Caution: contagious thoughts!

Each of us can interpret the same situation in completely different ways. Imagine that you are woken up in the middle of the night by a loud sound coming from your living room. “It seems that there is someone there,” you get scared and reach for your mobile phone. Your pulse begins to beat faster, you listen frantically to the silence and then you can’t fall asleep for a long time. Here’s another scenario: when you hear a sharp sound, you wonder what it could be, and remember that you put a thick art album on an uneven stack of books on the edge of the table. “Apparently, the album has fallen,” you guess and calmly fall asleep.

In both cases, your attention is directed to the same object – the sound from the living room, but you explain it differently. The first explanation signals danger, while the second does not pose any threat. And the consequences of these thoughts, as we have seen, are also different: panic and insomnia in the first case and sound sleep in the second. “If the mental images you create are negative beyond measure, then your thinking may be infected,” warns Hanne, a clinical psychologist from Norway. Brourson*. There are many examples of such “thoughtviruses”. And Hannah Brourson gives her names to many.

“You are very fat, you need to exercise more often,” the perfectionist virus says to a girl who stands in front of a mirror in a shopping center fitting room. “Everyone is laughing at you,” the “I am the center of the universe” virus convinces an employee who hears the friendly laughter of colleagues gathered nearby. Under the influence of this virus, it seems to us that we are the object on which all the attention of others is focused, and this attention has a negative connotation.

“She thinks you’re a loser,” the “mind-reading” virus tells a teenager who thought that a classmate looked at him dismissively. This virus tells us that others think badly of us. “You will be fired soon,” warns the “impending disaster” virus of a young employee whose project has been criticized by his boss.

And we are constantly being overwhelmed by the virus of generalization, the virus of false feeling, the virus of black-and-white thinking … However, you can call them whatever you like, the question is: how to resist them?

Hanne Brourson offers seven ways to counter them.

1. Detect and expose

Thoughts that should not be trusted can be detected by the following signs:

• Infected thoughts cut us off from the present. Their first sign is anxiety about the future or painful thoughts about the past. Or both at the same time.
• They trigger a physiological stress response in the body. This sign is easy to recognize by listening to your body: from harmful thoughts, the pulse quickens, breathing goes astray, we feel tension in the muscles.
• These thoughts undermine our self-esteem. Thoughtviruses gladly remind us of past failures and mistakes and helpfully offer scenarios for future defeats. In addition, they manage to make us believe that this kind of reflection is useful – they supposedly prepare us to face problems in the future. It’s a delusion. The mechanism of the brain is such that if we think about something good, then we have access to other positive impressions. If we think about something bad, then other negative impressions easily pop up in our memory. Remember how long the chain of unpleasant thoughts can be when we, going to bed, begin to analyze at least one problem.

2. Enter into controversy

Every situation can be interpreted in at least three ways: positively, negatively, or neutrally. Thought viruses are always trying to convince us that there can be only one interpretation of the situation – negative. Imagine, for example, that you can’t get through to a friend in any way – he doesn’t pick up the phone. A day passed, another, and he did not call back. Thoughtviruses suggest that he is probably bored with you and he is trying to get rid of you. Or that a thoughtless remark thrown by you in the presence of a mutual friend nevertheless reached the ears of a friend and now he no longer wants to see you.

If you listen to the virus’s clues, you are likely to become nervous or feel hurt. Therefore, it is important to compete with them with positive or neutral alternatives. Maybe your friend has lost his cell phone? Or did he decide to call you back as soon as he gets back from vacation?

Even an unequivocally unpleasant situation (such as a towed car, a fine, or illness) can be interpreted in at least three ways: as relatively negative, just negative, and extremely negative.

3.Just accept the thought

Thoughtviruses are a part of our life: they come and go, sometimes there are many of them, and sometimes not, but in any case they are harmless in themselves. Try, when faced with thoughtviruses, not to be afraid of their appearance, but to shrug your shoulders indifferently and accept it without fear or resistance.

4.Switch

If, despite the exposure of the virus, controversy with it, and even acceptance, you still react to it, try to distract yourself from what is happening in your head by switching your attention to some urgent matters – for example, cleaning the apartment, surfing the Internet, cooking dinner, communication with children. Active actions are likely to distract you from gloomy thoughts.

5. Take control of negative thoughts

You can also learn to switch your attention from thoughtviruses to uninfected thoughts and back. What for? Yes, to destroy the developed automatism. It is much easier for thoughtviruses to poison your life if they have succeeded many times before.

First of all, start by thinking about something pleasant. For example, about your dog, about juicy tangerines, about someone’s infectious laughter, or about the sea and white sand of Pattaya. The next step is to associate this pleasant thought with an active virus. Think first about what is bothering you, and then move on to the pleasant. Switch back and forth. If you’re not used to it, it’s quite tiring, but when you do it a few times, it will become much easier to control negative thoughts!

6. Save them for later

Another trick is delay. The longer you manage to brush off annoying thoughtviruses, the better you learn to control them. Try to set a specific time for yourself to think about the bad. For example, the road to work or a coffee break. Another option is to choose a permanent place for anxious reflection. A stool in your kitchen, a bathroom, a bus that takes you to work. This means that until you find yourself in this place of your choice, you will not even think about thoughtviruses!

7. Decide on a brave act

Courage is succinctly expressed “sometimes you have to do something that you absolutely do not want to do.” Why should? Yes, because in many cases “I don’t feel like it at all” is nothing more than the result of exposure to thoughtviruses. You can verify this by testing the thought in practice. For example, go to visit even if you think you will not be welcome, or use the elevator, even if you are afraid that it will suddenly break and fall down.

Courage will help you see how much thoughtviruses distort reality. Indeed, they will do everything they can to get you to fold. But don’t give up. Thought viruses can keep the heat of passions up for 15 minutes, no more. Gradually, they will give up, and, having withstood their attack, you will be convinced that you had nothing to fear, except for an exhausting, but, in fact, harmless physiological reaction of the body.

* Hanne H. Brorson is a clinical psychologist, lecturer at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Oslo, a participant in the Youth Addiction Treatment Evaluation Project (YATEP) at the Oslo University Clinic, author of the book “Thoughtviruses. How not to poison your life with harmful thoughts” (Alpina Publisher, 2014) and presenter (together with Tove Helene Edvardsen) of the popular Tankevirus psychological course developed on the basis of this book.