5 ms·

The trouble with suppressing negative thoughts in the long run is that, eventually, reality may force you to confront them all at once and under far more diffic

The trouble with suppressing negative thoughts in the long run is that, eventually, reality may force you to confront them all at once and under far more difficult conditions. I'm a strong believer that you have to confront negative thoughts and resolve underlying issues as soon as they arise and not neglect them and tell yourself that everything is going to be OK. It's not going to be OK. Murphy's law; what can go wrong WILL go wrong. This has been shown to me over and over again. You cannot leave anything to chance. I'd rather have a few negative thoughts from time to time and resolve them as they come than fool myself into thinking that I'm living in la-la land and then after a few years find out that it has become hell on earth due to my neglect. It's like a garden; you need to maintain it. If you ignore the weeds, they'll eventually take over your garden. You can tell yourself that the weeds add charm and make your garden look more natural; that you're going for a "wild tropical look" or whatever, all part of the plan, but with that attitude, you're bound to fail. You'll just keep getting more of whatever it is that you neglect until it becomes unbearable.

chmod600 3y ago
Well, maybe or maybe not. A lot of the negative thoughts I have are somewhat fleeting, and if I revisit them the next day they seem pretty trivial and I could probably dismiss them sooner. Others might be more meaningful, perhaps a character flaw that you don't want to think about, but without really processing it it will never get fixed and keep causing more problems.
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  The fleeting part is essentially what certain types of meditation are all about. Negative thoughts and emotions have to actively be fueled by something in order to persist. And if you spend some time by simply observing those thoughts from a non judgmental stand point they’ll quickly disappear.
  - soared 3y ago
    > Negative thoughts and emotions have to actively be fueled by something in order to persist. I don’t think that’s true right? Negative thoughts and emotions occur naturally. If you’re statement we’re true then positive thoughts have to be fueled by something to persist. So then what is fuel - any stimulus at all?
ipaddr 3y ago
The underlying issue is the thoughts. Once you have done all you can do many start worrying the future won't unfold as they predicted. Fool yourself into thinking you live in some hell on earth is worse than thinking you might be happy with your current situation.
- jongjong 3y ago
  I feel like happiness itself is also like a garden and needs to be maintained. You need to take intermittent breaks to look for weeds.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Perhaps you would understand if you accepted that some of us feel like we're surrounded by weeds, weeds that cloud our vision and impede our movement, which prevent us from detecting any beauty or value in our garden; we've forgotten what roses and tomatoes look like altogether. Therefore, our approach and solutions are different from what you're espousing.
captainbland 3y ago
My view is it's sort of a balance. There's a place for confronting negative thoughts but it's possible to spend too much energy doing so which can also have negative consequences. The problem is that you can't "weed" your mind, that's not how minds really work. It's not a garden at all, it's a learning system. The things you pay attention to are also the things which become more prominent. Attention is ultimately sunlight and water for memories if we need to use a gardening analogy. The problem really comes when the memory becomes intrusive. At that point you're forced to do something to tackle it because it's growing anyway.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
shandor 3y ago
> The trouble with suppressing negative thoughts in the long run is that, eventually, reality may force you to confront them all at once and under far more difficult conditions. I guess the whole point, and better way of putting the original idea is to resolve the negative thoughts. If the thoughts are trivial, just suppressing them is mostly resolution enough, since trivial thoughts are most probably not going to come back. If the underlying reason for the negative thought is major and has staying power due to reality (e.g. you lost your mother when you were young), I think it's probable that the thought pattern is not going to go away if the reality underneath is not resolved (e.g. to actually learn to cope with your loss). Because eventually, reality will force you to confront these things at some point, because it's, well, reality. If you just keep suppressing these negative thoughts, they will just keep coming back and you're not really winning that much.
vasco 3y ago
A negative thought is just a thought, it's not like you need to actively not take care of real life things or errands. But if you find yourself thinking about death, or about how much your childhood sucked, or that you're good for nothing, you don't need to address anything about those thoughts. The least time you spend on them the better, nothing good comes from dwelling. I can't understand people that want to re-live or push through some negative thoughts "because it'll get better eventually". To me it seems like you're just making yourself numb, and it's got to be at the expense or something. You become so beaten down from them they don't hurt you anymore. I'd rather just not think about bad stuff, they come my away and I go away from them and I get to keep my "mental innocence". Why go through a long road when there's an immediate escape hatch? Said in a similar way, I could prepare for bad things to come. I know my parents will die. Should I think about that non-stop and feel sad everyday I do it just so I'll feel less sad when they die? Sounds ridiculous. I have zero desire to "understand" why some thoughts come sometimes, I just want to move past them as fast as possible.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  > But if you find yourself thinking about death, or about how much your childhood sucked, or that you're good for nothing, you don't need to address anything about those thoughts. > The least time you spend on them the better, nothing good comes from dwelling. Negative visualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization is absolutely a thing. If you do it properly (aiming towards psychological resilience and gratitude for the things one actually has) it can work quite well.
  - vasco 3y ago
    Of course it exists, I described it in my comment. Look at this quote from wikipedia and compare it to my example of preparing for your parents to die: > Unlike the general focus of creative visualization of inducing an imaginary positive psychological and physiologic response, negative visualization focuses on training the practitioner on the negative outcomes of realistic life scenarios to desensitize or create psychological fitness in preparation for real-life losses Something existing and some people thinking it is a good idea doesn't mean it is. I'm not saying I'm right either, I'm sharing what I do and what I think. And what I think is that negative visualization is ridiculous. Live your life, bad things will happen anyway, why do you want to be sad in advance just to maybe be a little bit less sad later? I can't take this idea seriously, it's like someone who doesn't want to love for fear of getting a broken heart.
nazgul17 3y ago
I think there's an important difference between a negative thought about X and an introspective but emotionally more neutral thought about X.
nvarsj 3y ago
Unsure why you’re being downvoted - bizarre. Anyways, I agree completely. Life long struggle with anxiety and depression. Most of my issues come from ignoring my worst feelings and not dealing with them. I find the idea of suppressing feelings to be bizarre for treating clinical issues. Maybe that’s why mindfulness only ever provided me temporary relief.
- wruza 3y ago
  I believe there are different types or modes of thinking. Some tend to avoid negativity, others live through it to anchor in reality. Also, maybe it’s subjective, but all my friends who are negative-aware and embrace cynicism (not necessarily follow it) have much better sense of real life and of characters than all my friends who believe in all good things and are optimists. The former tend to be business people, the latter are all hired workers.
- saberience 3y ago
  It depends a great deal on the nature of the negative thought. For example: spending hours obsessively thinking about death and dying and infinite nothingness isn’t helpful in my opinion. But avoiding thinking about a mole you might want to get checked out at the doctor is a bad idea.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

chmod600 3y ago

Well, maybe or maybe not. A lot of the negative thoughts I have are somewhat fleeting, and if I revisit them the next day they seem pretty trivial and I could probably dismiss them sooner. Others might be more meaningful, perhaps a character flaw that you don't want to think about, but without really processing it it will never get fixed and keep causing more problems.

manuelmoreale 3y ago
The fleeting part is essentially what certain types of meditation are all about. Negative thoughts and emotions have to actively be fueled by something in order to persist. And if you spend some time by simply observing those thoughts from a non judgmental stand point they’ll quickly disappear.
- soared 3y ago
  > Negative thoughts and emotions have to actively be fueled by something in order to persist. I don’t think that’s true right? Negative thoughts and emotions occur naturally. If you’re statement we’re true then positive thoughts have to be fueled by something to persist. So then what is fuel - any stimulus at all?

ipaddr 3y ago

The underlying issue is the thoughts. Once you have done all you can do many start worrying the future won't unfold as they predicted. Fool yourself into thinking you live in some hell on earth is worse than thinking you might be happy with your current situation.

jongjong 3y ago
I feel like happiness itself is also like a garden and needs to be maintained. You need to take intermittent breaks to look for weeds.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Perhaps you would understand if you accepted that some of us feel like we're surrounded by weeds, weeds that cloud our vision and impede our movement, which prevent us from detecting any beauty or value in our garden; we've forgotten what roses and tomatoes look like altogether. Therefore, our approach and solutions are different from what you're espousing.

captainbland 3y ago

My view is it's sort of a balance. There's a place for confronting negative thoughts but it's possible to spend too much energy doing so which can also have negative consequences. The problem is that you can't "weed" your mind, that's not how minds really work. It's not a garden at all, it's a learning system. The things you pay attention to are also the things which become more prominent. Attention is ultimately sunlight and water for memories if we need to use a gardening analogy. The problem really comes when the memory becomes intrusive. At that point you're forced to do something to tackle it because it's growing anyway.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

shandor 3y ago

> The trouble with suppressing negative thoughts in the long run is that, eventually, reality may force you to confront them all at once and under far more difficult conditions. I guess the whole point, and better way of putting the original idea is to resolve the negative thoughts. If the thoughts are trivial, just suppressing them is mostly resolution enough, since trivial thoughts are most probably not going to come back. If the underlying reason for the negative thought is major and has staying power due to reality (e.g. you lost your mother when you were young), I think it's probable that the thought pattern is not going to go away if the reality underneath is not resolved (e.g. to actually learn to cope with your loss). Because eventually, reality will force you to confront these things at some point, because it's, well, reality. If you just keep suppressing these negative thoughts, they will just keep coming back and you're not really winning that much.

vasco 3y ago

A negative thought is just a thought, it's not like you need to actively not take care of real life things or errands. But if you find yourself thinking about death, or about how much your childhood sucked, or that you're good for nothing, you don't need to address anything about those thoughts. The least time you spend on them the better, nothing good comes from dwelling. I can't understand people that want to re-live or push through some negative thoughts "because it'll get better eventually". To me it seems like you're just making yourself numb, and it's got to be at the expense or something. You become so beaten down from them they don't hurt you anymore. I'd rather just not think about bad stuff, they come my away and I go away from them and I get to keep my "mental innocence". Why go through a long road when there's an immediate escape hatch? Said in a similar way, I could prepare for bad things to come. I know my parents will die. Should I think about that non-stop and feel sad everyday I do it just so I'll feel less sad when they die? Sounds ridiculous. I have zero desire to "understand" why some thoughts come sometimes, I just want to move past them as fast as possible.

zozbot234 3y ago
> But if you find yourself thinking about death, or about how much your childhood sucked, or that you're good for nothing, you don't need to address anything about those thoughts. > The least time you spend on them the better, nothing good comes from dwelling. Negative visualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization is absolutely a thing. If you do it properly (aiming towards psychological resilience and gratitude for the things one actually has) it can work quite well.
- vasco 3y ago
  Of course it exists, I described it in my comment. Look at this quote from wikipedia and compare it to my example of preparing for your parents to die: > Unlike the general focus of creative visualization of inducing an imaginary positive psychological and physiologic response, negative visualization focuses on training the practitioner on the negative outcomes of realistic life scenarios to desensitize or create psychological fitness in preparation for real-life losses Something existing and some people thinking it is a good idea doesn't mean it is. I'm not saying I'm right either, I'm sharing what I do and what I think. And what I think is that negative visualization is ridiculous. Live your life, bad things will happen anyway, why do you want to be sad in advance just to maybe be a little bit less sad later? I can't take this idea seriously, it's like someone who doesn't want to love for fear of getting a broken heart.

nazgul17 3y ago

I think there's an important difference between a negative thought about X and an introspective but emotionally more neutral thought about X.

nvarsj 3y ago

Unsure why you’re being downvoted - bizarre. Anyways, I agree completely. Life long struggle with anxiety and depression. Most of my issues come from ignoring my worst feelings and not dealing with them. I find the idea of suppressing feelings to be bizarre for treating clinical issues. Maybe that’s why mindfulness only ever provided me temporary relief.

wruza 3y ago
I believe there are different types or modes of thinking. Some tend to avoid negativity, others live through it to anchor in reality. Also, maybe it’s subjective, but all my friends who are negative-aware and embrace cynicism (not necessarily follow it) have much better sense of real life and of characters than all my friends who believe in all good things and are optimists. The former tend to be business people, the latter are all hired workers.
saberience 3y ago
It depends a great deal on the nature of the negative thought. For example: spending hours obsessively thinking about death and dying and infinite nothingness isn’t helpful in my opinion. But avoiding thinking about a mole you might want to get checked out at the doctor is a bad idea.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]