Negative, Intrusive thoughts and Affirmations

Intrusive thoughts are often sudden, unwanted and often distressing, unsettling involuntary images, thoughts and/or urges.  But remember experiencing them in your mind doesn’t mean you want or will act on them; they are just thoughts.

One way to manage these negative and intrusive thoughts is  with Affirmations because affirmations challenge the negative and intrusiveness of our thought patterns.

That can be your first affirmation “I am experiencing  an intrusive thought; it doesn’t define me”.

This has several affects:

1) we name and claim the thought as intrusive which stops it in its tracks

2) we begin to diffuse the thought pattern

3) we start to reprogram our subconscious mind that holds the intrusive thought

4) the pattern holding the intrusive, negative thought begins to breakdown

5) with practice the negative/intrusive thought gets replaced by more positive automatic thought patterns as our neurons develop different pathways within our mind.

When we are experiencing negative and/or intrusive thoughts as flashes and unwanted.  Affirmations are very powerful tool to counterbalance the thoughts and with practice, they can replace the negative and intrusive thought patterns altogether.

But you have to practice saying them to yourself throughout your day many times not just once because the pathways needs a lot of energy to redirect themselves.

How affirmations work

Affirmations work by engaging our cognitive processors and effect our emotional processing at the same time.

With repetition we constantly challenge the negative neural pathways in our brain and reinforce a more positive pathway.

This helps to restructure our cognitive thought patterns and affirmations are a technique which challenge the negative thought patterns, counterbalancing the distressing words  and eventually replacing the negative with a more helpful chatter.

Counterbalancing and replacing our internal conversations within ourselves significantly reduces anxiety, speaks to our Amygdale turning off the fire  alarm so our prefrontal cortex can think for itself.  Which enables us to take back control from our thoughts and our mental states and our chatterbox as reference by Susan Jeffers in her "Feal the Fear and DO It Anyway book".

When we practice affirmations, we divert the attention away from the negative and intrusive thoughts onto something more positive but its more than ‘positive thinking’ the affirmations are working to replace the negative by breaking into the patterns and allowing our brains to be rewired through new pathways and strengthening older more positive pathways which have been taken over with the negative.   Neuroplasticity of our brain allows this process to take place, neuroplasticity is the brains ability to change and not stay stuck in a fix position.

Whilst all this is happening our stress and anxieties are being reduced with each repetition of a positive affirmations and our nervous system is being regulated, our emotions are becoming more manageable and understood.

We can see from this information that affirmations are a very useful tool for our mental well-being and can make a huge difference to our internal state of mind.

Help affirmations become part of your daily routine by:

• Choosing a few core affirmations those that speak to you directly I started with three and repeated them for weeks before adding others as I grew and changed.

  
  

• Repeat them as many times throughout your day as you can the more you do the stronger your neural pathways become.

  
  

• Write your affirmations on post it notes, pop them in your diary, on your mirrors, in your car, on your fridge, make a computer screen saver of your favorites, anywhere you can see them to remind you to repeat them.

  
  

• Repeat them especially as you begin to do something which provokes anxiety to help soothe your nerves and to connect with your neural pathways making them stronger not weaker.

  
  

• At quite times use your affirmations with a breathing exercise to ground them into your mind.

  
  

• Create a visualization around your core affirmations and see yourself being calm, clear, peaceful and confident, this helps you ground them in your internal world.

I’ve used affirmations as my very first tool when I was in a highly anxious state and I’ve since used them daily for the past 29 years, so I know they work and continue to work for me and my hope is they will work for you too when repeated them daily.

So, practice, practice, practice.

Start feeding your beliefs and value systems with positivity today because affirmations are our cheapest, most convenient and most valuable tool to use. Which helps us to feel more in control, empowering our Self and enabling us to feel more grounded and resilient.

Training your brain and tame that flame.

If you live in the British Isle and are in needs of counselling support for any of the above. I offer a free 30 mins video call so we can meet before our first session. Contact me at email: pendulumofpeace8@gmail.com text or WhatsApp message to 07867938630 and lets connect and realise your fullest potentials.