How to Break Free from Negative Thinking and Reclaim Your Joy

Hey friends, and welcome back to Building a life you love.

This is your host, Kristen.

Today we are going to talk about what might be standing in our way from experiencing more joy and happiness.

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Hey there.

Today we're going to talk about what might be keeping us from experiencing more joy or happiness in our lives and what can we do about it?

And the surprising answer is actually the thoughts between our ears.

And I did want to come on real quick and let you know that I want to apologize because this episode was apparently not recorded with my professional microphone, so the audio isn't great.

So I want to apologize in advance of the rest of this episode, but there's really just not an easy, quick way for me to fix it to make it the same quality as how I'm talking right now.

But I still think you're going to get a lot out of it and I hope you can bear with me through the episode.

And so we're going to dive into why that's the case and are there things we can do to increase the amount of joy and happiness we have in our lives?

And so the first thing that I want to say is that we're going to have negative feelings or thoughts, right?

So we're not saying we're always going to be positive or we're not angry or feel frustrated.

Sometimes fear feel afraid or fearful.

But what we want is we want there to be a balance and we want more of the positive, purposeful thoughts than we do of the negative thoughts because it impacts our overall health.

Negative thoughts impact not only our mental health, how much joy or happiness we experience.

It also impacts our physical health because our mental landscape determines our gene expression.

And so today we're not going to get into that piece so much because I've actually talked about that before for on a past episode, we're going to talk about the negative thoughts and how they're tied to how much joy we experience.

But I do want to just point out how important it is that we learn how to feel our feelings, how to go through them, how to release those feelings, and then things we can do to shift feelings that way.

All right, so the main reason though that negative feelings can impact us, feeling joy or happy is because it's the same part of the brain that allows us to feel both.

Okay, so and then what are negative feelings?

It's our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions and reactions that don't serve us, right?

So it's feeling anger, feeling unmotivated, feeling jealous, feeling triggered, feeling upset or hurt, worried, afraid, scared, guilty.

So and what we're taught, and here's the thing, so feelings like that are actually trying to protect us, right?

Because we've probably been hurt or we're afraid of something happening to us, right?

Are we, are we going to be safe?

Are we going to be loved?

Are we going to be accepted?

Right?

So there are all these things.

So there's a reason that we feel these things.

But we don't want to suppress or ignore those feelings or avoid them because that's what a lot of us do.

We try to suppress them or just disregard our feelings, right?

Or explain them why.

No, no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine.

But suppressing our emotions can do two things.

It can reduce our ability to feel positive emotions, which I'm going to get into in a minute, but suppressing our emotions and our needs actually also like I talked about hearts, our bodies, physical health.

And I've shared before recently, just trying to pull it up here, a book called when the Body says no, exploring the Stress Disease Connection by the Boar Mate.

And he explains that 80% of women are the ones that are diagnosed with autoimmune diseases because we tend to care about everyone else's feelings and needs and we put ours last or we just disregard ours.

Also, people that tend to get autoimmune diseases in general, long term chronic illnesses and cancer tend to, to have certain personality characteristics.

Now that doesn't mean because you have those, you're going to get one of those diseases.

What it means is that's one more factor in pattern that people that get diagnosed, of course it can be their environment, what's going on, or what they're exposed to.

But there's another piece which is they have un.

Resolved trauma or they have suppressed emotions and feelings.

And so most often from very young in our lives, right?

Childhood trauma or how we process things or didn't process them, how we perceived things and we brought it into adulthood.

Okay, back to negative feelings and why it can impact us feeling more joy in our lives.

So here's the deal.

All our emotions are interconnected and processed in the same part of the brain.

So our brain's center is also its pleasure center, right?

It's also the place.

It's the place, in other words, that all sensory information is brought through.

And there's quite a few parts of the brain that are that deal with our emotions, right, and our feelings.

But the one that we're talking about today is the somatosensory cortex because it doesn't just process pain, it processes physical sensation.

But it also is where, when we experience pleasure and joy gives sensory signals to that same part of the brain.

So when we try to avoid or suppress negative emotions, we're shutting down part of emotional experience.

We're numbing out, right?

And so we feel less overall emotion.

I guess the best way I can describe that is if we don't allow ourselves to feel the feelings, even negative or ones we've been holding on to, we're not allowing that part of us, right?

The somatosensory cortex do its job.

So it'd be kind of like if you had a cast on your arm, right?

Because we're protecting, if you will, that part of the brain or we're kind of closing it off.

Then if I tried to scratch or touch my arm where that cast is, I'm not going to feel it, right?

I would feel the cast, but I wouldn't feel my arm and my arm wouldn't feel the sensation the same way.

So we have to feel the feelings.

And so first I want to share with you a quote about it's going to give us growth, right?

We're going to have the good with the bad, the light with the dark.

We're going to have negative or things we feel that we don't want to feel.

And we're going to have good feelings, right?

Positive things, and that's okay.

But we have to learn to deal with the pent up feelings and not suppress our emotions, our needs and these things that are coming up for us.

So I'm going to share with you three things we can do to try to shift that in a minute.

But I just want to share this quote with you from Frederick Buchner says, listen to your life.

See it for the fathomless mystery that it is in the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness.

Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it.

Because in the last analysis of all moments are key moments in life itself is grace.

But friends, that's the thing we have to experience.

Like, we don't get the joy without also playing opposite, right?

And I don't mean that, that means we want more of it.

We have to be able to feel both and also, right?

It's through our senses, it's through processing things that we able to experience that excitement, excitement, that gladness, that joy, that happiness.

And so it's just really important that we actually address this.

Okay, so Dr.

Clint Steele, he's a brain and nervous system specialist, shares that our negative thoughts will stress out our brain.

And really.

And it also, it can increase having a lot of negative thoughts continuously.

Right where we're staying in this stressed out state, our brain sanctions out.

It also leads to an increase in, or I should say, sorry.

By addressing this, we are lowering one more thing we can do to lower our chances of getting Alzheimer's and dementia, which is how he helps people.

He helps people with common, everyday ways that we can lower our chances of having dementia or Alzheimer's.

He explains three ways that we can get ourselves out of these negative thoughts.

And so I would say two things.

One, this is for just like when we have a negative thought, how we capture it and shift it.

But then I'm going to come back and talk about like the same negative thoughts that keep coming up.

Okay, so here's what he says.

We want to notice a negative thought, right?

We're worried about something, we feel shame, we're afraid.

So we want to notice it.

Because if we don't notice it and we just let ourselves keep having these thoughts when they're, they kind of take over, right?

So we don't want that.

So if we notice the negative thoughts, then we can try to shift it.

And what he explains, one way to do that is that we are going to use like the pivot method.

And what that means is when you have a negative thought, you want to replace it with something else.

And so I'm sorry, first you want to stop your brain from having the thought.

It's an interruption.

And so the way you do that is you either you look at a photo, something that makes you happy or lifts you up, maybe that you look at scripture, you could turn on your favorite song.

That just kind of pulls you into a better state of good mood makes you think.

Or you could just have like a quote, right, that you have on your phone saved as an image and you look at that, you read that thought because it pulls you out of where you were.

So that's what we want to do.

That's the second part.

The third then is we do want to return to the original thought or scenario we were thinking of and replace it.

We want to change our perspective.

So let me think of an example here.

So let's say that I'm.

I'm worried, right?

My kids, my kids isn't home yet and they're driving.

It's getting later.

And of course, my what if mind goes on and I'm like, oh, it's not great weather.

Oh, what if something happens?

So once I notice the thought and then I redirect myself, if you will, right?

I like stop the thought by looking at maybe pictures of my family and just having these good emotions flow into me.

Then I want to come back to that thought and I want to really say to myself, like, is me worrying going to do any good?

And it's not.

First of all, my past does not show me or the data in general that that's realistic.

Of course, it doesn't mean it could never happen to anyone, but the chances are very small.

So then I need to shift myself to, you know what, I'm just going to say a little prayer for his safety and, and I'm going to release it because.

And then envision him coming home in 10 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it might be.

But I'm going to shift it to a realistic thought, not a spinning what if worry, because it's not doing me any good to have that worry because it's not based on any past thing that's happened.

It's.

It's just that thing in life and we never know what's going to happen, but the chances are low of something bad happening in that instance.

Okay, so that's kind of what he says we want to do with negative thoughts.

But I would say there's two types of negative thoughts.

One is what I just explained where it's more specific just to what's going on in your life right now.

In other words, they're kind of leading negative thoughts, if you will.

Now, maybe you have the same ones over and over.

Like maybe you don't feel good with the way you look on some part of your body.

So you just have this continuous negative thought.

Well, this three steps would still help with that.

Then I think there's Also a different part is we have to address what we're feeling.

And so, you know, one way, there's many ways to address past trauma or patterns that we're stuck in.

And I am not a specialist or psychiatrist or psychologist, but is having a somatic release.

And what does that mean?

It means we allow ourselves to actually feel the feeling.

So when we feel like we're in a space, we have a little bit of time.

If we feel sad, in other words, don't just say, I feel sad all the time, right?

Like, get in a safe spot, a quiet spot, and let yourself actually feel the emotion.

Like, where are you sat?

Do you feel it in your body?

Where do you feel it in your body?

Right?

Like, in other words, become aware of the feeling and allow the feeling to come forward, right, to come out.

And when you do that, and you.

And you welcome that feeling, like, look, feeling like, what do you want to tell me?

In other words, when we start getting in a little attention, we likely are going to have a release.

We're going to have a somatic release.

But that means is we might start crying, we might have a, you know, a feeling go through our body, right?

Like an energy or something.

But then as we release that emotion, as we're thinking about whatever we're holding on to, we start to feel lighter, okay?

Because we don't want to hold and bottle up these emotions.

We want to release them.

Of course, in cases where you're holding on to stuff and maybe you just don't know even what it's about, you absolutely should go find a professional to help you.

There are so many people.

There's counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists.

There are different types of coaches depending on the work you need to do.

There's also a technique called emotional freedom tapping and that also can help you have those sort of releases.

And so a lot of ways to deal with suppressed emotions or suppressed trauma or patterns that we might have.

But the most important thing is we want to bring them to the surface.

We want to start understanding them better and then we want to process them.

Because when we do this, we will start to increase our joy and our happiness, but we will also improve the state of our mental health and our physical health when we start releasing some of this stuff we've been holding onto, we haven't been allowing to surface.

And so I just wanted to come on, share that today how we can pull ourselves out of negative thinking.

Ways that you might want to explore trying to surface your suppressed or avoided emotions and feelings.

And then Also, how this can actually help you have more joy and actually improve your health overall.

So before we wrap up today's episode, I want to share a quote or two with you, and then I also am going to share a piece of scripture.

So there is a book called the gift 12 lessons to save your life by Dr.

Edith Hooker, who is.

She is a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor.

And her book, the Gift is really one that I highly recommend that you get.

It's just full of truly 12 life lessons that I think all of us can take so much away from.

But as she's wrapping up the book, she.

She says we can't take away suffering.

We can't change what happened.

We can choose to find the gift in our lives.

We can even learn to cherish the wound.

And then she says, life, even with its inevitable trauma, pain, grief, misery and death, is a gift.

The gift we sabotage when we imprison ourselves in our fears of punishment, failure and abandonment, in our need for approval, superiority and inferiority, in our need for power and control.

To celebrate the gift of life is to find the gift in everything that happens, even the parts that are difficult.

We're not sure we can survive to celebrate life, period, to live with joy, love and passion.

Sometimes we think that if we move on from loss or trauma, if we have fun and enjoy ourselves, if we continue to grow and evolve, that we're somehow dishonoring the dead or dishonoring the past.

Past.

But it's okay to laugh.

It's okay to have joy.

And she ends the book saying, honey, you may also choose to give up the prison and do the work, to be free, to find in your suffering your own life lessons.

To choose which legacy the world inherits.

To hand down the pain or to pass on the gift.

Okay, just reading that literally bring me to tears.

Just the emotion of it.

Okay, I also want to share with you two scriptures.

One of them is Proverbs 4:23, which says, above all else, guard your heart from everything you do flows from it.

And I think related to today's conversation, I think it's so important because if we find that we're stuck in patterns, we're stuck in the repeat stories in our head.

We're stuck in patterns like people pleasing or not speaking up to what we really want to be doing.

Maybe we're living a life or our life because we think we have to, right?

Our parents had expectations of us or what career we went into.

Maybe our spouse did.

Maybe we just feel like if we take a different path, people will judge us or think that we seem odd or unlikable.

But we have got to start guarding our own hearts.

We have to start speaking up for how we were designed and step into more of that.

And we need to do the work to heal ourselves.

We need to do the work to be whole.

And so whether we can do that on our own or whether we need to work with somebody to do that right, There are people, there's programs, there's books.

There's so many ways to make shifts here.

And then the other structure that I want to read to you is Philippians 4:8.

It says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

And like I talked about, it's not that we're not going to have negative thoughts or hard things happen, but what we can do is we can curate what we're looking at.

We can curate our thoughts over time.

We can try to focus on how we're showing up in the world, how we're being of service.

We can look at content that's life giving and uplifting, right?

We can start filling ourselves with things that help us shift to a mindset that makes us whole.

We can let go of the past, hurt the past, trauma, past patterns.

And you know, I love that in Scripture that it basically tells us that if we focus on right, if we think about those things, what's right, what's noble, what's pure, what's lovely, it changes us, right?

Because if we think good things, if we look at all the beauty in the world, all the amazing things people are doing to help each other, yes, there's bad things in the world, but look at all the good, which doesn't usually get covered.

And if we look at that more than we're looking at all the things that make us fearful and worried, our life will change because we're going to see more of what we look for.

So if we're looking for the good, if we're looking for the kindness, if we're looking for the examples of love and miracles, we're going to see more of it.

And we're going to know that we have a place in that world and that it's not just all gloom and doom.

So as we wrap up today, I just want to tell you that I hope there's something you can take away from this episode and apply it to your own life or dig into the quote or the scripture, maybe the book I mentioned or way that you can do the brain rewiring three steps right to notice your thoughts or patterns, to interrupt them and then to shift those thoughts or patterns.

So until next time, I hope you have a great day.

And as I've said before, this is not medical advice.

This is just educational, informative and you should always seek medical help of a professional practitioner if you're looking to find ways to actually work on this yourself.

So until next time, have a great.

One and thanks again for listening in.

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Thanks so much.

Until next time, have a great week.