Waking Up From The Nightmare of Negative Thoughts

By Nick Arrizza M.D.

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If you are one of those people who experience a lot of negative thoughts then I think you will agree that you exist in what I would call a “living nightmare”. Would it surprise you if I also said that the nightmare is a “trance state” that you could permanently wake up from thereby abolishing all of those negative thoughts? If so then this may interest you.

Nightmares are characterized by a never ending barrage of negative images and experiences that inspire fear, a state of vulnerability to unforeseen dangers, and feelings of helplessness. You will also recall that two other chilling qualities are feeling stuck and totally out of control of what is happening.

Well, if you reflect on the experience of having negative thoughts hijacking your mind you will see the striking similarities with nightmares. Negative thoughts emerge from out of nowhere, capture your attention and in the process panic and paralyse you. As they do they also render you dysfunctional, deplete your energy, motivation and enthusiasm for life.

Of course that only happens if you choose to believe them to be true i.e. allow yourself to be hypnotized by them. Unfortunately too often it is difficult to have any clarity of mind when they are present and hence one’s free will is weakened or at least seduced into buying into them.

So if one of those negative thoughts was, say, “I’m inadequate” then it’s likely that you would start to feel incapable, incompetent, lacking confidence, afraid to try anything new, like a loser, unattractive, reluctant to expose yourself to social situations and so on. In words the thought itself would have essentially shut down your life.

So is there any possibility of gaining some objective distance from such thoughts so as to diffuse their destructive tendencies? Absolutely! In order to appreciate how this is possible one must understand that such thoughts arise from conditioned negative memories stored inside you from your early life.

It is because you have accepted that those memories represent “your” life that you have identified with them and thus have unwittingly also chosen to accept whatever they dish out. One of the things they produce is those negative thoughts mentioned earlier which you then automatically also accept as true.

To “dis-identify” one’s self from this negativity it becomes necessary to uncover the reasons why you “think” such memories/thoughts/beliefs benefit you. Now I know many of you will say that they have absolutely no benefit for you but if you look at the one I used above you’ll see that:

The belief “I’m inadequate” apparently motivates you to better yourself so that you can feel better about yourself, more confident, more capable, more competent and therefore more adequate.

In summary what has been said is that:

The belief “I’m inadequate” makes one feel good about one’s self, confident, capable, competent and adequate.

Without realizing it many individuals carry this “unconscious” false belief inside of them.

I ask you to try the following short exercise right now, if you wish. Place one hand over your Heart and as if you are speaking from there say the following three statements to yourself:

1. I recognise that the above statement is false.
2. I want this false statement purged from my life.
3. I want the belief “I’m inadequate” purged from my life.

Now take a moment and reflect on how you are feeling in and around your Heart region and you will likely notice some positive feelings emerging from there. This represents you beginning to wake up from this nightmare of negative thoughts.

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