Negative Thoughts

Today I am wrestling with negative thoughts I am really starting to get on my own nerves. I cannot get anything accomplished today.  So I thought I'd get some advise or insight from Stephanie.  This is what she had to say...

OK – as far as negative thoughts go – it requires diligent work to abolish them, but it isn’t really that hard (as long as you are properly medicated - ** we can discuss the long-term effects of cannabis / hallucinogen usage later **). 

 

Every time you have a thought that isn’t positive, reprimand yourself like a parent would.  "Stand up straight, stop slouching, get your elbows off the table, get your hair out of your plate, look both ways, ..." The need to remind yourself never stops, but it does become less frequent. And eventually negative thoughts take you by surprise, because days or weeks have gone by without having one.

 

Every negative thought decreases your personal power and, when shared, can function as a psychic energy vacuum - causing the person listening to either try to make it all better, or to join you in your mental cesspool and feed your negativity, or to just tune you out (which is lonely for both of you).  I don't know of many people who can field the negativity of others like a skilled diplomat.

 

Until my first mushroom cap, I was hard and cynical - negative about everything - very righteous and condescending and intolerant. But after that night, I decided to unload the baggage that was weighing down my soul. The unloading process was unpredictable, sometimes slow - sometimes instantaneous, as was my ability to isolate and accept ownership of the baggage in the first place. 

 

My ability to wrestle down most of my negative thoughts is a fairly recent development - maybe only within the last few years.  When I first started to scold myself - maybe that's the wrong analogy - it's more like using the reins and your heels to keep a stubborn horse in line.  When I first started self-correcting, I'd sometimes have the same negative thought a hundred times in a day, and every time I would say 'Stop it, shut up already, you're annoying me, I thought I told you to shut up, ...'. 

 

It became funny after a while - 'wow, you're up to that again? what made you start saying that?' It became easy to isolate the event that triggered the flair up. But then, some new negative thought would enter into the picture under my radar - festering unnoticed until it ruptured into my attention.

 

I stuck with it, and the negative chatter eventually lost its hold. But in writing this, I am wondering if I need to take inventory of my thoughts to catch any evil lurkers that I may be missing....