Title: Overwhelmed by Negative Thoughts? This Clinical Psychology Professor Has Some Mental Health Tips For You

Americans have become more anxious year after year.

In 2024, 43% of adults said they felt more anxious than in the previous year, compared to 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022, according to the American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll.

Some therapists might recommend pushing back against negative thoughts, said Andrea Bonior, a teaching professor of psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences and a licensed clinical psychologist. But that might not always be the answer.

“Classical cognitive behavior therapy says to challenge the thoughts. That can work,” said Bonior. “But for people where it’s constant negative thoughts, they’re in a cycle of ruminations, and we refer to those thoughts as sticky. What tends to happen for those folks who constantly challenge negative thoughts is that they become exhausted.”

Rather than fight their thoughts, Bonior recommends patients practice acceptance and commitment therapy, which is rooted in mindfulness and gently observing one’s thoughts.

Learn more about Bonior’s clinical approach as she explains why we have negative thoughts and how we can manage them to improve our mental health.

Ask a Professor: How to Help Manage Anxiety and Negative Thoughts

Why do we get negative thoughts?

There are times when we are more sensitive to negative thoughts than other times, and we do have a bias towards negative thoughts and pay them more attention compared to positive thoughts. It’s important to recognize that it’s natural because it’s kept us alive for tens of thousands of years. If we didn’t have a sensitivity to threat, we would not have survived as a species. It’s biological in nature. Our nervous systems are wired to pick up threats, which in turn makes us more likely to perceive things negatively.

What happens in the brain when we get negative thoughts?

If we are having negative thoughts, we are more likely to be sensitive to threat, so our amygdala is going to be more active. The amygdalae are these two threat detectors in the brain that start the process of activating the nervous system that is required in fight or flight.

Your nervous system can be broken down into several branches, and within the autonomic nervous system, we have the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is what activates the threat response. What is key is that the parasympathetic nervous system can bring it back to equilibrium.

The problem with the experience of chronic stress or negative thoughts is that the parasympathetic nervous system starts to fall down on the job, so you’ve got this chronic, heightened state of arousal. That’s why people see long-term stress responses when they can’t fall asleep well anymore. We know it can lead to inflammation and that it’s not good for your heart. This is why chronic stress over time can be damaging.

How does your approach to confronting negative thoughts differ from mainstream therapies?

With acceptance and commitment therapy, what we do is we learn to accept the presence of the thought, but that doesn’t mean that we believe it’s true. We learn to neutralize it. Yep, there’s an anxious thought. Do I have to pay it any mind, or can it be background noise? I’m going to watch it pass. It’s the heckler in my mental audience. It can be there, but I don’t have to listen to it or even have to fight with it. The essence of mindfulness is that you can approach negative thoughts with a gentle curiosity.

For most of us, when we have negative thoughts, they are about us. What mindfulness does is help us distance ourselves from our thoughts as curious and nonjudgmental observers. It’s all about not getting into a huge fight with yourself that weakens you.

What if the negative thoughts have some truth behind them?

Let’s say you have a health crisis and are in the middle of medical testing, with a chance that you have a devastating diagnosis. It might not be helpful to say, I’m sure I’m fine. But what can we do with the thought? What is this thought doing? Is it helping me gain insight or be proactive? Do I have a plan in place? A support system? Who would I call first? At some point, the thought can give me strength, but when I catch myself over and over again returning to it, I can say that this thought isn’t helpful. It’s becoming sticky, and I need to separate myself from it.

Why are some people more prone to negative thoughts?

We know that the nervous system’s reactivity level is, in part, influenced by the biology that is inherited. In turn, environmental forces always act on genetics. 

The field of epigenetics looks at how certain genes might be turned on or off depending on environmental changes, and some of those changes might be inherited. Beyond that, the environmental factors probably matter even more so because there are so many ways our experiences with threat early on in childhood can influence us to view the world as a more threatening place. 

Whether we had a supporting and nurturing parental or guardian relationship matters a ton. Whether we were embraced with social connections and a sense of community matters. There’s also so much research about our diets and anxiety.

How does our diet affect our mental health?

A lot of people turn to processed food when they’re feeling mentally not great. I think we’re seeing more that our overly processed diets are influencing our mood. Our gut microbiomes are responsible for neurotransmitter activity. Serotonin, for instance, is a hugely implicated neurotransmitter when it comes to mood, depression and anxiety. That is synthesized in your gut and influenced by what’s happening digestively in the microbiome. We need good, diverse bacteria in the microbiome. The processed diets we tend to eat don’t help with that.

How does sleep affect mental health?

We know that sleep deficits make us more prone to hypersensitivity to threat. Again, it’s evolutionary because when we were dwelling in caves, if we were sleep deprived, we were more likely to die. We were more likely to be eaten or sluggish and could not escape from a predator as quickly. So, our brains created an adaptation where our brains will err on the side of thinking that things are threatening because it wants to keep us alive.

How does screen time affect negative thoughts?

It’s important to have nuance because the screen conversation is not just what, for example, social media is doing to our brains. It’s also what time on screens takes away. If it’s taking away time outdoors, physical activity, eye contact, hugs and social connection, that’s just as important as what it is doing.

Threat also just exists everywhere in our culture now, and anxiety spreads. If all of us are getting more anxious, then we’re talking about it. It’s on cable news. It’s on our social media feeds. We’re absorbing it. Emotion contagion is real, and we can easily pick up on other people’s anxiety.

How would you counsel someone to start dealing with negative thoughts?

Step one is learning to be a good observer. What are your triggers? What times of day are you feeling most anxious? What kinds of thoughts are you having? How do you normally deal with it? What helps you feel better? Let’s look at whether you’re getting physical activity or social connection. 

There are so many people walking around with anxiety who do not notice they’re clenching their hands or hunching their shoulders. Are there breathing exercises you can do? Progressive muscle relaxation? Are there specific interventions we can do in the moment to try to get the physical anxiety down?

Then we have to look at general lifestyle factors. Are you in a situation that makes you feel helpless? Are you in a relationship that creates a scenario where you’re not your best self? Are you not setting appropriate goals for yourself? Are you getting support from people in your life? 

Do you have creative outlets? A lot of these things are overlooked. One interesting thing about the pandemic was that a lot of people started doing creative stuff. If you talk to people now, they’ve kind of let that go. Let’s bring that back because creative endeavors are an outlet for not being stuck in our own ruminating, anxious heads.

In everyday moments, what are tactics people can use to handle negative thoughts?

There are many different techniques. Some work for some people and not others. [Using] metaphors is one.

Think of your thoughts as metaphors. Maybe you’re watching a parade, and your thoughts are the parade floats going by. Some parade floats are great. Some are loud. Some are smelly. You’re going to sit and do a meditation where your thoughts are on a parade, and you let them pass.

Some people find leaves on the stream as a metaphor to be super helpful. Your thoughts are leaves on a stream. You can watch them. You can see them, but you [let] them pass.