How To Spot And Break Out Of Negative Thought Spirals

Have you ever had a situation where you are worried about a situation, either real, potential or hypothetical, and felt yourself get increasingly distressed as your mind races down increasingly worst-case scenario situations that turn something innocuous into something truly gargantuan?

This is a concept known as a negative thought spiral or in some cases a catastrophic thought spiral. Many people have felt like this before, and often this is the reason they have reached out to an online life coach to help them navigate thoughts like this and the emergence of spirals that can turn often innocuous thoughts into a major cause of anxiety and a barrier to achieving your goals.

A negative thought spiral is an irrational negative prediction of the future that becomes the basis for other irrational negative thoughts and predictions. Ultimately, however deep a negative thought spiral goes, it is important to know that they are just thoughts without any basis in reality and formulate a slippery slope that can lead to a false perception of reality.

Here is a hypothetical example. Imagine you are in a meeting with several important people, and you present an idea in the heat of the moment that gets rejected by the other people in the meeting. Most people have an experience like this, and they are often easily forgotten about and moved on from.

However, a negative thought spiral would take this to mean that they don’t like your idea, which means they don’t like you, which means you’re not going to have a job, no money, no home, no shelter and then the negative consequences of this. It can be exceptionally distressing, and it is important to pull yourself out as soon as you feel that spiral start to descend.

First of all, remind yourself that this feeling will pass. You will not always feel this anxious. A good step to take is to use examples of similar situations and how they turned out. How many other people in that meeting had ideas that were rejected? Often the most likely scenario is in between the best and worst-case scenarios. Another thing to try is to use some mindfulness techniques, such as meditation for instance.