7.07 - Negative Thinking

Understanding Thoughts

Our thoughts are not always correct. They’re not facts, they’re just the way we see the world and the people around us.
We can get into negative thinking traps, especially if we’re feeling self-conscious and not very confident.
Thinking negatively makes us feel miserable and affects our behaviour, making it hard to make and keep friends.
People may respond to you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable (staring, commenting, asking questions). This is hard to deal with , but it’s made worse by negative thinking. For example: if we think that someone is staring because they’re being rude of threatening, then our experience of that person will be just that – threatening. But, if we think that someone is staring because they’re curious or concerned, we can shrug it off, smile, ignore them and not feel threatened.

Changing our thinking patterns

Although it may seem like a challenge, there really are ways to change your thinking so that you can feel more positive about your appearance and the reactions of others.

Here are our top tips to help you:

Remember Catch it, Check it, Change it?

Catch it

Learn to notice or ‘catch’ those negative thoughts.

Check it

Is there any evidence to support them or any evidence against them. Being your own best friend can help you find more helpful ways to think about a situation.

Have a conversation with yourself (in your head) like you might have with a best mate or someone who always gives you good advice e.g. sister/ brother/ friend. Tell them how you’re thinking and feeling. Think of the positive things they would say to make you feel better or question your negative thoughts?

Maybe they’d say:

Don’t give yourself such a hard time!

What if someone did stare at you, what would be so bad about that?

What happened last time at the disco, did everyone stare at you?

What could you do to deal with someone who stares at you?

Change it

Here’s the difficult bit! Replace your negative thought with a positive one. To make the positive thought stick, try saying it over again in your head.

Negative thought

That boy over there is laughing at me

Positive thought

That boy’s probably laughing because he has just heard a joke – nothing to do with me!

Look out for those thinking traps!

All or nothing

This is when we think that just because something has happened once it will always happen. So from one single event we make a general rule.

It’s all my fault

This is when we get stuck into thinking that other people’s negative behaviour is because of some thing we’ve done – when actually it may have nothing to do with us.