Redirect Negative Thought Loops

“Rather than fighting with ego you can work together for the same goal. Teach ego that it is an equal energy. You can say to ego, ‘While I am doing this, I would like you to support in this other way.’ This gives your ego permission to show you the parts of yourself that you have repressed out of self-judgment.”
-Red Feather
 
Have you ever found yourself caught in a looping circle of negative thoughts even when things are going well? It can be really painful, and all the more so because it doesn’t have to happen that way. Unfortunately, or fortunately for the lesson of it, it did happen to me, just the other day.

It was a magical day. I went with some of my dear soul family to a wetlands wildlife refuge. We discovered to our delight, a huge migration, hundreds of thousands of Snow Geese, as well as Trumpeter Swans, Canadian Geese, Mallards and Bald Eagles. It was a delight to my birder eyes, and pure magic for my soul. The day was filled with lovely discoveries and messages from Spirit throughout.

The lesson for me, however, was my growing awareness of how at odd moments during the day, and even afterwards, my thoughts circled around negative perceptions of small events that took place, like a dog worrying a bone. Instead of staying focused upon the magic that surrounded me, my thoughts zoomed in on some perceived annoyance or jealousy or fear and gnawed at it.

Really? Why would I want to do that?

It’s all about ego of course. Like a nervous and overly energetic dog our egos need a job to do. If we don’t assign our egos something positive to do, they will revert to old habits. So, our egos need to be taught how to support us.

It is not that our egos are consciously being negative, in fact just the opposite. Our egos are trying to protect us by searching out what is wrong or hurtful and fixing it. The ego is not programmed to look for the good stuff. The ego is programmed like a watch dog, to look for the bad stuff, the stuff that might hurt us. That worked well for survival in the past when we had to be on the look out for predators and life-threatening situations. In our lives today that more often looks like watching out for emotionally threatening situations.

So, here I was having a lovely day with friends and my ego was on alert, looking for the bad stuff, looking for anything that might be emotionally threatening. And of course, my ego usually finds something scary to worry over.

The egos way of ‘fixing’ things is to worry and fret and go over and over various negative scenarios and generally get us worked up into an emotional lather. Then we take some sort of fear-based action or just withdraw into a negative funk. It’s no fun. It certainly doesn’t feel good. But the ego doesn’t care about fun, the ego cares about survival. In this case, emotional survival.

The ego is programmed for fight, flight or freeze, the physical survival responses. When it comes to emotional survival however, these responses may be less than optimal, and keep us circling around in a loop of negativity.

Unless we can catch ourselves and redirect, reprogramming our egos with a positive response.

I caught myself repeating a negative loop, a loop I have repeated many times in many ways, in the past. It was old, familiar and painful territory.

I asked for support and guidance from my Spiritual Support Team as I became aware of what I was doing. I asked for guidance because at that moment I didn’t have a solution. I was just aware that I didn’t want to continue on with the negative thought loop of worry, running negative scenarios, going over various negative scripts in my head, and all the other egoic approaches that result in increasing emotional pain.

I asked for guidance and was delighted by the unexpected thought that I was really lucky. I was really lucky to have these dear friends and family. I felt the fullness of the love that we share, our history and our bond. I felt that overflow of love as echoed in the abundance of life that surrounded us in the wetlands, the water, the marsh, the thousands upon thousands of geese and swans coming together in floating, honking, trumpeting, feathered rafts of bird community.

It was an inspiring, loving answer to my prayer for support, and it turned me right around. After that my thoughts focused upon the beauty of the sunset on the drive home, the fun and humor of those riding in the back seat, my gratitude to my friend driving us, making this trip possible.

That night as I lay in bed, tired and ready for sleep, I could feel my thoughts edging back toward negativity. Like unwelcome visitors knocking on the door in my mind, I knew if I opened the door I’d be circling around once more.

Closing my eyes, I saw a beautiful visual of thousands of geese rising up into the air. I focused upon that visual, and other visual memories of the beauty in the wetlands, choosing not to open the door to the loop of negative thoughts. I fell asleep easily, feeling contented.

Have you ever felt yourself caught up in a negative thought loop like this? Running scenarios and mental scripts and visualizations in an attempt to ‘fix’ whatever the ego perceives as threatening, falling down the rabbit hole of negativity?

Yup, it happens to most of us. Today’s Spiritual Toolbox has some suggestions for what you can do about it.

Photo by Callie Morgan on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Suggestions for Redirecting Negative Thought Loops

​Ask for guidance. Ask. Ask. Ask. Our Spiritual Support Teams are always there for us, but given the gift of our free will, can do nothing unless we ask for support and guidance.
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Hand it over. Give whatever is worrying you to your Spiritual Support Team, to God, to your Higher Self, and know that it is taken care of. Ask that you be shown if and what you need to know and do about it, and then let it go.

Redirect your thoughts. Look around you with your heart. What feels good to you? It doesn’t matter what it is. Find something that feels good and focus your attention upon that. It may be a thought. “I’m so lucky to have all this in my life.” It may be a feeling. Perhaps an appreciation of the abundance of love that fills your life, or something else that feels really good to you. It may be a visual, a beautiful memory that gives you a feeling of appreciation and contentment.

Give your ego a positive job to do. If you discover repeated negative loops triggered by certain types of situations, give your ego the job of recognizing the trigger situations and then programming in a new thought pattern.

Affirmations are a wonderful way to reprogram your thought patterns. As you pay attention to situations in which you don’t feel good, you can recognize your triggers, those situations in which you find yourself in a negative thought loop. Then you can create positive affirmations for how you want to feel in those situations.

For example, perhaps your pattern is to feel left out in social events. You expect it. Your thoughts loop in negative circles about it any time you are in a social situation or even thinking about being in a social situation. Not because you want to, but because your ego thinks that by doing so it is protecting you. You get into a social situation and create your expectations, and there you are are feeling left out yet again.

Only now you recognize the pattern and you can take preemptive action. Tell your ego, “Thank you for trying to protect me. Now let’s do this in a positive way.”

Ask yourself how you would like to feel in this situation and create an affirmation based upon that. Here are some possibilities from the above example –
“People love me, and I love people.”
“I feel calm and relaxed when I am with others.”
“I welcome others into my life and they welcome me.”
“I love being with others and they love being with me.”

Create your affirmations based upon your specific trigger situations. Now repeat your affirmation to yourself, throughout the day, as well as whenever you find yourself in your trigger situation or thinking of your trigger situation. The more that you repeat your affirmation the better, as it gradually becomes your new belief about that situation.

Oh, and remember to thank your ego for her/his assistance with this. Ego loves a pat on the back ;)