Think positive: How to conquer self-loathing and negativity

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Updated: May 5, 2011 4:43PM

You can make progress on your resolution to be more positive in 2011 by tackling your addiction to negative self-talk — you know, that “I’m so worthless” stinkin’ thinking that keeps you mired in a swamp of negativity.

Yes, negativity is an addiction, contend Catherine Johns and Karen Hand, professional hypnotists who work with their clients at Chicago Hypnosis Center to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative — especially when their clients’ habit of self-loathing has led to serious issues including weight gain, alcoholism, smoking, drugs, troubled relationships and failed jobs.

“Clients will tell us, ‘I will feel so much better about myself if I lose weight.’ We respond, ‘You will lose weight when you feel better about yourself,’” says Johns.

Johns says most negative people have heard and read the most popular solutions to overcoming negativity: count your blessings, view your life as a journey filled with adventure, stop comparing yourself to others, act as if you’re positive and confident until you are, substitute the word “challenges” for “problems,” live in the now, stop and smell the roses, surround yourself with positive people.

But, she emphasizes, telling a negative person to “just buck up and be more positive” isn’t sufficient.

Instead, Johns stresses the importance of dealing with the root of most pessimism: “the soundtrack of negative self-talk we replay and replay.

“And we can be meaner to ourselves and say mean things we wouldn’t say to anyone else so it becomes essential we replace that negative soundtrack if we’re going to like ourselves more and become more positive.”

“Even a hypnotist, even a millionaire, even Oprah has to decide how to handle each situation. Everybody has something go wrong. How we react to any given situation — choosing to look at what’s right in life [instead of] what’s bad — is a choice we all have to make every minute of every day. The exact moment we notice we are reacting negatively is when we can change our reaction,” explains Hand, recipient of the Hypnotist of the Year Award at the 2010 Mid-America Hypnosis Conference.

While Hand and Johns are proponents of hypnosis as a method to overcome negativity and self-loathing, Hand cautions, “The hypnotist is the GPS system that guides you to the next turn, but you have to make that turn yourself. You have to realize that the way you think about any situation changes everything and, surprise, you control the way you think.”

Johns offers four of her favorite practical tools to overcome persistent negative self-talk:

Put negative self-criticism to music

“When you find yourself saying, ‘I made a significant mistake, I’m so stupid,’ think about a song — I sing to ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ — and substitute the words, ‘I’m so stupid! I’m so stupid!’ You can’t feel stupid about yourself when you’re laughing. If ‘Happy Birthday’ or a Bruce Springsteen song work better for you, fine.”

Replace color images with black-and-white

“When we worry about something, we create images in our head — those images are in living color, big, vivid, intense. Reduce those images by turning them into black and white, shrinking them, and moving them away from you until they are just a pinprick. The worry loses its emotional charge, and your bad feeling subsides.”

Create an imaginary remote control, change the channel of your thoughts

“Create a mental file of images that make you feel good — I think about my nieces singing . . . or a blue heron in a lagoon, a breathtaking scene — and then use your imaginary remote to click from a negative to a good or peaceful feeling.”

Re-experience times when you were successful

“When you’re not feeling successful and getting down on yourself, especially in these rough economic times, remind yourself that you’ve had successes in your life and put yourself in that spot to hear what your ears were hearing then. As that happens, your confidence increases.”

Sandy Thorn Clark is a local free-lance writer.