needs and desires are more important than their own...

These people can very often have some very negative ‘self-talk’ which actually, on investigation, is not even their own voice. It will be a voice that has been ‘adopted’ to again and again reinforce the message, reinforce the information that we are not good enough, that we are not worthy, that we do not have the right to a life or to fulfil our own hopes, our own dreams or our own desires.

Self-Talk coming from threatening 'others'

Sometimes that self-talk can come from another person, where we have received that information repeatedly.

That self-talk that we hear has come from people outside of us, where we are in a situation where we are threatened, where we feel unsafe, where we know that if we were to somehow show any interest, or begin to engage in any action where we would follow through on our own thoughts or desires, that it would place us into some position of insecurity, of being unsafe, of placing us in some sort of danger.

Unconscious 'adoption' of our 'group beliefs'

Sometimes, we can take on those thoughts or beliefs from other people completely unconsciously. Because in some way, form or some shape, those beliefs of the other person have been handed on down to them - that they believe that they also are unable to follow through in their own thoughts, their own beliefs or desires. And they too have taken on that belief, perhaps handed down from parent to child: an epigenetic belief system that is handed down from generation to generation where there is a belief that we have to stay within our ownboundaries, inside of our own ‘parapit’, our own safety zone, which is our own ‘home’, culture, our own society, our own (boundaries …)

And we can extend these boundaries in many shapes and forms - but fundamentally there is a belief that we shouldn’t be raising our heads above the parapet. That we shouldn’t be seen to be rising above the position that we have been taught to believe that ‘that’ is where we should exist and that we should not venture beyond that!

So we can take on these beliefs that have been passed on down to us.

Power-play tactics creating negative self-talk

We can take them on from an external ‘other’ person who has enforced their position pf power onto us (as we talked about previously) - in that they will make us believe that we do not have a right to ‘follow through’ in our own life purpose, in our own dreams and desires.

Personal Experiences of failure creating our inner self-talk

We can also even have had experiences in our own life, whereby, when we have tried to follow through on a dream of our own, something that we have acted upon, and then had a negative experience as a result of that. Sometimes we can even ‘create’ the belief, completely from scratch for ourself, that somehow we will not be able to fulfil our own dreams, our own desires.

So you see we can have this coming from multiple areas. Some coming from outside of ourself (from a third party) , sometimes inherited, and sometimes we can ‘create’ that thought or belief completely from our own personal experience.

Sometimes we can become 'stuck' in an image or the 'story' of our own failures

There are ways that we can begin to look to dissolve those thoughts or patterns.

A little further in todays podcast there is a meditation that i s aimed to begin to help you to break down some of those cyclic, repetitive thoughts. To open a window to the opportunity and potential that there is another option and another choice.

That we can begin to make other choices about the thoughts we wish to have, and to let go of the negative thoughts that are not particularly helpful, or positive for us.

These negative voices that w e can hear in our own mind - that are telling us old stories that keep us stuck in a place where we are not allowing ourselves to move out of that place - to grow or expand - to have a different or alternative experience.

Working on the Mind-Body Connections

This meditation is really a first step approach to begin to open up that possibility. But there are many other ways to begin to change our mindset and to open up that possibility to change.

One of those options is to begin to work, not only on the level of our thinking mind, but also to begin to work on the level of our emotional body…

Because our thinking mind, our beliefs and our emotions are inextricably linked, in that any important thought process, any important belief that we hold will have been integrated into our body. We will have ‘embodied’ that belief with a strong emotional component.

That can sometimes be a positive emotional component. So it may be a thought or a belief that has been embodied because we had a powerful experience of love or joy. And equally, we can embody a powerful belief because we have had a negative emotional experience, such as fear or shame.

Redefining 'Positive' & 'Negative' Emotions

It is true to say that when we talk about emotions we are used to using descriptions such as ‘positive emotions’ and ‘negative emotions’, good or bad emotions.

This is a double edge sword - because we can very easily think that all positive emotions will lead to ‘good things’ and ‘good patterns’, and that all negative emotions are naturally going to result in ‘bad experiences’ and ‘bad patterns’.

However, it is really important to be aware that through this process of beginning to understand what our emotions are linked to and how they are affecting us, that in fact our emotions are neither positive or negative!

They are simply providing a biological feedback which we experience as an emotion, and we have decided, or 'labelled' them as positive or negative.

However, when we begin to let go of those labels of emotions as being either positive or negative, and we begin to look at how we have embodied our beliefs and experiences with those emotions, we can begin to look beyond the idea of positive and negative emotions - and we can begin to look at the patterns themselves. What it is that we have embodied in terms of the thinking, the belief that is either serving us well, or perhaps not serving us so well.

When we do this, we can begin to see that sometimes negative emotions are giving us biological feedback to help us to move forwards and experience life in a new and different way. They are often there to help us to consciously evolve our situation, so that we move towards an alignment with our true self, our true purpose and our true values.

Also equally and oppositely, we can be having very positive emotions that can be reinforcing experiences which can set expectations, and beliefs around expectations that can be very difficult to sustain or achieve! In essence, sometimes those positive emotions can actually create patterns which can keep us stuck in situations where we can become frustrated and unable to move forwards in a positive way, or to reconnect with what it is we want to be doing, or something which would be serving us better. Precisely because we get caught in this addiction to a good feeling that stops us from evolving in a way that might actually be more beneficial for us.

So ultimately, when we break that down, it is simply to just become aware of the fact that we want to let go of these ‘labels’ of good or bad emotions and become aware that with our thoughts and beliefs, with stories we tell ourselves and these ongoing repetitive cyclic thoughts that can keep us very stuck there will always be an emotion attached to those thoughts.

When we recognise that, we can begin to reflect on

• what that thought process is doing in our body and

• what the emotion is that is connected to that thought process

In the upcoming meditation this is reflected as this idea of these emotions that are ‘fluttering flags’; these fluttering emotional flags that are attached to this roundabout of thoughts that can continue to go around and around in our head.

And as we become aware of those thoughts, we can begin to shift our attention to these ‘fluttering flags of emotion’ and become aware of

• what they are and

• where they are in our body and

• to allow ourselves to recognise that these two aspects go together, and that we can have a choice to let those go

This podcast Meditation

(Meditation starts at 17:44)

And this meditation is to help you to release those repeated cyclic negative, repetitive thoughts and to begin the process of beginning to opening to the potential to allowing yourself to let those go.

I advocate that along with this meditation that you may begin to notice which emotions are strong for you - and which ones come up and present themselves.

Just notice

• which emotions they are

• where you feel them in your body

• allow yourself each time you listen to this meditation to ‘notice’ those feelings and then ‘allow’ yourself to breath through those - and let them go

Each time you do this meditation - if you come back to the beginning of this meditation allow yourself to practice this same process of

• ‘noticing’ - feeling where that is in the body and

• ‘breathing and allowing’ yourself to let that go

Just letting that feeling flow through you and out of you with every breath as you listen to the meditation.

If it helps you, you might consider noting down in a journal

• what those emotions are

• where you feel them in your body

Otherwise just allow yourself to engage in the process and let your body simply move you through as you release those thoughts inside of this meditation.

This weeks podcast Meditation “Releasing Repeated Negative Thought Patterns”

Listen on PodBean: https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-iabnh-b4e7f0

or iTunes: (to be updated)