This is How You Can Counteract Negative Thoughts (Morning Routine)

This is How You Can Counteract Negative Thoughts (Morning Routine)



Welcome to today's discussion where we address a common yet challenging scenario: waking up to a barrage of negative thoughts. If you find yourself starting your day with an overwhelming flood of negativity, it could be a specific example of a mood disorder or even indicative of a depressive episode.

Healthy Gamer Coaching designed by Dr. K: https://bit.ly/3Q318lG
Dr. K’s Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/45NirwY

In this video, we'll explore practical strategies and insights on how to navigate these difficult mornings. We'll delve into the complexities of this experience, acknowledging that waking up with a stream of negative thoughts can be distressing and might indicate underlying mental health concerns.

Dr. Alok Kanojia is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specializes in the health and happiness of people who grew up online. He is the cofounder and President of Healthy Gamer, a subclinical mental wellness platform that makes premium content and coaching resources.

For more mental health resources: https://explore.healthygamer.gg/mentalhealthresources

Find us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and more here: https://wlo.link/@healthygamer

▼ Timestamps ▼
────────────
00:00 – Preview
00:17 – Reddit post
00:35 – Signs of mood disorder
02:27 – Negative thoughts and what to do about them
07:23 – Spiralling
10:12 – Counteracting negative thoughts
15:41 – Conclusion
────────────

DISCLAIMER
Healthy Gamer is an online community and resource platform for gamers and their families. It does not provided medical services or professional counseling, and it is not a substitute for professional medical care. Our coaches are peer supporters, not professionally trained experts, and they cannot provide medical service. If you or a loved on are experiencing an emergency, please call your nation's emergency telephone number. All guests of Healthy Gamer are informed of the public, non-medical nature of the content and have expressly agreed to share their story.

#healthygamergg #negativethoughts

anyone have a morning routine to start the day I get bombarded with negative thoughts the moment I wake up I get bombarded with negative thoughts does anyone have a morning routine to start the day off we're going to talk about is what to do if you wake up in the morning and you're bombarded with negative thoughts so the first thing to understand is that early morning Awakening and a very very high amount of negative thoughts first thing in the morning are the most is one of the most specific signs for a mood disorder and especially a depressive episode so let's explain that for a second what do I mean by specific signs so in medicine we have certain things that are sensitive in certain things that are specific so things that are sensitive are things that people are likely to have if they have a particular disease but they're not very specific so I'll give you all an example let's look at something like concentration difficulties concentration difficulties are not specific to depression so so if I have difficulty with concentrations I could have a major depressive episode I could have ADHD I could be high on a substance I may be physically ill I may have schizophrenia there are all kinds of reasons why I would have difficulty with concentration so that's not a specific sign for depression early morning Awakening and especially having lots of negative thoughts early in the morning is pretty specific even low mood throughout the day for example can be common in in grief or it can be common in things like even cancer for example physical illnesses but specifically waking up very early in the morning we're talking 4 AM 5 a.m 6 a.m with a mind that's running very very high on negative thoughts it's like you wake up and you're bombarded with negative thoughts can actually be a specific sign of depression so when I'm evaluating patients for depression one of the things that I'll ask them is like okay so you're feeling sad and down about yourself and things like that what time of the day do you feel that and the more they feel it kind of first thing in the morning especially if they wake up at 5am that makes me really concerned about a clinical illness so if you fall into that camp I'd highly recommend that you get clinically evaluated that being said there are a lot of people who wake up first thing in the morning with a lot of negative thoughts now that doesn't necessarily mean that you have a clinical illness there are other reasons why we kind of do that so now what we're going to talk about is understand a cup a little bit about what's going on in the mind when you wake up with negative thoughts and what to do about it so sometimes we worry about stuff and when we worry about stuff it's kind of hard to deal with it right so I don't know if this kind of makes sense but worrying about stuff doesn't necessarily solve problems so if I'm anxious about something and I'm thinking oh my God like are people going to invite me to the party are they not going to invite me the party I can think about it I can think about it I can think about it and at the end of those thoughts let's say an hour later is my anxiety been resolved have things been fixed no they haven't right so worrying about things in the moment sometimes doesn't actually fix problems if it did fix problems no one would have anxiety like or everyone with anxiety would have perfect lives because worrying about stuff if it actually fix stuff like that would be great the first thing to understand about worrying and especially worrying first thing in the morning it doesn't necessarily do anything so why do we do it we do it because our brain is concerned about a couple of things it's warning us about a couple of things or sometimes we have negative self-attitude so we're thinking negative things about ourself and then normally what happens or not normally but what happens nowadays is when we start to have negative thoughts we tend to distract ourselves from them so since thinking about them doesn't actually solve the problem what we end up doing is distracting ourselves this becoming easier and easier with the availability of technology so once I start browsing social media I can distract myself from my negative thoughts I can watch something I can play something I can do all kinds of different stuff to distract myself from these negative thoughts and when I distract those negative thoughts what happens to them they actually go dormant they don't get fixed right so if I lack self-esteem or I'm worried that people aren't going to invite me to a party and I spend four hours playing a particular video game at the end of those four hours those thoughts come back and so then what happened if we think about our days our days become filled with distraction so now I'm going to play games for four hours I stopped for a second the negative thoughts come back and now I need to do something else so I distract myself in another way I distract myself in another way sometimes I distract myself with work sometimes I distract myself I even will socialize right so even if I feel like I'm gonna be alone for the rest of my life and I have a group of buddies and we're all going to go out drinking tonight I can go do some fun stuff but I never deal with the problem and so what I tend to do is I have these negative thoughts and throughout my day I push them to the side I push them away I push them away I push them away and so the moment I wake up I haven't built any barriers yet so what happens they come flooding back into my mind first thing in the morning so how do we deal with this what should we not do and what should we do so the first thing to not do if you wake up with negative thoughts in the morning is use any kind of technology so it's so easy because Tech is so good at this stuff suppression of our amygdala in our limbic system which is our emotional circuitry our fear Center so social media memes video games Reddit whatever if I watch some kind of technology or engage in some kind of Technology it'll suppress my emotional circuitry the worst thing about a lot of social media is that even if it suppresses your circuitry in the short term over the long term it actually worsens your mental health so there's been studies that show that the more time you spend on social media things like Facebook or Instagram or Reddit or whatever the worse your mental health becomes over time and that taking a break or reducing your social media or technology usage improves mental health over time now the challenge though is that's overtime right I I'd put it to you this way let's say that there's even data that shows that for example having two drinks a week two alcoholic beverages a week correlates with improvements in mental health and some people are really confused by that they're like how is how can drinking help with your mental health and it turns out there's a confounding variable what kind of person drinks two drinks a week what is the setting in which you have two drinks a week it's almost always social so once a week I'm gonna go meet up with a friend I know my limit so I'm gonna have like two beers with dinner we're gonna hang out for a while and then we're gonna go our separate ways I'm gonna go to bed on time it's not like we're out there getting hammered so two drinks a week actually correlates with social social activity and that's what's responsible for the Improvement in mental health and if we go to 10 drinks a week 12 drinks a week 15 drinks a week then our mental health gets worse and worse and worse and social media in that same way when we use it temporarily if I'm having a really rough week and I spend two hours a week playing video games to kind of distract myself kind of cool off a little bit after a tense day that can actually be helpful because I want to suppress those emotional circuits because the rest of the week I'm actually dealing with my problems but as technology uses Rises and Rises and rises even though it's suppressing in the short term it can make things worse in the long term so if you have negative thoughts first thing in the morning most important thing is don't slip into technology usage because what that's going to do is push it away and then it'll come roaring back later second thing and this is going to sound kind of weird is don't try to fix the problem when you're feeling bad and y'all may be kind of confused by that you're like what do you mean don't isn't like when am I supposed to like fix the problem so let's understand this is really important so let's say I've got negative thoughts and I wake up first thing in the morning and here are my four negative thoughts and so what we can do in the mind is we can engage with negative thoughts right so let's say I'm let me just trying to find something uh like an example so let's say that I wake up in the morning and I think to myself no one really cares about me okay so that's this thought and then what I do is I start thinking okay no one really cares about me and then I start thinking about it well like or I'm feeling really lonely let's say let's say I'm feeling lonely okay and I start thinking about this thought of loneliness and then I think okay well like if I'm feeling lonely why don't I go and socialize let me call up a friend of mine but if you're in a negative frame of thought if this is the mindset that you're in when you think about Solutions what does your mind actually say oh people don't want to invite you right and you're like oh like and so even though you can try to solve the problem it's kind of like the more you engage with your negative thoughts and you start arguing with yourself and like the negative thoughts grow and grow and grow and let's say like you fight that thought for a little while you're like oh no I don't want to trust that people really do love me let me text someone so you text someone first thing in the morning hey you want to hang out this weekend at 9am and then they don't respond in 15 minutes then how do you feel they don't care about me does this make sense so oftentimes what we'll discover is that when you have negative thoughts first thing in the morning and you engage with them these thoughts the more you engage with them the more they actually start to spiral and then you're kind of stuck in this like negative thought Loop where you're spiraling in negativity and this is the key thing to understand so when you wake up in the morning and you have negative thoughts you want to fix them but I don't know if this kind of makes sense but in that frame of mind you can't effectively fix them if that worked you we wouldn't be in this problem in the first place in fact engaging with those negative thoughts and trying to fix them in that moment actually makes things worse because you wake up and you think through that stuff you think you think you think you think you think and the more time you spend thinking the worse that you feel until eventually what happens is you hit the state of cognitive exhaustion where you're like ah and you get out of bed and you go grab your phone and then you distract yourself you push all the negative thoughts you push them to the side and now we're going to focus on this stuff in the middle we're going to focus on this stuff in the middle okay that's there we go we're gonna focus on the stuff in the Middle with distraction and then the second the distraction thought stops the thoughts are going to come rushing back so oddly enough don't try to fix things that's the second thing to be careful about third thing is avoid substances so this is this kind of goes back to this distracting thing and is almost in the same vein as um you know avoiding technology but be careful about things like getting high first thing in the morning and like getting high when you're feeling bad and like drinking and stuff like that because it's gonna just create more problems down the road down the line especially because substances are more likely to put you into a negative frame of mind where you can actually spiral so then the question is okay if I shouldn't use technology don't try to fix the problem and don't use substances what should I do first thing you should do is go for a walk so this is key when we're in this Frame of Mind where we've got some weird Thoughts The Right Move is to not engage with them and let them spiral but we what we actually want to do instead is kind of let them fizzle out so we don't want to distract ourselves by pushing them to the side but when we go for a walk or there are other things that you can do so what I would say is go for a walk or clean something there's this weird effect when we clean things or when we go for a walk is that like the thoughts don't we're not really pushing them away we're sort of letting them be there but we're not engaging with them and I don't know if you all have experienced this but like when you clean stuff and when you go for a walk your mind will start to wander so what sort of happens is the energy in the mind starts to kind of like dissipate you start just naturally thinking about like other stuff so now you've got two thoughts left that are bad but then you start thinking about other things right and then you've got like two kind of neutral thoughts and then as you keep walking what's going to happen is you're going to get one bad thought and then a couple good ones and then eventually that bad thought will go away and then you're just kind of like thinking about okay what do I need to do today and the key thing there is that in this moment you haven't engaged with the thoughts you can kind of think through them a little bit you're not going to try to solve them you're just going to let whatever you're going to let them kind of like it's almost like I don't know if you all have seen like a dog shaking off water after it's been in the rain or whatever but like that's kind of what we're doing in our mind anytime we clean or anytime we go for a walk the third thing to do with negative thoughts assign a time to deal with them so remember we said we don't want to fix them now but sometimes we have to address them but what we want to do is approach them from a clear head and methodically so this is like literally what happens in therapy so what's really cool about therapy and I've seen this this change a lot is that sometimes I'll notice a shift in my patients where they learn that they can take their negative thoughts they've got a box over here they wake up in the morning with negative thoughts here's day one here's day two and let's say here's day three when their boss gets mad at them and what they actually learn over time is they're like oh okay like I'm feeling bad right now I'm going to talk about this with Dr K on Thursday next day they wake up they're like I feel this way right now I'm gonna talk with Dr K about this on Thursday I'm feeling this way right now I'm gonna talk with Dr K about this on Thursday and then what happens when they come into my office is we're like cool okay let's break these walls down let's let all that crap out we're gonna let it all out and we're gonna kind of deal with it methodically one at a time and so what we can almost do is compartmentalize dealing with our problems and the key thing that when you when you assign a time is that when you're clear-headed you can actually fix stuff you'll get that the biggest problem here is that when we are emotionally active and we're not clear-headed it makes it even harder to fix the problems even though the problem seems so in our face when we let it set it down put it aside and then approach it with a clear head suddenly Things become so much easier and so one of the biggest advantages of therapy is is sure you can have a clinician who's trained in a bunch of stuff and that's fantastic don't get me wrong it's a great evidence-based intervention but half of the advantage of therapy is just learning how to compartmentalize and then approaching problems in sort of a calm way and the nice thing about a therapist is that you've got someone there who's going to keep you from spiraling and guide you in hopefully a productive manner but the major principle here is that assigning a time deal deal with them so then what I'm feeling pretty good about myself maybe before I have lunch I'm gonna sit down with a piece of paper and I'm gonna like think through those thoughts I'm gonna try to summon them I'm gonna pick one thing okay people don't like me okay and then let me try to socialize okay let me send a text and then even in that moment you're going to kind of acknowledge for a moment that okay like if I send a text they may not get back to me right away that's okay do I need to find and then when they don't when they don't respond if you're kind of really in a clear frame of mind do I need different friends instead of it suddenly being if they don't respond to you it's not a shortcoming of you it could be a shortcoming of them but when you're in this negative headspace and there are people who are neglectful of you in life it's never their fault because in this negative headspace in your spiral it's always your fault and so when you have negative thoughts first thing in the morning I'd say very Simply Clean go for a walk don't use technology don't use substances and don't try to solve the problems instead assign a separate time where you're of clear ahead to approach whatever your concerns are and when people do this something magical starts to happen may not happen overnight but over time you'll have fewer and fewer and fewer negative thoughts in the morning because when we engage I don't know if this makes sense but when we engage with the negative thoughts in the morning we actually ramp them up do you all get that like one thought leads to another thought leads to another thought like this this grows when I start thinking these and then it grows and grows and grows and grows and grows and then I feel overwhelmed then what happens is if I'm engaging with my thoughts in the morning okay so I'll draw one last thing to illustrate this so I have four bad thoughts and then I engage with them and it becomes five six seven eight nine ten whatever and now here's the key thing when I distract myself and I push all these thoughts to the outside of my mind how many are left and now tomorrow morning when I wake up how many thoughts negative thoughts am I gonna have I have more than what I started with right and then I'm going to engage with these I'm going to create more and more and more and more and more and then I'm gonna have more the next day and more the next day and more the next day because I'm spending all this cognitive energy nothing is actually getting fixed so don't engage with your negative thoughts when you're a negative frame of mind set it aside for later and honestly when people start doing this when you start controlling how and when your mind thinks a particular way that's when your mind starts to get purified and last thing just to keep in mind is remember we started that sometimes earlier morning Awakening is actually a sign of a clinical illness so I'd recommend getting evaluated if you fall into that category if you found this video helpful check out Dr K's guide we've spent hundreds of hours writing and filming to help people understand their mind so that they can build the lives that they want so check out the link in the description below

#Counteract #Negative #Thoughts #Morning #Routine

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