Negative Thoughts and Emotions are Healthy

How? I hear you asking. Well, let me tell you a little secret...

Up until the age of 21, I had never considered the effect negative thoughts and emotions could have on my body and mind. Then I read a book called "The Secret." A book with which most people are familiar. The Secret preaches that negative thinking and emotions within a human body, cause only damage and attract more and more negative thoughts and emotions and therefore more damage. I was suffering from chronic ill health at the time I read The Secret, and for years had just been gradually getting more ill. Unable to find a solution to the ill health I was suffering, I quickly came to the conclusion that my own negative thoughts and emotions were responsible for making me ill. In fact, it was quite the opposite!

Reading this book suddenly made me analyze my own thinking and emotions on a minute level of detail. At first I started feeling positive and was determined to change, but very quickly I became petrified at the sheer weight of the negative thinking I was doing. The amount of stress this phobic thinking put me under was unbelievable, surely I'd end up dead if I carried on like that? Every negative thought and emotion had to be removed and replaced with a positive one, I had to only think positively. The state I was in could be compared to having World War III exploding out within my head, positive thoughts and emotions fighting, fruitlessly against negative ones...

The amount of stress I was under to change my thinking was crippling, but I never gave up, relentlessly, I struggled on, fighting to change.

3 years down the line. My health is worse than it has ever been. Explanation?

Negative thoughts and emotions are vital, for our survival, we CAN'T control them, because they are part of our body's natural anatomy.

Recently there has been a boom in the self help industry, about The Law Of Attraction, Negative Thinking and various other media of that sort. This boom preaches that negative thoughts and emotions are to be avoided, like the plague and we should ONLY think positively.

WRONG.

Negative thoughts and emotions are a natural, normal part of being a human being. You cannot deny what is natural and normal. A human body reacts instinctively to stimuli, both on the inside and outside of our body. Sometimes the reactions are pleasing and we feel at ease and think pleasant thoughts. Sometimes, however, our body's reactions to stimuli are unpleasing and negative.

The body has an innate system it tunes into, in order to deal with stimuli, both positive and negative and there is nothing we can do to control this. If our bodies are going to react to a certain stimuli with a negative response, there is little else for us to do but sit back and wait for the moment to pass. You cannot fight against nature, because you will ALWAYS lose.

What happens if you do try to fight negative thoughts and emotions?

One of the most delicate and yet powerful organs in the human body is the brain. It is this lump of gray matter between our ears, that has the task of interpreting all internal and external stimuli and responding appropriately. This is called Biofeedback.

When a person attempts to shut off the brain's natural response to certain stimuli, they are making a very deliberate effort to interfere with something that shouldn't be interfered with. Physically what this does, is alters the natural rhythm of the brain waves.

Let me offer a very simple explanation as to the brains working, so you can understand what I'm saying.

The brain has 4 brain waves, which represent different physical and emotional states, in which a person may find themselves.

Delta waves - these are the slowest brain waves and are associated with the deep sleep.

Theta Waves - These are the second slowest brain waves and are associated with light sleep.

Alpha Waves - These are associated with an awake/relaxed state.

Beta Waves - these are the fastest brain waves and are associated with an awake/excited state.

The human brain is very good at regulating itself under normal circumstances and the brain waves are well balanced, leading to a healthy, well balanced individual. However, when the brain waves are interfered with, deliberate or not, this will cause an imbalance and the physical and emotional state of the person will be altered.

High anxiety is associated with an excess of Beta waves. Chronic Fatigue is associated with an excess of Delta and Theta waves.

Simply put, Alpha waves can become suppressed and Delta, Theta and Beta waves can become elevated.

Over time if an individual repeatedly interferes with the natural response of the brain to stimuli, the brain can become permanently changed and the person will get stuck in a state of fight or flight, chronic fatigue and chronic ill health.

The emotional impact of these changes in natural brain waves can lead to phobias, anxiety, insomnia, paranoia, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, nervous breakdown, physical illness etc...

So you see. Interfering with the natural response of the brain is devastating.

Relax, there is nothing to worry about. Negative thoughts and emotions, no matter how unpleasant WILL NOT HURT YOU. Accept them, think them, feel how you feel and sit with it, until it passes of its own accord. You feel negative for a reason.  Your body and mind are trying to tell you something.  Listen.  Balance will come again, but you have to listen and be patient. This is Biofeedback. Your body and mind are telling you something, you listen, adjustments are made, you get feedback for the adjustments.

What is your body and mind trying to tell you?

Suppressing negative thoughts and emotions not only disrupts the natural waves of the brain; it also hides the biofeedback. You can no longer work out what you need to do in order to bring your body and mind back into a state of harmony.  You are too distracted with the effort of trying to forcibly change your negative thoughts and emotions to even notice what they represent.

This is dangerous for both short and long term health. Take this extreme external negative stimuli senario:

Fred places his hand into a pot of molten lead. Pain signals shoot to his brain. His brain interprets the signals and promptly instructs Fred to remove his hand from the lead. Now imagine that Fred tries to somehow suppress the pain signals and forcefully try to fight them with thoughts of "I'm not in pain." He's going to end up with one poorly hand!

Take another, less extreme external negative stimuli scenario:

Fiona is being bullied. She feels upset, hurt and hatred towards the bullies. Natural emotions and thoughts, which are instructing her to take action, in order to the remove the bullying from her life, so she no longer feels these unpleasant negative thoughts and emotions. But imagine if Fiona tries to suppress these negative emotions and fight them off, because she believes they are "bad." She will miss the biofeedback and will fail to take the required action and things will spiral.

Now take this internal negative stimuli scenario:

Jackie has recently begun feeling ill. Now imagine Jackie tried to fight this unpleasant, negative feeling and continue with her normal everyday life regardless of feeling ill. Jackie misses the biofeedback from her body and she makes no adjustments to her life. Over time the illness just gets worse and eventually Jackie can no longer function at all and is seriously ill. What about if it turns out Jackie has Cancer? Or Diabetes? If Jackie had listened to her body in the first place, it might not have led to that.

These are very extreme scenarios, but all three of them aren't that far from what most of us tend to do in our everyday lives when we are faced with negative thoughts and emotions, which have been labeled as "toxic" in today's society.

Listen to what your body and mind are telling you. You need to hear it!

Mindfulness involves paying attention “on purpose.” Nothing more. This, as far as my experiences have shown, is the most effective way to handle negative thoughts and emotions. If you pay attention, without judging or taking action, your body and mind will tell you exactly what you need to know and will more often than not, make you act instinctively, rather than deliberately. Balance in mind and body is then restored.

The following words can be applied to a mindful state:

accepting, embracing, non-judging, being, observing, opening, letting be...

Being mindful of negative thoughts and emotions takes the pressure off.  You no longer have to fight to change anything in your mind or your body. You just sit back and observe and wait patiently. You cannot force anything. It will come in its own time and the negative thoughts and emotions will subside, in their own time.

Being mindful also removes the fear we all feel towards negative thoughts and emotions, which is in fact a fear of fear, or "anxiety." A fear of fear is what causes panic attacks and anxiety disorders. If you no longer have that fear, and are able to just sit with negative thoughts and emotions, you will be in a rational, sound state, both physically and mentally. You will therefore be in a place where you can make rational and sound decisions and adjustments, based on the biofeedback you are paying attention to.

Mindfulness takes practice. But its well worth the effort!

Well, I interfered with the natural rhythms of my brain, to the point where they changed permanently. In attempting to remove negative emotions and thoughts from my life, I only succeeded in locking myself into a permanent state of perpetual fear, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and panic. I switched off my entire digestive system, and can no longer eat without horrific gastro-intestinal distress and illness, so I am currently living on a medically prescribed, pre-digested elemental diet drinks. I have also run my adrenal glands to exhaustion, I suffer from chronic insomnia and fatigue and my body cannot regulate its temperature or hormones properly. My brainwaves have been altered to the point of no return, I now need Neurofeedback to retrain my brain how to function properly again.

Frankly I dare not think of what other damage I may have done on top of all this...

BUT

I am getting better. Mindfulness is saving my life. I have begun to sit with the very thoughts and emotions I became so utterly phobic of facing. They aren't nearly as bad as I thought. My body has slowly, but surely begun to fix itself. The original cause of my deteriorating health has only just come to light. My own biofeedback, which I previously fought against, is actually telling me what I need to do, to fix myself and I am doing it. If I'd just listened to my biofeedback earlier instead of fighting against it, I wouldn't have had to have gone through the years of... well...  Hell on earth! 

I am accepting, facing, and allowing negative thoughts and emotions into my life, and it is saving my life. I am letting go of the control, which I desperately fought to gain over my thoughts and emotions. I can't control them.  Nobody can control their thoughts and emotions.

So on that note, I ask you to re read the title of this hub, once more. Yes. Negative Thoughts and Emotions ARE Healthy, and don't ever forget that!

Sending Love, Courage, Peace and Happiness to you all...

Heidi xxx