You can’t always stop anxious thoughts from appearing—but you can choose what happens next. This article is about the hidden moments where your response determines whether anxiety fades… or gets worse.
Something happens and gives you a negative emotion. What you do with it next in your head can give you a secondary negative feeling.
This article is to help you avoid secondary negative emotions and stop your feelings from going from bad to worse.
Have you ever noticed that it can get much worse if you have a painful thought or mood when you mull things over in your head?
A problematic thought may occur randomly, or you could experience an unpleasant emotion. More often than not, if the thought stays or the feeling intensifies, it is due to something you are doing.
Let me start with an example. Let’s say you are feeling just fine, and I insult you. Naturally, this could make you feel bad; your mood has changed. The change in mood occurs automatically, and there is not much you can do about it, but you can choose what happens next.
If you can move quickly past the insult, the pain will fade, and your mood will return to normal. However, most of us don’t work that way. You might try to ‘make sense of it by going over it repeatedly in your mind.
The pain intensifies, and you might now be feeling anger at me!
I want to introduce you to the element of choice.
If I insult you, you can choose what to do next. You can quickly weigh it up in your head; was it a flippant insult, or will your life change because of it?
If it was a small matter, you could decide to do nothing. Doing nothing does not make you a pushover; instead, it gives you control over your emotional state.
Many people get stuck at this bit. They want to defend themselves and stand their ground.
It might be easier if I flipped the example and pretended that you insulted me. If you insulted me and I decided that it was a small matter, I have two choices;
- mull it over
- Do nothing
What happens if I mull it over?
I am still hurt. I am now thinking of other times that you hurt my feelings, as my brain will want to make connections with what is happening now. These connections are not helping, but that’s how the brain works. (if you want to read more on how your brain can create anxiety, start by reading about where you feel anxious, on my main anxiety page.)
I am now angry, and it has nothing to do with the initial insult. I am mad as I also remembered something you did last year that I did not like!
My feelings intensify, and now I have a new negative emotion to spoil my day – anger.
Do nothing
If I ignore the insult as I weigh it up quickly in my mind and realise it is not significant, my mood returns to normal. I am not doing anything that will intensify the emotion or create other negative thought processes.
An important point to note
Misery loves company. If you mull it over in your head, your brain will quickly link other instances when I annoyed you.
You will find it hard to see all the other times when I did not annoy you or my company was neutral.
What happens if you mull it over?
You might hear something on the news or get a message that instantly triggers anxiety. If you start going over it in your head, Googling more information, or imagining worst-case scenarios, you’re feeding the emotion. Without realising it, you’ve gone from a single anxious spark to a full emotional fire.
If you mull it over or search for more news articles, you unintentionally grow the negative emotion.
If you can move on quickly, your mood will return to normal.
Unfortunately, we do not see that we have a choice, and more often than not, we will end up with a mood much worse than the initial trigger warranted.
How to move on and not mull it over in your head
If you have an anxious thought, you can label it as that. Rather than going into the content of the thought and analysing, tell yourself.
“I have an anxious thought.”
“I just had a thought about anxiety.”
And carry on with what you were doing before the thought arrived.
The one thing that I would like you to take from this article is that you have a choice when something is making you anxious.
Most of the time, you will not be aware that you have a choice and will default to the analysis, making you feel worse by intensifying the emotion and giving you a secondary feeling.
By secondary emotion, I mean the initial thought or feeling is what hurt you first; you have no control over that. Mulling it over in your head gives you secondary pain, which you can control if you exercise choice.
You don’t have to stop the first thought or emotion—but you do have a choice in what you do next. Catch the moment between thought and reaction, and you take back control from anxiety.
