Starve Your Negative Thoughts


Being inside my head has never been a nice, safe place to be. Instead, it’s been a place of perpetual horror overrun with fear, dread, doom and anxiety. If nothing bad was literally happening in the real world around me, I’d always find a quick way to create a terrifying drama in my head. 

Recovery has given me the awareness to realize how I've learned to thrive on chaos since childhood. And I can now see how much my subconscious mind, in particular, works against me. It’s easier to recognize conscious negative thoughts, but extremely difficult to have control over the negative subconscious tapes that are constantly replaying through my head. Since I’m not always consciously aware of subconscious thoughts, I’ve decided to develop a simple mantra to retrain my brain. That mantra is “My subconscious mind is now working FOR me. All my subconscious thoughts bring healing and wholeness.”

Right now, everything is actually going my way in the real world. Under the direction of my Higher Power, I see everything falling into place just right. There’s only one glitch: My subconscious mind is so programmed to make my life miserable and it keeps getting in the way of fully enjoying the good that’s gracing my life. I realize now that the most important part of recovery, and achieving complete self-acceptance, is working to reprogram my subconscious mind.

It’s certainly true that most of us live primarily in our heads. From now on, I want my mind to be a welcoming, healing “nice place to be.” It’s going to take a lot of work. But I’m already learning to deflect negative thoughts as they enter my conscious mind. On entry, I've noticed that every negative thought produces an immediate negative, fear filled feeling. But as soon as I dismiss the thought, the feeling disappears as well. The quicker I dismiss any negative thought, the better. I’m learning not to entertain or feed them anymore. As I starve negative thoughts, life becomes much easier to enjoy. And I feel safer.

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