Many people struggle with negative thoughts. Letting go of them isn’t always easy. However, these four self-destructive thought patterns deserve our attention.
We have thousands of thoughts running through our minds daily—positive, negative, organizational, informative, meaningless, funny, and sad. Often, we feel helpless against this flood of information and believe that we must accept all these thoughts, even the toxic ones. But that’s not true. We can work on our mindset and gradually dissolve negative thought patterns.
If we feel unable to handle this alone, a therapist can help us. These particular thought patterns can become downright self-destructive if we let them run unchecked.
These self-destructive thought patterns should be avoided:
1. “Oh, that was nothing…”
How do you handle compliments? Imagine someone tells you how great your new hairstyle looks or that your project presentation was informative and exciting. Can you accept the praise? Or are you one of those people who immediately downplay such comments? “Thank you, but the bangs are mainly to cover my high forehead,” you might say about your hairstyle. “Thanks, but I wasn’t really satisfied—I kept stumbling over my words,” might be your intuitive response to the praise for your presentation.
If you find it hard to simply enjoy a compliment and instead feel the urge to downplay yourself, it often relates to low self-esteem. You probably have difficulty seeing yourself in a positive light. Practice accepting praise when someone says something nice to you next time.
2. “I probably can’t do that!”
We often underestimate the power of our thoughts. We can strongly influence ourselves—and even our environment—through them. This isn’t about esotericism or hocus-pocus but rather about what we project. If we appear confident to others, they perceive us more positively. If we constantly belittle ourselves, others expect less from us.
And we likely sabotage ourselves to perform poorly if we believe something won’t work before even trying it. If you think, “I probably can’t do this,” when faced with a challenge, you are likely to manifest exactly that outcome. Try to believe in yourself. Expect the best possible result and look to the future—and yourself—with confidence.
3. “I just got lucky!”
Imagine this scenario: you have completed a major project at work very successfully, and your boss praises you. What’s your first thought at that moment? Does it go more like, “Great, my hard work paid off!” or “I got lucky; that went well for me!” Even if you think it doesn’t make a big difference how you handle the situation—it actually does.
The first reaction is much healthier: you have accomplished something and are proud of it. If you tend to attribute such positive outcomes to circumstances beyond your control, it suggests that you don’t see yourself in control of your life. While you can’t influence every external factor, you can make decisions and put in the effort. And if you have done that, you can be proud of your achievements and not see them as mere coincidences.
4. “This person is just so much better than me…”
Comparisons are a normal part of human psychology. Evolutionarily speaking, we need them to place ourselves within the group. But in our modern society—especially thanks to social media—we take comparing ourselves with others to an unhealthy extreme. Moreover, our comparisons are often unrealistic, but we tend to overlook that. On Instagram and other platforms, we often see people whose lives seem perfect. They are rich, slim, beautiful, and always seem to be lounging on beaches in Santorini or the Seychelles. Spoiler: These people are not always happy and certainly not always satisfied with themselves and their lives.
They just don’t show that in their perfectly curated social media world. It’s natural for our self-esteem to be affected when we constantly see only perfectly retouched photos of seemingly perpetually happy people. But what if we approached our negative thoughts with a dose of realism? Instead of thinking, “I’m so bad; why am I not as disciplined and successful as they are?” we could think, “This person probably works very hard to afford this lifestyle.
And of course, they only post the pictures where they look perfect, not the ones where their skin is flawed.” It can be very helpful to broaden our perspective and not immediately spiral into self-critical thoughts. No one is perfect—neither we nor the people on Instagram or TikTok.
