Episode 7
· 14:03
Hi. My name is Gary Johannes. I'm a Solution Focus Hypotherapist, founder of Inspire to Change, and I train other hypnotherapists through CPHT. I left school at 14 with no qualifications, one of nine kids, joined the RAF at 16, then left and went into sales, run bars and nightclubs and restaurants. Not exactly the typical route into mental health.
Gary Johannes:But in my late forties, I met a hypnotherapist, and everything I thought I knew about myself turned out to be a lot more flexible than I assumed. I retrained and started Inspire to Change. I took on an MSc in psychology and neuroscience of mental health at KCL in London, and then graduated at 60. This podcast is everything that comes from all of that. One condition per episode.
Gary Johannes:What's going on? What's keeping it going? And what exactly helps? Let's get into it. So, negative thoughts.
Gary Johannes:Here's something what might surprise you. Around 80% of our thoughts are negative. 80%. That's not a mental health stat. That's just how the brain is wired.
Gary Johannes:The negativity bias isn't a bug. It's a feature, a survival mechanism that kept our ancestors alive by scanning constantly for what might go wrong. The problem isn't that you have negative thoughts. Everyone does. The problem is when those negative thoughts start running the show, when they become so loud, so persistent, so believable that you stop questioning them and start living by them.
Gary Johannes:That's what this episode is about, what negative thoughts actually are, why the brain craves them,
Gary Johannes:what keeps them going, and what actually helps. I'll leave you with one particular thing that you can take away today. And if you find this podcast useful, hit subscribe wherever you're listening. Let's get into it.
Gary Johannes:Let's start with the distinction that changes everything. Having a negative thought is not the same as that thought being true. Sounds obvious. Right? But in the middle of a thought spiral, when the voice in your head is telling you that you're not good enough,
Gary Johannes:that you're going to fail, that people don't really like you, It doesn't feel obvious at all. It feels like fact, the most accurate assessment of the situation available. It isn't. It's a thought. And thoughts are generated by the brain constantly, automatically, and often without much regard to accuracy.
Gary Johannes:The brain produces around 6,000 thoughts a day. Most of them come and go like the weather. The ones that stick, the ones that loop, that we return to, that we build stories around, those are the ones that create problems.
Gary Johannes:Not because they're true, but because we treat them as if they are. Negative thoughts come in different forms.
Gary Johannes:The background commentary that undermines you throughout the day. That was stupid. Why did you say that? You're not as good as them. Most people are so used to this voice that they don't even notice it anymore.
Gary Johannes:It's just there, part of the furniture. And then there's a rumination
Gary Johannes:going over and over the same thing, a conversation, a mistake, a worry, without ever reaching a resolution. The brain's stuck in a loop it can't get out of, exhausting, one of the biggest contributors to both anxiety and depression. And then there are intrusive thoughts, sudden, unwanted, completely out of nowhere, disturbing images, irrational fears, thoughts that feel completely at odds with who you are. These are particularly distressing because they feel like
Gary Johannes:evidence that something is wrong, like the thoughts reveal something dark about you. It doesn't. Intrusive thoughts are a normal feature of the human brain. The content isn't a problem.
Gary Johannes:What you do with it is what matters. So what actually happens in the brain? The amygdala, the brain's threat detection system, is wired to pay more attention to potential threats than positive experiences. A brain that missed a threat was more dangerous than one that noticed too many. So evolution gave us a brain that scans constantly, flags danger, and replays threatening experiences to make sure we remember them.
Gary Johannes:In a low threat environment, that's fine. In the modern world, social comparison, financial pressure, relationship stress, the relentless noise of social media, the threat detection system becomes chronically overactive. And when that happens, the thought it generates become increasingly negative, increasingly distorted, increasingly persistent. There are patterns that tend to emerge, catastrophizing, jumping straight to the worst possible outcome, black
Gary Johannes:and white thinking. It's either fine or it's a disaster. Overgeneralization, when one thing went wrong, so everything always goes wrong. Personalization, everything is somehow your fault. Mind reading, assuming you know what other people are thinking and assuming is bad.
Gary Johannes:None of these are character flaws. They're patterns the brain learned, often very early in life, as ways of processing a complex and sometimes threatening world that made sense at some point. They just got stuck. And here's what makes them persistent. The
Gary Johannes:more a newer pathway is used, the stronger it gets. Every time you follow a negative thought down the same route, catastrophizing, ruminating, self criticizing, you strengthen that pathway, making it easier for the brain to go there next time. The brain that thinks negatively gets better at thinking negatively.
Gary Johannes:Not because you want it to, but because that's how neural pathways work. The good news, and there is good news, is that it works the other way too. So what keeps it going? Belief is the biggest one. When we treat negative thoughts as accurate reports of reality rather than automatic brain outputs, we respond to them emotionally.
Gary Johannes:The emotional response reinforces the thought. The thought feels more real, more true. This is the trap. You have a thought. You believe it.
Gary Johannes:You feel bad. The feeling confirms a thought. The thought comes back stronger. Round it goes.
Gary Johannes:Rumination maintains it. Going over things repeatedly without resolution doesn't help the brain process it. It keeps them alive. The brain thinks it's solving a problem, but rumination isn't problem solving.
Gary Johannes:It's problem dwelling. And the longer you dwell, the deeper the rut gets. Avoidance plays a role too. Avoiding situations attached to negative thoughts reduce discomfort in the short term, but it also prevents the brain from getting evidence that things might not be as bad as a thought suggested. The thought stays unchallenged.
Gary Johannes:The belief stays intact.
Gary Johannes:Sleep disruption feeds it. Poor sleep makes the brain more reactive, more threat sensitive, more likely to generate and believe negative thoughts. And negative thoughts make it harder to sleep, Another cycle that feeds itself cycle after cycle after cycle. The cycles can be broken, and this one is generally responsive to the right approach.
Gary Johannes:So what really helps? The goal isn't to eliminate negative thoughts. That's not
Gary Johannes:realistic. The goal is to change your relationship with them,
Gary Johannes:to create distance between the thought and the belief, to see the thought for what it is, a brain output, rather than what it feels like, a fact. Start with the question.
Gary Johannes:What does life look like when negative thoughts aren't running the show?
Gary Johannes:How do you feel when you wake up? How do you talk to yourself? What are you doing that you can't do right now when thinking is heavy? Getting clear of that gives the brain a direction, something to move towards. The first thing is noticing, not analyzing, not challenging, just noticing.
Gary Johannes:That's a thought. Observing the thought rather than becoming it, creating a tiny bit of space between you and what the brain is generating. That space, even a fraction of it,
Gary Johannes:is where change begins. Then ask what the thought is actually doing. Is it helping? Is it solving anything? Is it based on evidence or assumption?
Gary Johannes:Not to argue with it aggressively. That rarely works. But to gently question it,
Gary Johannes:to hold it a little more lightly. Three things can make a real difference here. Connection with other people. Genuine interaction directly contracts a self focused negative spiral. When you're engaged with someone else, the internal commentary quietens.
Gary Johannes:It's hard to ruminate when you're really present with another person.
Gary Johannes:Movement and action. Doing things.
Gary Johannes:Moving your body. Engaging in life builds neurochemistry that makes positive thinking more accessible. The brain needs input.
Gary Johannes:Give it some. And deliberately noticing what's going well. Not pretending everything is fine.
Gary Johannes:Not toxic positivity. Just intentionally looking in a different direction. Because the brain has been looking in the same direction for a long time,
Gary Johannes:and it's very good at finding what it looks for. You can train it to look somewhere else. Sleep underpins it all. Better sleep means a less reactive brain. A less reactive brain generates fewer negative thoughts and processes the ones it does generate more effectively.
Gary Johannes:If thinking is bad and sleep is bad, start with sleep. Before I close, the next time a negative thought arrives, and one will, probably today, don't fight it. Don't push it away, and don't follow it down the rabbit hole. Just name it. There's a negative thought.
Gary Johannes:That's it. It sounds almost too simple,
Gary Johannes:but naming a thought does something very specific in the brain. It activates the prefrontal cortex, the rational observing part of
Gary Johannes:the brain, and creates distance between you and the thought. It moves you from being inside the thought to washing it from slightly outside. You're not the thought. You're the one noticing the thought. And that distinction, small as it sounds, is the beginning of a very different relationship with your own mind.
Gary Johannes:Try it today. Just name it. Notice what happens. If you're listening to this because negative thoughts are a significant part of your daily experience, I want to say something clearly. This is not about who you are.
Gary Johannes:It's not a character assessment. It's not evidence that you're pessimistic or weak or fundamentally broken. It's a brain that learned to look in a particular direction that got very good at that particular kind of thinking.
Gary Johannes:And the brain that learned those patterns can learn different ones, not by fighting them, not by suppressing them, but by gradually, consistently giving it something different to work with. You are not your You are the one having them, and that means you have more influence over them than you probably realize. It starts with understanding what's going on, And you've just done that. Quietly, whether you realize it or not, that's a step forward. Hit subscribe wherever you're listening.
Gary Johannes:Every episode, one condition, the same lens, what's going on, what's keeping it going, what actually helps. There's a lot more to come.
Gary Johannes:See you in the next one.
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