Anxious thought loops: what to do about them

Anxiety is part of being a human being.  When we are anxious, it does not mean automatically that something is wrong.  But sometimes we can be plagued by anxious thoughts that go round and round and just won’t stop.  It even feels as if they get worse and worse, the more we think, and  we can feel as if we are at the mercy of them.  It’s important to know that that is just not the case.  There is a lot that we can do to tame our thoughts, including looking out for bear traps and developing healthy thinking habits.   

In this blog, we’re going to look at each of the following unhealthy thinking patterns and see what we can do to stop them.

1. Negative bias
2. Personalising
3. Generalising
4. Catastrophising
5. Labelling

Let’s start with our natural negative bias.

Negative bias (literally, a leaning towards the negative) is where, if we receive ten good comments on something we have done, and one bad  one, we will focus almost exclusively on the bad one.  It doesn’t matter how positive the good comments are, how glowing the reviews, how much people really seemed to enjoy our offering, we will think the one negative comment is much more important than all the good ones put together.

This is because our brains are primed to keep us safe.  We have to pay full attention to anything negative, because it might be dangerous.  Our unconscious brain doesn’t have to pay too much attention to a positive comment or a friendly engagement, because these are obviously not threatening or dangerous.  Positive responses often fade out of focus, or even become invisible when we hear a negative comment. 

So, say you are cooking a family meal.  You have ten people sitting around the table, they wolf it all down, most people have seconds, and they call your dessert ‘sublime’ (even though you know it only took you ten minutes to put together and shove in the freezer).  All good so far.  And then auntie says she prefers boiled potatoes to the roast potatoes you prepared.  What are you going to focus on?  Chances are, the comment from auntie about preferring boiled potatoes to roast potatoes, when you cooked roast potatoes, will wipe out all the appreciative comments in your mind. 

This happens to everyone, without exception, and is even a natural and healthy part of our brain’s setup to keep us safe.  As long as we know that that happens, though, we can deliberately look at all the comments and pay them equal attention.  Suddenly auntie’s negative comment is only one of dozens, and things feel much better.  It takes effort and determination to spot negative bias and bring positive comments back into focus, but it is worth it. 

What to do?  Ask:  ‘Are there any positive comments or responses as well as the negative response?’  Given that we focus on the negative to keep ourselves safe, does the negative response really mean danger?  (Does it really matter that auntie prefers boiled potatoes?). If not, weigh up the responses in total and see what you get more of.

You can do this visually, to let your brain understand that positive comments are as valid as negative comments and to make the positive responses as visible as the negative ones.  Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle from top to bottom.  Write all the positive comments on the left hand side and all the negative comments on the right hand side.  This will show you there are more positive comments than negative and your unconscious brain will be able to see the relative space they take up when written down. 

You can do this physically as well.  Get out two identical bowls or containers.  Gather a heap of similar sized objects, like paper clips, marbles, grapes, or spoons.  Just make sure they are the same size.  Have one bowl for the positive comments and one for the negative responses.  For each positive response put one item in the positive bowl, and for each negative response put one item in the negative bowl.  This will make sure that the positives do not fade out of focus or become invisible.

Personalising

This is a trap we can fall into, which can make it seem impossible to escape bad thoughts.  Personalising is something we do when we make an event or an interaction just about us, and then feel bad about it. 

Say, for instance, we bump into a friend on the street and they seem distracted, even a little distanced, and before long they say they have to go, and they leave.  You feel as if there is something wrong.  This is the point at which we can fall into personalising, that is, making it all about us.  You may begin to think that you said something that annoyed them, or that you hadn’t responded to them the way they wanted, and you feel bad.  Or you think they don’t like you any more, or have blamed some recent difficulty on you, or have even just got bored with you.  You then think they don’t care about you any more, and soon enough, you wonder whether they really hate you. 

None of this is necessarily the case!  It is much more likely that they were distracted by something going on in their own life that you knew nothing about, that they were engaged in thinking about a work or a home problem.  Maybe it was just a busy time of day for them, or they were tired, or felt under the weather, or were just day-dreaming.  There could be so many things going on which explain their behaviour, which you know nothing about.

The question to ask ourselves here is “What could be going on that is not about me?”.

Personalising can happen in all sorts of situations.  Say, for instance, you are at the airport, and everyone in your party goes through security but you are singled out for a search.  You think they are targeting you, or “getting at you”.  The truth is, it has nothing at all to do with you.  They are performing random checks, or some of your jewellery set off their machine, or there is some other kind of operational principle at work, which has absolutely nothing to do with you.  Again, you can ask “What else might be going on that is not about me?”, and that will help to stop the thoughts going round and round.

What to do:  The key here is to look for the evidence.  “What could be going on that has nothing to do with me”?  Before you buy into your thoughts, look at all the  evidence there is for assuming that something is about you, and you will find that nine times out of ten, there is no actual evidence at all! 

Try reframing the situation, which means deliberately seeing it from a different perspective, which is more helpful.  You might for instance look on airport checks as the security services taking good care to prevent crime.  This makes me feel much safer! 

Generalising

Generalising happens when we apply  a conclusion we draw, from one event or set of circumstances, to everything, and make it a general principle.  Of course, if we think about it, generalising hardly ever works, but we can drive ourselves into despair if we persuade ourselves that it is so.

Say we have a bad day at work and make a mistake or are late with a deadline.  If we then start thinking ‘this always happens to me’, or ‘I never get things right’, or ‘all my work ends up being inadequate’ or  ‘nothing ever works for me’, or ‘everything always goes wrong’, then you know that you are generalising. 

Or say we are late for an appointment.  Although we are only thinking about this one time, we could generalise and say to ourselves ‘I always do this’, or ‘I am never on time’.  Of course this is not true.

Or you could have a conversation with a friend and there is a misunderstanding.  Instead of seeing what is happening right now and working out what to do about it, you could generalise and think to yourself ‘I always say the wrong thing’, or ‘I can never say what I think without it going wrong’, or ‘I always ruin everything’, or ‘Nothing ever goes right’.

The questions to ask ourselves here when we notice these words are like these; notice the trigger word (e.g. always, or nothing) and challenge it.

‘Is this really always the case’?

‘Does it really never happen’?

‘Can I think of a time when it has not all gone wrong’?

‘Is it really nothing’?

‘Is it really everything’?

These questions will break the cycle of thinking because you are challenging the assumptions of always, never, all, nothing and everything.  Add to that nobody and everyone.

A really helpful question to ask then is ‘What can I do in this particular case’?

What to do:  Don’t let yourself get away with generalising where generalising is simply not true.  Again, look for the evidence.  If you are going to believe that something is ‘always’ or ‘never’ the case, there needs to be evidence for that.  You are more likely to find times when it’s not ‘always’ or when something happens that you are tempted to think ‘never’ happens.  Are there times when you haven’t made a mistake, or been late with a deadline?  Have you had good days at work?  Gather all the evidence and then draw your conclusion.

Reframing can help as well.  You could look at failure as valuable information as to what is not working, so you can make improvements.  You can look at being late for an appointment as an opportunity to find out how long it actually takes you to get ready to get out, or at how long a car trip takes when you have to find parking as well.  This is all useful for the future.

Catastrophising

Catastrophising is simply when we assume the worst possible scenario.  For instance, if I get a headache, I could immediately think I have a brain tumour and have two weeks left to live in total agony.  Or if I am at the train station and one train is delayed, I might immediately think that my train will be cancelled, and then I will miss my connection, and then my flight, and my holiday will be totally ruined.  Or, our partner is a bit later home from work than usual and we immediately think they have been in an accident, or been abducted, or have abandoned us!

We all do this from time to time, and it is just the brain in survival mode trying to alert us to potential disaster so that we can avoid it.  When we carry on with catastrophising, though, it can become a nasty cycle of ever-increasing doom. 

You get the feeling!  When we do this a lot, our brains get used to expecting the worst and carry on painting lurid pictures of doom and disaster, which make us highly anxious and unable to function properly.

What to do:  The way to challenge this is to ask one of these questions

‘Am I imagining a worst case scenario’?

‘Is this the only possible outcome’?

‘Is it possible that there might be something else causing this’?

‘What else might be going on’?

Look for the evidence.

Of course, if I have a headache, it might be because I haven’t drunk enough water, or I have spent too long staring at a screen, or I am tired, or I am really stressed, or any number of benign plausible reasons.  What is the evidence that you have a brain tumour?  A headache is no evidence for that 

If a train is delayed, it may not be that the whole network is down (see how this crosses over with generalising?).  It may be that there is a very specific reason that just one train is delayed and that it will not affect any others.  What is the evidence that your train will be delayed?

If our partner is later home than expected, it may be that there is a lot of traffic, or they were on the delayed train, or a meeting has overrun, or they have been held up by a client, or they forgot to tell you they were working late, or any number of other plausible reasons that don’t involve the worst case scenario, or the particular catastrophe you are imagining.  Examine the evidence.  Is there any evidence that something is wrong?

Ask the questions to gather the evidence and drag your brain back into thinking more helpful thoughts.

Try reframing the situation.  If your partner is often ‘late’, it may be an opportunity to talk about letting each other know with a text when there is a delay, or to review our expectations of each other, or even to review our idea of what is ‘late’.  This can lead to much better understanding.

Labelling

Labelling is when we jump from a one-time behaviour, something that we do or say,  to making that behaviour part of our identity, part of who we are. 

So we might get up late one weekend, and then tell ourselves ‘I am lazy’.  If you are really skilled at negative thinking cycles, you could use generalisation and catastrophising as well, and think ‘I will never succeed at anything because I am lazy and can never get up on time!’

Or, if you are tired and irritated and you snap at someone, you might then think ‘I am a horrible person’.   It’s not true, you just snapped at someone.  If you were to generalise then you might say to yourself ‘I can never be nice to people’, and then you could catastrophise and say to yourself  ‘I’ll lose all my friends because I am a horrible person and I can never be nice to people’.

Or, you might make a mistake at work, miss a detail, forget about an appointment, misunderstand an instruction, just get something wrong.  We all do it.  You might then draw the conclusion ‘I am stupid’.  This is labelling.  You are leaping from one thing you did (or didn’t do) or something you said, to a whole character trait, in one millisecond!  Of course, you could generalise by saying ‘I never get things right’ and then add catastrophising  by saying ‘I am going to lose my job, or be humiliated, or get thrown out of my friendship group because I am stupid and I never get things right!’.  See how I did that?

So, what to look out for to spot and then avoid labelling:

Phrases like ‘I am’.  When you say ‘I am’ you are saying something about your identity, about who you are.  This is pretty final.

When you hear yourself say ‘I am’, you can challenge that by asking

‘Am I really?’ ‘Is that who I am’?

‘Are there times when I have not been stupid?  Or horrible?  Or lazy?’

And then remind yourself of those times.

Look for evidence that you are, in fact, what you are telling yourself you are.  If you find evidence to the contrary, that is really important, because it blows your theory that you ‘are’ something or other. 

Reframing could help to see a situation as one in which you can learn to do something differently.  If you spot an unhelpful pattern, this could give you the impetus to put something in place to change that pattern.  For instance, if you find yourself forgetting things frequently, you might consider using a notebook to write important things down so you don’t have to keep them all in your head.

Those of you doing the Making Great Life Decisions programme will have spotted that all this is closely linked with having a flexible or fixed mindset, and with developing a strong sense of self.  Both are enormously helpful in combatting these negative self-talk patterns. 

Look for the evidence, reframe and see the bigger picture.

As I write this, we have scaffolders taking scaffolding through our basement to the back of the building, where the cat flap is, banging about and making a lot of noise.  It is raining.  The scaffolders have turned up a couple of hours later than expected.  Now we have a very elderly cat, and she is frightened by noise and building activity, but was also furious at being kept in, so we let her out in the rain, thinking she would come back in after she had done her rounds.  No.  She didn’t.  So we had six scaffolders turn up with three lorry loads of scaffolding, and Cleo the cat was out in the cold and the rain, on the wrong side of the cat flap, terrified to come back in.  Of course, I catastrophised!  My imagination immediately took me to Cleo, soaking wet, shaking and cowering under a bush, frightened out of her wits, running off in her terror, getting lost, and never able to come back home!  See what I did there?

No.  Look at the evidence.  Cleo will be wet and a little cold and absolutely furious, and maybe even confused and frightened by the noise, and taking refuge under a bush, but she will make her way back in good time.  There is no evidence that she is suffering (cats usually do find somewhere dry to hide).  There is no evidence that she won’t find her way back home (that’s ridiculous, she’s lived here for twelve of her eighteen years).  It is much more likely that she is reclining on a neighbour’s sofa being hand-fed fresh salmon.

Always look at all the evidence.  If there is evidence against your negative thought, pay attention to it, as that will stop the cycle.  Keep on looking at the evidence. 

Reframe when you can.  Seeing things from a different point of view, and seeing the benefits of something you feel is bad, can be really helpful.  Reframing often involves looking for opportunities, looking for silver linings, or even just looking at the funny side of things.

See the bigger picture.  Seeing the bigger picture means zooming out from this one scenario that has triggered us, and seeing it in a bigger setting.  That setting may involve evidence that doesn’t fit the negative scenario.  That is a good thing.  Any reframing you do, and paying attention to your sense of self, who you really are, deep down inside, will help you see the bigger picture. 

For those of you doing the Making Great Life Decisions programme, almost every video in the Managing Moods section and the Building Confidence and Self-Assuredness section will help with seeing the bigger picture and not only avoiding negative self-talk, but establishing positive self-talk.

The bigger picture also involves any experience you have, that usually things do work out.  When you have catastrophised previously, the worst case scenarios most likely did not happen, and there were often totally different explanations for people’s behaviours than those you had imagined.  Knowing that we are fallible in our negative self-talk is all part of the bigger picture.  Knowing that our brain in survival mode nudges us to see the danger, so it can keep us safe, is also all part of the bigger picture.  We all do these things from time to time, and there is not something wrong with us if we have negative self-talk.  We just have to pay a little attention to keep a better perspective. 

Cleo did return home, after a few hours, very slightly damp and very miffed.  She took full advantage of our attempts to make amends, by demanding we feed her roast chicken by hand, which, obviously, we did. 

If you would like more help with this, there's a video series to go with this blog post on this page.