"More recently, the idea of "negative thinking" became a way of describing those difficult, painful, anxiety-provoking thoughts that take us down the rabbit hole where depression might take hold. And as we in the mental health field continued to use those terms, they became a part of psychotherapy."
"A related spiritual perspective has taken hold, in which positive thoughts and emotions lead to positive life experiences and negative thoughts and emotions lead to negative life experiences. As a mental health clinician, I have worked with many people who have been taught to use this kind of magical thinking and experience anxiety and depression as a result of not being able to control their thoughts and emotions accordingly."
"It is very difficult to separate the terms positive and negative from their archetypal heritage of goodness and badness, making it hard to self-regulate using those terms."
Generations of cultural messaging have taught people to suppress difficult emotions and pursue constant positivity. Mental health professionals adopted terms like "negative thinking" and "positive thinking" to describe emotional states, but these labels carry archetypal associations with goodness and badness that complicate self-regulation. Spiritual perspectives suggesting negative thoughts create negative life experiences have led many to attempt thought control through repression, paradoxically increasing anxiety and depression. The fundamental issue is that thoughts and emotions themselves are neither inherently positive nor negative—these are learned judgments we impose on them. Mindfulness offers an alternative approach by encouraging observation of thoughts and feelings without judgment or labeling.
Read at Psychology Today
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