Overcoming Negative Thoughts

How do you overcome negative thoughts?

Someone recently asked me this question, wanting to know my answer, especially in relation to my journey with food and weight. Here are some of my specific thoughts and how I got past them.

I’m so fat and ugly

I had this thought almost constantly in my younger years. It started with getting dressed in the morning, and it continued with seeing media images and comparing myself to every other woman I saw.

I only started moving past it when I questioned the association of “fat” and “ugly”. Some cultures venerate heavy women, after all, as do some individuals, even in our thin-obsessed culture. Who defined beauty, especially when I could look at other overweight women and recognize them as pretty?

I might be fat, but that didn’t mean I had to be ashamed of myself. I realized I had to stop worrying about how others saw me and focus on how I saw myself, and that included appreciating what I liked.

I weigh too much to be able to do anything very physical

I couldn’t ignore this, when going up a flight of stairs winded me, or even sometimes walking down the street. It also felt impossible to change. Eventually, though, I stopped being angry at myself and began to accept that even though my body might not be as capable as others, that didn’t mean I had to stay that way.

I realized that part of the problem was my desire to emulate others. I sometimes forced myself to do too much or go too fast, which only ended with me getting discouraged and quitting.

Me playing flute on Bald Pate Mountain, 1999

Instead, I could set modest, realistic goals for increasing my ability, and take pleasure in achieving them. Even those small changes made me feel better about my body, allowing me to accept it even more.

I can’t control myself around food

I believed this myth for a long time, even though it was both clearly false and the wrong way to think about it. When around other people, after all, I had no problem keeping myself from eating certain foods or overeating. It was only when I was alone that I got “out of control”.

I also began to realize that it wasn’t about the food. It’s not like the candy or cookies or ice cream forced me to eat them. Rather, I allowed myself to feel that I had no choice in what I ate.

Once I recognized that, I began to see I did have a choice, whether or not I was alone, and I could choose not to feel powerless in the face of certain foods. Instead, I could focus on what and how I wanted to eat.

I’m going to die young like my mom

This is related to weight and food for me, since it was my mom’s death at a young age that made me reevaluate how I thought about myself and how I wanted to live my life. And this belief in an early death was a tough one to get past. It helped when I realized I wasn’t alone. In fact, this fear is fairly common, especially for women who lose their mothers young.

After enough time, I could acknowledge the root of my belief, as well as face the reality that any of us could die young, no matter what happened with our parents. My mother’s parents, for instance, lived to their early 90s, but my mom only got to 48.

I’ve now lived past 48, and I realize that I simply don’t know how much time I have. So, my best option is to make the most of it.

Self-acceptance and focusing on the positive

Looking back, I know that although my approaches to these various thoughts were different, some common themes come through:

• Accepting myself and my feelings

• Focusing more on the positive

• Making different choices

• Believing in myself

• Deciding that I don’t want to live in a negative space

I don’t, after all, know how long I have, and I’d rather not spend my limited time feeling awful about myself and everything I imagine is wrong with me. Instead, I choose to pay attention to what is good and beautiful, and what I might yet become.