Chapter 3 : Overcoming Negative Thinking

Dispelling fears for a more positive outlook

Fears and phobias are something which can have an affect on anyone to some extent, while most of us can conquer our fear and most fears and phobias are dislikes more than actual phobias, for some people fear and phobia can be severely distressing and have a huge impact on their day-to-day living.

Fear and phobias obviously cause negativity and constant negativity gets us down, while some phobias and fear can be deep-seeded you can break the hold it has over you with time and help. There are various methods of help, and the more deeply seeded the fear or phobia, the more likely professional help may be advised in the form of a therapy or hypnotherapy. If the fear is only mild then you may overcome it by using self-help methods.

Understanding fears and phobias

In order to be able to conquer fears and phobias it is essential that you understand them, fear and phobia simply causes us uncomfortable thoughts and feelings when placed in certain situations. It can bring feelings such as nausea, vomiting, dizziness, a terrible feeling, a tight band of pressure around the head, pains in the chest, a feeling of breathlessness and trembling. These are all feelings that we ourselves allow to build up and take over our mind and body, dispelling fear is a matter of taking back control and putting things into perspective.

This is the basis behind curing any form of fear or phobia although if you suffered for many years it will take longer for you to recover, recovery is possible. Phobias and fear are basically exaggerated anxiety, and learning methods and ways to relax is a good start to curing fear and phobias. There are many self-help books, DVDS, courses and audio courses that can help you make a start, any self-help material designed for dealing with anxiety and stress will help but there are many specifically aimed at those suffering from fear and phobia.

Benefits of overcoming the fear

The benefits of dealing with and overcoming phobia and fear is immense and those who have recovered and overcome their fears and phobias have likened it to being reborn again, the world takes on new meaning when fears are dispelled.  A new positive outlook develops which leads to living a happier and more fulfilled life, you start to feel good about yourself and what you can accomplish in life, you are finally free to do anything and everything that your heart desires.

While there might still occasionally be some anxiety for a time when confronted by your fear or phobia, it will be unlike the intense fear that once had you incapacitated from it. Once you have realized that the key to overcoming these feelings is inside you, the fear you feel doesn’t have the same hold on you it once did and will eventually give up its hold on you altogether.

Overcoming dissociation

Dissociation causes us problems with our emotions, physical sensations and how we feel about ourselves as well as the world around us. It is often associated with depression and anxiety or when a person has gone through a traumatic experience. People suffering from dissociation offer have feelings of unreality and often fear they are going insane or that they have some incurable illness. Talking with and being around others becomes almost impossible and deep anxiety that is caused by the feelings can develop into a social phobia.

The feeling of dissociation can vary from person to person depending on the circumstances that brought it about, but common thoughts and feelings associated with disassociation include:

  • The world around feels unreal
  • Not belonging in the world
  • A grey fog covering their vision
  • Like having a veil over your head
  • The world is moving at a faster pace than normal
  • Confusion
  • A terrible feeling of not being able to cope
  • Unsure of yourself
  • Others find happiness but not you
  • Extreme anxiety
  • Feelings that everyone is against you
  • Feelings that everyone is talking about you

These are just some of the feelings caused by disassociation and these feelings eventually cause the sufferer to believe that they have to turn deeper inward to themselves in order to get back into reality. They continually watch themselves for any brief glimpse that reality as they knew it is returning, of course the more they turn inward and worry the worse the symptoms are.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help those suffering to overcome feelings of dissociation particularly when the cause is severe trauma. Those suffering from dissociation due to anxiety and stress may be able to rid themselves of the feelings through self-help methods and the help and understanding of a doctor.

It is important to remember that the world hasn’t actually changed, it is only your perception of the world and those around you that has really changed and these are only temporary thoughts and feelings you are having. Once you have conquered and overcome what is causing the feelings of dissociation you will see things as you once used to. For those who suffer from feelings of dissociation due to depression and anxiety they should realize that the feelings are just that, no more than feelings and these feelings will leave in time. It is important not to be constantly studying them and wondering when they will go, try to accept that they are here for a time and give them no more thought. Once you have lost some interest in your feelings and are not constantly worrying about them it can be surprising how quickly the world once again becomes the world you once knew. Accepting your feelings and any thoughts you might have during this period is essential, for it is only when you lose fear of the situation can you recover. 

Overcoming Doubt

Overcoming doubt is easy, if you don’t doubt it, of course.  However, most of us entertain an element of doubt in our minds about being successful whenever we try something new.  In fact, almost everyone is in some way plagued with doubt of some kind.  Take science, for example. Do you think all the scientific advancement achieved would have been possible without questioning the prevailing assumptions at the beginning?  Suppose you want to start a business or launch a novel project. Are you absolutely sure that it will succeed? There is always a little fear or doubt at the beginning.

Despite your doubt, you cannot let it keep you from your ultimate goal. The reason is simple. You must be prepared to risk failure because it is important for overcoming doubt. Dive right in to whatever it is without being making rash decisions.  Don’t worry, you won’t dive in without the right gear.  You will analyze all of the possible consequences of your situation and you will embrace the outcome, whatever it may be.  This is the secret to conquering doubt.  Have courage to fight it out and you are sure to defeat it.

Belief is the enemy of doubt. Learn to think positively and believe in your ability to be successful. Remember you will succeed if you think you will and you will fail if you think that too. Your thoughts are self-fulfilling prophecies so you must stop thinking negatively. Likewise, never pay heed to the people who discourage you, who revel in planting doubts in you and who are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing. Always be in the company of those people whose thoughts and attitudes to life in general are positive.

When failure strikes

You probably won’t be fortunate to never experience failure in your life.  However, you must understand that it is part of life.  These are the times when failure fills your mind with doubt and it is hard to muster the confidence you built up earlier in the process.  You can’t let go of your commitment, no matter how shaken you are by failure.  In fact, any setback should only prompt you to double your resolve to make another attempt at reaching your goal.  In order for this to happen, train your mind to build your self-control and self-confidence.  Every step towards self confidence helps get rid of doubt and you will be back to your successful ways once again.

Healthy doubt

Remember some amount of doubt can always be helpful in gaining wisdom or achieving advancement in life. But when it becomes a cause for your depression and inactivity or when it stands like an insurmountable hurdle in your way to reach your destination, draw upon your energy reserves that can toughen up your mind. You have to strengthen your will to succeed at all costs and weaken doubt by all possible means, so that you will lead a life of fulfillment.

You may succeed because of your doubt or in spite of your doubt. Or, you may have to accept the inevitable and compromise with whatever worst-case scenario that presents itself.  If this happens, just change course, re-energize your cylinders and start afresh on your revised path. Defeat doubt before it defeats you.

Overcoming Feelings of Helplessness

We all come across feelings of helplessness to some degree or another sometime during our life, this is fine as long as we get back on track and overcome these feelings. However for some, feelings of helplessness set in and begin to affect our way of thinking and life. Here are some helpful tips to help you understand those feelings of helplessness and how to overcome them.

  • Begin by identifying the problems, fears, issues and obstacles which make you feel helpless and try to discover why they make you feel this way
  • Work on ways that encourage you to take on new beliefs that you can be independent, self-confident and are capable of dealing with anything that crops up in the future
  • Learn ways to deal with these feelings of helplessness when they crop up
  • Practice ways to deal with conflicts and problem solving when they arise
  • If you have relapse and begin to doubt again remember that this is only normal and pick back up from where you left off
  • Whatever the success however small be sure to reward yourself
  • Realize that it will take time to change our feelings of helplessness so always strive towards your goals.
  • Don’t aim for perfection all the time, no one is perfect we all make mistakes
  • Identify what you need to do to grow in the skills of  self-coping, self-healing and self-confidence

Feelings of helplessness can cause us many problems in life, the longer you feel helpless, the less control you have over your own life; here are some common experiences that occur through helplessness.

  • You begin to feel that no matter what you do or how hard you try you cannot succeed in life
  • You become over dependant on others around you to help you overcome your problems
  • You see yourself as totally incompetent
  • You develop a deep seated fear that you are unable to handle a situation
  • You become miserable, unhappy in life and depression sets in
  • You think of yourself as a victim that always needs rescuing from situations
  • You have a pessimistic outlook on life in general
  • Your are afraid others see you as being frail and weak
  • You become despondent because you run out of people who are willing to look after you by solving your problems
  • You resign yourself to the fact that you will always be helpless, that you cannot possibly change

There are many ways you can help yourself overcome these feelings, the important thing to remember is that you are not alone and you can take back control over your life and make important decisions again to successfully solve your problems. All you need is to have faith in yourself and dig deep and find that faith and bring it to the surface. While we all have the ability to overcome our problems ourselves, it doesn’t hurt to get advice from friends and relatives as long as you aren’t relying on them totally to solve your problems for you.

Overcoming Inner Conflicts

Commitment makes life a lot easier to deal with, by making a decision and sticking to it no matter what and staying committed without letting unwanted thoughts drift into your mind you are able to deal with any obstacle in your way. Inner conflicts lead us nowhere but to indecisiveness and are an open invitation to stress and losing confidence in ourselves.

While we all have them at sometime or another it is important that we know how to deal with them and resolve them and move forward with a positive attitude again, by resolving inner conflicts you are able to vastly improve your self-esteem, allow yourself to be more focused, and feel less stressed, listen to your inner voice and guide yourself when it comes to making choices and decisions, be in total control over your life, manage and achieve goals that you have set out in life, and create a healthier more relaxing and happier future.

Inner conflicts play havoc with our emotions and they lead to low self-esteem, low self-confidence and depression.  With this in mind, it is essential to banish inner conflicts when they arise and don’t let them start taking over. Inner conflict can develop in different ways it may stem from indecisiveness or deep-seated feelings stemming from unresolved issues in your life, they could even stem back from things that happened in your childhood. After all the person you are now is the result of what has happened throughout your life, instead of dealing with the unresolved issues you perhaps built up a wall and kept them in rather than facing them and dealing with them. It is essential that you break down the wall and bring these out into the open and deal with them now, overcoming unresolved issues and inner conflicts relies on:

  • Letting go of the past and beliefs from the past including letting go of old habits and emotions, discovering the true inner you and listening to the inner you
  • Realize that you are capable of helping yourself and becoming the person you truly are
  • Learning to become focused and centered on yourself, realizing what stresses you and why
  • Making yourself let go of the feelings and thoughts you harbor relating from past issues
  • Visualizing the new you, the more confident and decisive you until it becomes a reality

There are many courses, self-help books, DVDS and audio CDS which can help you to overcome past unresolved issues and so overcome and deal with inner conflicts. However there is no magical cure and it will take time to resolve these issues and start seeing a better way of dealing with and coping with life. While some of us change merely by using self-help methods others get more benefit from attending meeting groups of seeing a therapist in the early stages. It is important to realize however that you can change and only you can do it, whichever method you choose to take to get you there. It all basically comes down to the same thing, changing your feelings and thoughts.

Overcoming Intimidation

Intimidation can happen everywhere, in all walks of life and can occur in any age group. Being intimidated by someone is a form of being bullied, it happens in school, the workplace by co-workers or the boss, when shopping and in many other situations.

Some people are not even aware that they are being intimidated, while for it others it can make their life a misery day in and day out with them suffering intimidation on a regular basis. You might even be the one who is intimidating others.

People who are constantly intimidated go through many feelings, but there are many steps that you can take to help eliminate intimidation. In order to be able to deal successfully with intimidation you first have to understand what intimidation really is, it can come in many disguises.

  • Using force to get what you want from others
  • Threatening to or using power and control to get others to do what you want
  • Getting others to believe they are more powerful than you
  • Using size or strength to get others to do what you want or threaten them
  • Holding punishments over their head such as being fired, spanking or divorce
  • Being quick tempered, angry or getting into a rage with someone to get them to do what you want
  • Behaving in a manner that has others frightened to step up to you
  • Using your wealth to get others to do what you want
  • Using racial or sexual slurs towards others

There are many steps you can take to stop allowing others to intimidate you, the first step you should take is to look at yourself and determine if your irrational, unhealthy way of thinking has allowed yourself to become intimidated by others. If you think this might have been the case then you should take steps towards

  • Identify new healthier ways of thinking to help you overcome and respond to the intimidating factors
  • Display your new ways of thinking and acting to those who are intimidating you, this will show them that you are no longer willing to be intimidated by them
  • Develop ways of dealing with people in case they respond negatively to the new you
  • See the consequences of your new assertive behavior
  • Stick to your guns and accept whatever the consequences are of your new behavior

The next step to take once you have developed a strategy for dealing with those who intimidate you is to develop ways to reinforce your beliefs in the new you. The easiest way is to use daily affirmations or positive self-talk. Examples of positive self-talk include.

  • I am a good person, who is worthy and deserves to be treat with respect
  • I will not put anyone in a superhuman position over me
  • I will take my life back under my control from any who tries to intimidate me in the future
  • I will not allow others to intimidate me
  • There is no one out there who can intimidate me

Overcoming the need to be in control

Some of us have problems when it comes to being in control, we simply have the urge to control all aspects of life for those around us and this can lead to many problems. There are many negative effects that come with the compulsive need to fix everyone’s problems and they can have a severe effect on your life in general. So what is the need to be in control or to fix? In addition, what are the negative effects? And how can you help yourself to give up the need to be in control?

You could be said to have issues of needing to be in control if any of the following apply to you or someone you know.

  • You compulsively go to someone’s rescue, regardless of whether they ask for your help or not, just because you believe it is the way the task or situation should be dealt with.
  • The feeling that other people are in need becomes an automatic response to you.
  • You strongly believe that things have to be perfect or just right for people; otherwise, they cannot possibly be happy in life.
  • You feel you have to change people because you cannot accept them as they are
  • You strongly believe that you know what is best for others and try your best to make them see things your way.
  • You accept personal responsibility for the actions of others.
  • You cannot help but give advice to others or offer your help to them.
  • People see you as interfering in their lives.
  • You have a strong need to feel wanted or needed which leads to you becoming overly involved in the business of others.
  • Things don’t feel right if you are not helping others or fixing their problems.
  • The most common negative effects that compulsive behaviour such as this can have on a person includes
  • You develop relationships where people become overly dependant on you
  • You cannot remain emotionally uninvolved if you come across someone you see as needing your help.
  • You lose friendships due to you needing to be in control over their lives.
  • You begin to neglect your own needs in favour of dealing with others around you.
  • You are ridden with guilt if things don’t improve for a person.
  • You might become angry with those you have helped if they don’t show enough recognition for what you have done.
  • You develop low self-esteem through losing yourself with others.
  • Ways which you can develop to overcome the need to be in control are
  • Have the belief that others have the ability to fix their own problems.
  • Set up a boundary between those you think need your help.
  • Don’t get hooked on needing recognition from others.
  • Accept that the only person you should control is yourself.
  • Tell people to confront you if you try to give them unwanted help or advice.
  • Realize that people have the ability to change themselves if they should want to.
  • Only offer help to those who clearly ask for it.

Overcoming Trauma

There are many thoughts and feelings associated with a traumatic experience, trauma occurs when we are faced with any terrible situation, such as a car accident, fire, witness to an accident, natural disaster, an attack on your person, war, e.t.c. Many people who are recovering from a traumatic experience mentally block out the experience that caused distress while others will relive it time and time again. Trauma can bring many feelings such as

  • Shock – shock is a normal reaction to any traumatic experience and the closer you were to the experience the more shock sets in. Your brain has to process the terrible images you have seen and this is when the feelings of shock set in and will take time to digest.
  • Disbelief – many people experiencing a shocking situation have strong belief that what they have witnessed cannot possibly have happened.
  • Denial – many people deny that the event happened; they try to force it out of their mind.
  • Emotional pain – even if you haven’t been hurt in the incident you will feel the pain of those around you who did.
  • Anger – after shock, anger will set in, you will ask yourself “why has this happened to you” and you can feel anger towards anyone and everyone. 
  • Blame – we very often blame ourselves or others for what has happened, we may even blame God for letting this happen.
  • Sadness – when overcoming a particular traumatic experience you will feel waves of sadness suddenly overwhelming you.
  • Depression – for some time after the experience you may suddenly lapse into depression from time to time.
  • Anxiety – anxiety often develops from fear and can continue for some time after the experience.

All of the above are the most common feelings and thoughts associated with having gone through trauma; these feelings can come in no particular order and at any time. What you should realize is that these feelings are only natural and are your body and minds way of coping with what happened, the feelings and thoughts will eventually dissipate with time. There are many ways you can cope with them and help yourself to overcome them, the best way for you of course will depend on the severity of the trauma you were exposed to. There are however a number of coping skills which can be learnt in order to help you overcome trauma.

  • Taking about what happened and letting it all out
  • Listening to and accepting advice from family, friends or counselor
  • Accepting what happened and continuing on with life
  • Changing your environment
  • Taking part in recreational activities
  • Picking up your old daily routine
  • Taking part in seminars

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