33 Types of Negative Thoughts

Anyone with a human brain has negative, or unhelpful thoughts. 

They are thoughts that create a sense of discomfort, anxiety, or unhappiness. These thoughts can be self-defeating, pessimistic, critical, or judgmental, and they often contribute to negative emotions such as sadness, anger, or fear. Negative thoughts can be related to past experiences, present situations, or future possibilities.

You might be thinking “I’m not good enough”, “Nobody likes me” or “I’ll never be successful.” These are all perfect examples of negative thoughts.

Learning how to identify and challenge negative thoughts can be an important step in improving one's mental health and creating a more positive and fulfilling life.

Here are 33 examples of types of negative thoughts that can negatively impact your mental health and well-being:

1. All-or-nothing thinking (e.g. "If I'm not perfect, I'm a failure")

2. Overgeneralisation (e.g. "This always happens to me")

3. Mental filtering (e.g. only focusing on negative aspects of a situation)

4. Disqualifying the positive (e.g. dismissing compliments or positive feedback)

5. Jumping to conclusions (e.g. assuming someone's intentions without evidence)

6. Catastrophising (e.g. imagining the worst-case scenario)

7. Personalisation (e.g. taking things too personally)

8. Emotional reasoning (e.g. assuming emotions are facts)

9. Should statements (e.g. "I should have done this differently")

10. Labelling (e.g. calling oneself or others negative labels)

11. Mind reading (e.g. assuming others' thoughts and feelings)

12. Fortune telling (e.g. predicting negative outcomes without evidence)

13. Magnification or minimisation (e.g. blowing things out of proportion or minimising their importance)

14. Blaming (e.g. blaming oneself or others without evidence)

15. Control fallacies (e.g. feeling responsible for things beyond one's control)

16. Fairness fallacies (e.g. expecting life to be fair)

17. Change fallacies (e.g. expecting others to change to meet one's expectations)

18. Global labelling (e.g. labelling oneself as a failure or loser)

19. Selective abstraction (e.g. focusing only on negative aspects of a situation)

20. Self-serving bias (e.g. attributing success to internal factors and failure to external factors)

21. Discounting or minimising positive experiences (e.g. dismissing positive events as not meaningful)

22. Emotional reasoning (e.g. "I feel bad, so something must be wrong")

23. Disqualifying or ignoring alternatives (e.g. not considering other options or solutions)

24. Comparing oneself negatively to others (e.g. "I'm not as good as they are")

25. Ignoring evidence that contradicts negative beliefs (e.g. "I know I'm right, despite evidence to the contrary")

26. Feeling responsible for others' emotions (e.g. feeling guilty for others' feelings)

27. Needing constant approval or validation (e.g. seeking others' approval to feel good about oneself)

28. Projecting negative beliefs onto others (e.g. assuming others have negative intentions or beliefs)

29. Associating external events with internal state (e.g. feeling bad because of something external)

30. Believing in limiting self-talk (e.g. "I can't do that")

31. Feeling stuck in negative patterns of thought or behaviour

32. Holding onto grudges or resentments

33. Believing that one is fundamentally flawed or inadequate

It's important to recognise and challenge these unhelpful, negative thoughts in order to promote better mental health and well-being. A life coach like me can help you identify and reframe these negative thought patterns, and develop more positive and constructive ways of thinking.

Not everyone has the same dominant negative thoughts. Which one do you recognise coming up most for you?

If you think you could benefit from working with a life coach, I offer a free, no-strings consult for you to explore working with me.

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