Obsessive, Worrying and Negative Thoughts

[badaboom]

please do not worry about things. this life is fake and material. the world is temporary. yesterday is a memory. tommorow is not promised. enjoy your presence. forget all the problems in the world.

 

[Flood]

Obsessive, negative thoughts have taken a heavy toll on my life. My early teenage years were a nightmare sometimes when I was at the mercy of my obsessive thought patterns. Today I've become aware of the destructive force it was and can look back and recognize it. I haven't overcome it totally but I know better then to surrender to it. I remember when I decided that I would just say "stop" out loud to break the negative thought pattern. I felt ridiculous but I figured that was better then feeling miserable. Of course I could only do this when I was alone or otherwise I would have looked crazy. But finding alone time wasn't hard. And I began to realize how persistent and numerous these negative thoughts were.

 

[ChessGuy42]

I didn't really know where to put this topic, it doesn't fit into the loneliness section. Anyway, all of my life I have suffered from thoughts that can become quite obsessive and make me very depressed. These thoughts can range from, wrong things I may have said to people, what other people think of me, confidence at completing work tasks, to projecting negative things that could happen to me in the future. Once I start thinking some of these negative things I can really dwell on them and this can go on for weeks. I would like to know if anyone else on the forum has ever had negative obsessive thoughts that they can't seem to stop. And if you have managed to stop them, how did you do it?

Blue Sky

I haven't read the responses, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating advice from someone else.

I used to have horrible obsessive negative thought patterns.. particularly when it came to worrying. I actually drove one girlfriend away because of this.

What really helped me is that I figured out that I could break up my negative thoughts patterns by doing something else. If I started worrying, I'd sit down and play a video game. If I started worrying while playing the game, I'd pick up a book. If I started worrying again while reading, I'd go on a bike ride. If I started worrying while riding my bike, I'd go home and clean up the apartment.. etc. Whenever I started worrying, I'd immediately stop whatever I was doing and start doing something else that required focus to interrupt the worrying.

The brain is an amazing piece of nature. I won't go in depth about how people learn... but obsessive worrying is usually a learned activity. To get over it, you have to essentially rewire your own brain. It can be done, with time and patience. It took me a while, but eventually what happened is that my brain learned that worrying should only happen in short bursts as a result of the constant interrupts.