Can these negative thoughts make the fears actually happen?

[Txxxrho]

Can all of my negative thinking, and catastrophizing over situations and thinking that these bad things are going to happen, actually cause them to happen? Convinced no matter how irrational and rare it would be that these things are going to happen everyday and when the day goes by it's tomorrow when it will happen. But someone was trying to tell me about positive thinking and said something about you're creating this and giving it life for something to happen so now I'm afraid that I'm going to "think" my situations into happening.. Is this just more irrational fears? Or any truth?

[Rinzai]

Can all of my negative thinking, and catastrophizing over situations and thinking that these bad things are going to happen, actually cause them to happen?

Hi Txxxrho! I'm really glad you've posted this because I endure that problem too. I find that the short answer to this is no. Thinking, positive or negative, do not create the situations themselves. What you're going through is what is known as magical thinking. This for me is the worst form of irrational thought because it could really drive you nuts and also it can create feelings of guilt and strengthen feelings of paranoia.


But someone was trying to tell me about positive thinking and said something about you're creating this and giving it life for something to happen so now I'm afraid that I'm going to "think" my situations into happening..

Be very careful about what kind of advice you receive. I'm sure the person meant well and almost everyone highlights the importance of positive thinking. The idea of your thoughts 'giving it life' is in my experience absolute nonsense. I've had lots of negative thoughts where I feared something really bad happening and I feared I was giving it life but then it turned out to be nothing. And even if something bad did happen, looking at it logically, it would have nothing to do with your thoughts, but rather more rational causes.

Positive thinking is important to help you gain confidence in yourself, but positive thinking alone does not magically create situations. If it were true then everyone would end up winning the lottery. The same applies to negative thinking.

Whenever you experience a moment of negative thinking, maybe change your perspective on it and see what it is really all about. What triggered those thoughts and are they related to anything in your past experiences? Chances are that your mind is taking care to prevent any future trouble. This is not fortune telling, but rather it is following a kind of unconscious 'once bitten, twice shy' pattern.

Yesterday, I had thoughts that I may lose my job or even the new home I've moved into. But this was triggered by the loses I endured in the past few years and my mind is wondering: what else am I going to lose? The mind is getting used to a pattern and all what is needed to do it to gently convince the mind that there is no need to fear and therefore no need to anticipate a future loss. Bad things happen, sure, but not because you 'think' them to happen.

:hugs:

[MyNameIsTerry]

No, you cannot use your thoughts to influence the physical world - its impossible. You would need superpowers!

What they may be thinking about is the law of attraction. Its garbage. There is a certain element of truth in there i.e. if you keep thinking negative, you will continue to and how you act can mean you are drawn to certain types of people, but thats where it ends.

They may otherwise have been trying to say that you make the choice whether to remain in anxiety cycles rather than try to break out of them.

Spin it the other way around - would thinking hard about winning the lottery make it happen? Of course not. So, why would thinking something bad about someone make it happen to them? It can't.

The only way your thoughts can become physical is if YOU take the choice to make them to by using your cognitive mind to perform such actions.

Think of it this way, if we could make our thoughts into actions, there would be some serious violently deadly people around in the OCD community, me included!

Magical thinking, as mentioned above, is where you believe your thoughts can influence the physical world. Its a form of OCD, one that I have. I used to have to perform many, often combined, rituals to cancel out bad things happening to my parents because of a thought in my head.

---------- Post added at 10:51 ---------- Previous post was at 08:30 ----------

If you want to test your magical thinking, Behavioural Experiments are a useful way to do it, see this link:

http://self-help.tools/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/

[Oosh]

Great post by Rinzai there. I really like how you've broken that down.

What are the things you fear happening every day Txxxrho ?

I think what people generally refer to when they're saying that, is your outlook and it being a self fulfilling prophecy.

Eg
Belief -people don't like me.

You then go out into the world with your guard up and looking for the evidence you fear/belief that people don't like you. You're looking for it so that's all you'll inevitably find, but only because your outlook means that's the only thing you're looking for. The evidence confirms your beliefs that nobody likes you.
But saying all that, the belief "nobody likes me" isn't actually true.

So you can sort of get the world you expect to get to some degree.

That's just an example. I was like this for years. I stopped even looking for the evidence. I just took it as written that people were horrible. So that's the world I got. Any negative feedback I got was actually just due to how closed off and unfriendly I was, which was a result of my outlook and not some truth that people didn't like me.

But can you think yourself into various health anxieties coming true etc ?
Well that's changing the physical with your thoughts isn't it. That's not outlook.
If you are worrying about health anxieties the only thing you'd probably create is worry related issues.

When you are worrying that all sorts of things are possible you need an anchor to reality. You need good people to tell you what's what. If nmp is all you have use nmp. I went through it for a long time and didn't have anybody to tell me what was real and what wasn't.

Anchor your thoughts to real things, ideas, beliefs that have lots of evidence and make sense and grow that so it becomes dominant and the peculiar little worries you have about things become peripheral and weak compared to the new reality you've built that makes real sense to you.

You need to get more occupied in constructive, positive, productive, enjoyable things so your mind isn't left with the time to be wondering if thoughts can make your fears become reality.

I still get these kind of thoughts pop in and they freek me out when they appear because they can flip you into an anxious mood in an instant. Turn your back on it and go the other way and get on with healthy, positive, constructive, enjoyable things. Don't give these thoughts any attention at all.