Covering Up Negativity with Gratitude.

Gratitude is a beautiful thing. It can carry us through our dark times by helping us refocus our attention away from what we don’t have and remember all of the things that we do have. It can give us hope and strength when things aren’t going well. And living in gratitude is far greater than living in judgment, blame, fear, anger, etc…

That being said, a lot of people are using gratitude and positive thinking in a way that is not only unhelpful, but that can actually keep us stuck.

Someone who shared one of my posts recently said this: “Negative thoughts can become a vicious circle of death that chokes the life out of us. We must rejoice in heaven and the Lord, and we must think good thoughts instead.”

Let’s skip over the religious element of this statement for a moment and focus on the second half of “we must think good thoughts instead”.

Unfortunately, that WILL NOT WORK!

You cannot simply paint over your negative thoughts with positive ones. That would be like painting over the mold in your room. You might not see it… but the mold is still there, growing and spreading and will still have whatever effects on your health that mold may have.

And the reason you can’t just paint over your negative thoughts is because your negative thoughts are not themselves the core problem. Instead, your negative thoughts are the symptoms of a deeper problem. They are symptoms of the unresolved emotions, limiting beliefs, and current pain you are in. They are your mind's way of trying to make sense of the pain you’re in and to be in alignment with that energy you’re feeling.

When your ‘emotional body’ is suffering or when your nervous system is stuck in its fight or flight response, the mind will constantly look for things to be afraid of, worried about, or just plain bitter about. The thoughts that are popping up are simply the translation of emotional energy into words, and forcing yourself to think different words does not - on its own - change the emotional energy that you are carrying around with you.

Yes, learning how to steer our thoughts away from negativity will be part of the healing process. But that’s just the surface level, step 1 of the process. We learn how to handle our negative thoughts not because that’s the ultimate solution, but so that we can escape the cycling negative thoughts for long enough to actually turn our focus directly to the inner pain so that we can properly process it.

If we don’t conquer the negative thoughts, we will continue to fuel the fear that is creating them.

But until we learn to turn our attention directly to that fear without letting our thoughts get in the way, we will never truly escape this cycle.

So, again… I’m telling you that the thoughts are symptoms and we need to purge and process the emotional energy that’s causing them.