After doing a lot of reading and looking for some help to get a better understanding and control of my mental health I have decided to take the idea of positive thinking and use this to try and help manage my daily life.
I spoke to a friend last night via text on whatsapp and realised that the way I am feeling resonates with him and potentially a lot of people feel the same way. My friend mentioned “trying to stay positive” as a way of coping with my feelings.
As I have said before in my posts, the main focus of this website and blog is to not only to help myself with my mental health issues but others.
Fundamentals of Positive thinking
Positive thinking can have many benefits and although it may sound easy to do it can be quite hard in reality. Positive thinking is a way of eventually changing the way our brain works. Negative thoughts and the effects they have on the brain pretty much always cause worry, stress and anguish. This is why I need to do this.
Positive thoughts can and will if practiced and used daily, change a persons outlook on life. I have yet to fully embrace this fact but it is something I will be taking on with full commitment.
Last night I got very down and upset with myself. I had a long chat with my wife regarding how I was feeling and she reminded me to think positively. I can change how my brain works, I will change how my brain works. My life will get better and I will feel better and happier for this.
As I went to bed last night I really tried to concentrate on keeping these basic positive thoughts in my head. I was not fully successful as I had a few negative thoughts creep in but I managed to stay relatively positive and calm.
It was a strange feeling this morning when I woke up. 6am was an unusual occurrence as I have been waking up for months between 4am and 5am. I did wake up with some anxious thoughts and feeling a bit down. If I had a nightmare last night then I can not remember the details.
Benefits of Positive Thinking
There are a lot of benefits associated to the power of positive thinking and how it can improve your physical health and mental health. I personally have seen a few improvements in my own mental health recently and need to keep this approach going to gain many more benefits.
Here is a brief table below of some of the main benefits of positive thinking:
- Helps fight depression
- Better health
- Reduces stress
- Improved and healthier relationships
- Improves self-esteem
- Increased life span
- Lower levels of distress and pain
- Better psychological and physical well-being
There are many more benefits than listed above but overall the benefits of positive thinking can help with many more elements of a persons daily life.
Negative thinking and how it affects mental health
A negative thought process is something until recently I never realised I had. I have just always felt like this for as long as I can remember. This mindset has been there for pretty much all my adult life in one way or another and needs to change.
The negative thoughts are part of the problem with complex ptsd. I was diagnosed and treated for complex ptsd by my mental health counsellor. This happened as a result of the childhood sexual abuse that I was a victim of at the age of 13.
Looking back on my life I can identify with all of the symptoms below and how my mind has, and is still processing my thoughts. This is very tiring, both physically and emotionally and has been affecting my life every day. It also affects my family members on a daily basis and needs to stop.
Here is a list of the main thought types that I experience everyday. As you will see these can become very overwhelming and controlling. I’m starting to wish I had found this out years ago but no one mentioned it.
- Filtering – To filter out all of the good things that have happened in a situation and magnify the negative elements
- Catastrophizing – To automatically assume the worst possible outcome to a situation without fact that this will happen
- Magnification – To make a big deal out of a small problem
- Perfectionism – Keeping impossible standards and trying to be more perfect sets yourself up for failure.
- Overthinking – the main issue that controls your thought process
How this makes me feel
The list of symptoms above are experienced every day by myself at some point. Its hard to explain to someone why this happens. The brain is a very powerful tool and when it is programmed to act a certain way it becomes increasingly harder to change that.
I have struggled to understand why positive thinking is so important until now. Even though I went through 12 weeks of very intensive mental health counselling to help with my complex ptsd, this subject of positive thinking was never mentioned.
Over the course of my doctors appointments all those years ago, discussions with counsellors and other professionals, they never mentioned anything about positive thinking and how it could help me.
My doctors were happy to help with medication and assessments, even the doctor I spoke to recently to get more medication never mentioned anything about positive thinking.
What to do now..
Well I don’t know what to say apart from the obvious. I am going to have to try as hard as I can to develop a way to manage my negative thoughts. I need to feel like I am alive and not just existing. That thought has just hit me while I am sat here typing.
Wow, what have I been doing all these years? Why have I just realised how powerful my conversation with my wife was last night.
I know I have mentioned positive thinking before, it helped me a few weeks ago to play the best round of golf so far in my life. Why do I keep doing these kind of things. I lose my train of thought. Why do I forget things easily.
I think its because of all these negative thought processes going on in my brain that this happens. My Wife says I am always telling myself I am not good at anything. I always feel worthless.
I should have done this and didn’t, I made mistakes that caused issues for others. It seems like all of these types of thoughts have become my base level of emotions and that must stop.
I will be doing some press ups later today, I need to and I must concentrate fully and be positive about the effects they will have on my health and hopefully my sleep.