#33 How to Stop Negative Thoughts (The Truth No One Tells You)

You’ve tried everything to stop your negative thoughts — journaling, meditating, thinking positive — yet they still won’t go away.

They take over your mind, feed your fear, and make you feel like you’re fighting yourself.

If that sounds familiar, this episode will shift how you see your thoughts forever.

By the end, you’ll understand why your brain thinks the way it does, where those thoughts come from, and what it actually takes to get rid of them. 

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Transcript

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You've tried everything to stop your negative thoughts, the journaling, the meditations, the just think positive advice. You've tried flipping them, replacing them, distracting yourself from them, and yet they keep coming back. And every time you think you've finally gotten control of them, they sneak back in louder than before. And you've been told your thoughts create your reality. So now every negative thought feels like something you have to fix, erase, or fear. But instead of feeling calm, you feel trapped inside your head. And if this sounds familiar, today's episode will shift the way you see your thoughts forever. By the end, you'll understand why your brain was designed to think negative, how those thoughts got there in the first place, and what it actually takes to stop feeding them so they lose their power for good. Let's get started. Welcome to the Rebellious Healer, where we ditch the fear, decode the symptoms, and take healing into our own hands. I'm Jenny Peterson, a former holistic practitioner, turn symptom-free mind-body rebel. I help women break free from protocols and step into trust, confidence, and full body healing. If you're done with rules, restrictions, and outsourcing your power, you're in the right place. If you've ever caught yourself thinking things like, what if this symptom never goes away? Why can't I just stop thinking about my body all the time? I was feeling fine this morning. Why am I spiraling again? Everyone says to stay positive, but how do you do that when you're scared? You're not alone if you've had these thoughts or similar. Those thoughts don't mean you're broken, and they don't mean you're doing healing wrong. They mean your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do. Before you can change the way you think, you have to understand why your brain thinks the way it does. And that's where we're going to start. Number one, your brain isn't broken. It's ancient. And it was never designed to keep you happy. It was designed to keep you alive. That means its default mode isn't peace and positivity, it's what could go wrong. Thousands of years ago, that kind of thinking kept you safe. Your ancestors needed to assume danger, to spot the snake in the grass, to remember the cave that had the bear in it, and fast forward to today, and that same survival system is still running. Only now, instead of lions and cliffs, it's scanning for emotional threats, rejection, failure, judgment, uncertainty. Your brain's built-in bias toward negativity is what scientists call the negativity bias. It's why one bad comment online sticks with you longer than 10 compliments. It's why one stressful day feels heavier than one week of good ones. It's why when a symptom appears, your brain immediately jumps to worst-case scenarios. But here's what most people get wrong. They think the presence of negative thoughts means they're doing something wrong, that they failed at mindset work, that they have to fix their thinking to be healthy or healed. When in reality, your brain is just doing its job. It's scanning, it's protecting, and it's predicting. It's trying to help you to avoid pain. Even if that means keeping you stuck in fear. So if you've been shaming yourself for having negative thoughts, please stop. The goal isn't to eliminate them. That's like trying to fight gravity. It's about learning how to work with your brain instead of against it. Because the more you understand the design, the less power those thoughts will hold. So here's the truth. You can't stop negative thoughts. The more you try and stop them, the louder they are going to get. That's because thoughts aren't something you can shut off. They're the language of your brain. They're electrical impulses firing through well-worn neural pathways that have been built over years of repetition, fear, and survival. Every time you've had a flare-up, worried about what a symptom means, or replayed the fear that you're back to square one, that thought didn't just appear out of nowhere. It came from a deeply wired pattern that believes thinking about the threat will somehow protect you from it. Your brain isn't trying to torture you, it's really trying to help you in a really outdated way. You see, when a certain thought has been connected to fear, pain, or danger in the past, like something is wrong with me or I'll never get better, your brain marks that pathway as important. So it keeps sending it up again and again, thinking it's keeping you safe. But here's the problem with that. When you fight those thoughts, when you try to stop, silence, or replace them, your brain doesn't hear I'm safe. It hears this is a threat. And it turns the volume up even more. It's like trying to stop waves in the ocean. You can fight against them until you're exhausted or you can learn to surf them, to let them roll in and roll out without getting pulled under. When you resist a thought, you give it meaning. When you fear a thought, you give it fuel. When you argue with a thought, you make it stronger. That's why those negative thoughts about your symptoms seem to have a life of their own. Because they do. They're sustained by your attention. So I want to give you an example here. Think about the last time you had a flare-up. Maybe your stomach tightened or your heart started racing or that old familiar pain showed up. Instantly your mind jumped in with, oh no, it's happening again. And before you knew it, you were spiraling, checking, googling, analyzing, trying to calm yourself down. But in that moment, your brain learned something. It learned this thought must be important. She keeps paying attention to it. So it sends it again tomorrow and the next day and the next. Not because you're broken, but because your brain thinks it's helping you survive. Once you understand that, everything changes. Because now instead of fighting your thoughts, you can start leading them. So if you can't stop your thoughts, the next question becomes: where did they even come from? Because you weren't born with them, you weren't born thinking something's wrong with me. You weren't born afraid of sensations in your body. Those thoughts were learned. They came from a mix of experiences, conditioning, and emotional memories that your subconscious labeled as dangerous. And your brain's only job from that point forward has been to keep you safe from ever feeling that way again. Some of those thoughts came from childhood moments that seemed small but left a big imprint. Maybe you were told once that you were too sensitive, so you learned to doubt what you feel. Maybe you got sick once and everyone panicked, so your brain learned sickness equals danger. Or maybe you watched a parent constantly worry about their health and your subconscious absorbed that fear as truth. Others then came later from experiences where you felt out of control. Maybe a symptom appeared out of nowhere, and the fear that you felt in that moment etched a new pathway of hypervigilance. I have to stay on alert so this doesn't happen again. The subconscious doesn't care whether that thought helps or hurts you, only that it keeps you safe. So every time a similar situation happens, every flutter, every flare, every pain, your brain reactivates that same neural circuit like an overprotective guard dog barking at every sound. Those thoughts are not who you are. They're safety programs your brain installed when it thought you needed protection. And just like outdated software, they keep running in the background until you consciously choose to stop responding to them the same way. Let's say years ago you had a panic attack out of nowhere. It scared you so badly that your mind decided, we can't ever let that happen again. Now, even years later, you might notice your heart racing for a normal reason. Maybe you're walking up the stairs or feeling excited, and your brain instantly jumps in with, what if it's happening again? That's not intuition. That's a memory of fear replaying itself. Your brain trying to protect you by predicting danger before it even happens. So those looping negative thoughts aren't random. They're learned responses. They're echoes of old emotional moments that never got updated. And here's the empowering part. If they were learned, they can be unlearned. Because the subconscious can be rewired, but it only happens when you stop reacting the same way, when you stop giving those old pathways the energy that keeps them alive. The truth about your thoughts is that they only have as much power as the energy you give them. Your attention is the fuel, your emotion is the fire. And every time you react, analyze, or fear a thought, you're keeping that neural pathway alive. The subconscious doesn't know the difference between something that's happening now and something you're just thinking about. So every time you replay that thought, what if my symptoms come back? Or what if I never heal? Your brain fires the exact same stress response as if it's happening in real life. That's how a mental pattern becomes a physical one. Your body starts responding to the idea of danger as if it's real danger. That's why your heart races when you think about symptoms, even when there's nothing wrong. That's why your stomach tightens or your chest constricts or your breathing changes. Not because your body's malfunctioning, but because your brain is doing what it's trained to do. Prepare for threat. The more you focus on the thought, the more your brain believes it's relevant. And the more relevant it seems, the more often it fires. It's like watering a weed. You can't pull it out by force, but if you stop feeding it, it dies on its own. Or imagine your negative thoughts as a campfire. Every time you panic, argue, or try to make them go away, you're throwing another log on the fire. You just keep it burning. But when you stop reacting, when you let the thought pass without giving it emotion or meaning, the fire runs out of fuel. I worked with a woman who used to spiral every time she felt a flutter in her chest. She'd check her pulse, open up Google, and convince herself something was seriously wrong. But the truth was her body wasn't the problem, her focus was. And the more she analyzed every heartbeat, the more her brain associated heart flutter equals danger. So her subconscious kept sending that thought and the sensation to protect her. And so when she finally learned to notice the thought, take a breath, and not react, the flutter lost its power because her brain got new evidence. This isn't danger, we're safe. And that's how rewiring starts. Not by fighting the thought, but by starving it. So when it comes to your mind, remember you don't have to wrestle your thoughts into silence. You just have to stop feeding what doesn't serve you. So if fighting your thoughts keeps them alive, how do you take that power back? Number one, you stop reacting to them the same way. You stop giving them, meaning they don't deserve. And you start showing your brain what safety actually looks like. This isn't about thinking positive or being a positive poly or pretending everything is fine. It's about teaching your subconscious that old thought loops no longer equal danger. And that happens through action, not analysis. So here's how you start breaking these old thought patterns. Number one, you have to catch the thought early. The faster you catch a thought, the less momentum it gets. Notice when it shows up, and then don't run, don't fix, and don't judge it. Just simply say to yourself, there's that thought again. That one simple phrase keeps you in the observer seat instead of the reactors. When you observe instead of react, you send a new message to your brain. This isn't a threat. That's how the rewiring begins. The next step is that we need to label it for what it is. Your thoughts are not truth. They're just protective predictions. Label them that way. This is an old survival pattern. This is my brain trying to keep me safe. This is a habit of fear, not reality. When you name a thought, you create distance from it. It's no longer you, it's just a program running in the background. And once you see it that way, you can choose not to engage. And then the third step is that you want to redirect your focus. The only way to weaken an old neuropathway is to stop using it and start building a new one. That means you can't just not think the negative thought. You have to choose something else to give your attention to. Maybe it's something neutral, like you're noticing your breath, the sound in the room, or the feeling of your feet on the ground. Maybe it's something empowering, reminding yourself my body knows what it's doing. Or maybe it's something that really helps lift your energy, like thinking of something that makes you happy, or that you smile, or you even say something out loud that makes you laugh. I used to have a fart app that I would carry around on my phone with me when I was in my, you know, healing journey. And I would just play that fart app because at the time my son was, you know, he was like six or seven years old, and he was with me a lot of my times. And we would just do that as kind of our thing together is play, you know, play that fart app and we would laugh together. And I'm telling you, something that simple can make a big difference in helping to rewire these old thoughts and just make those old patterns go weak. Because laughter, joy, and gratitude aren't just, they're not just emotions. They're signals of safety to your subconscious. And when you intentionally shift into that state, your brain learns we're okay. So the goal isn't to feel instantly calm. I want you to remember that. The goal is to practice redirecting over and over until your brain learns this new route automatically. I want you to think of it like walking through tall grass. The first few times it's rough, but the more you walk that new path, the easier it becomes. Until one day, it's the only path your brain takes. And then step four is repeat until it's boring. Repetition is how the subconscious learns. You can't just tell it once, you have to show it again and again through your actions. Every time you catch, label, and redirect, even if the thought comes right back, you're teaching your brain that it doesn't have to respond the old way. That consistency is what makes the old pathway die off. This is where most people quit. I'm just gonna be honest with you, because they think it's not working. But the truth is the thought showing up again doesn't mean you're failing. It means your brain is learning and you can't see what's going on behind the scenes in your brain every time you make this little change that you feel is super small, it's not doing anything, it is making a difference. And the more you show it safety, the less often that thought will come back. We work with a lot of clients, and a very typical scenario is that a lot of our students, you know, in the when they start working with us, are waking up every morning and scanning for their symptoms. It becomes automatic to them. A lot of our students will say, I open my eyes and my first thought is, How am I feeling today and what's gonna hurt and what kind of symptom is gonna ruin my day? And that single thought will set the tone for their entire day. So we teach them to practice a new pattern every morning. The second you notice that thought that comes up, then you reply and say, That's the old way. It's just an old pattern. And then immediately redirect it to something neutral, like again, breathing or saying, I'm here and I'm safe, or clicking that fart app and laughing or just thinking about something that makes you smile, just redirect with something different. At first, for a lot of students, it feels like nothing is changing. Again, that's you consciously feeling that way. But behind the scenes, you doing these little actions every single day is adding up. And then within weeks, your mornings are going to start to feel different just by doing this little change. And your brain is going to stop, you know, scanning for danger right away in the morning because it's finally learned we don't need to do that anymore. That's what happens when you stop giving thoughts power. The old pattern fades and peace becomes your brain's new default. So this is where the shift happens. Not because you force your thoughts to disappear, but because you stopped feeding them. When you practice catching, labeling, and redirecting consistently, your brain starts to realize these old thoughts aren't useful anymore. And when a neural pathway stops getting used, it naturally fades. And that's what people mean when they talk about rewiring the brain. This isn't magic, this isn't woo-woo, it is biology. You're teaching your subconscious that safety no longer comes from control, fear, or overthinking, but from presence, leadership, and trust. So over time, you'll notice the thoughts still show up, but they don't hook you anymore. They just pass through like background noise that your brain no longer finds interesting. That's how you know you've starved that old pathway long enough for it to die off. And here's the important part I want you to remember. Stopping these thoughts isn't the only thing you need to do to heal. It's just one step. I tell my clients to focus on this for about 30 days. 30 days of practicing awareness, redirection, and neutrality. Not perfection, because this phase helps calm your body's stress response. But we also don't need you to be perfect that is going to continue keeping that stress response heightened. It gives your nervous system a chance to feel safe again by practicing this. And that's what creates the foundation for the deeper work to begin. Now, I just want to be honest, in the beginning, you're going to feel like you're doing this all the time: redirecting, catching, reframing over and over. And that's completely normal. You're literally retraining your brain, and that takes conscious effort. This is the part where most people give up because it's not quote unquote fun work. It's repetitive, it's uncomfortable, and it takes consistency. But this is also where change starts to build momentum. Every time you choose to redirect instead of react, you're unwiring an old pattern that's been running your life for years. So you need to be patient with yourself. This is foundational work. And if you stay here too long, trying to master that this part perfectly, you can get stuck in what I call mental maintenance mode, always managing thoughts but never moving deeper. Once those surface level thoughts quiet down, again, don't have to be perfect. It can be, you know, 50% better. That's your sign, it's time to go deeper into the patterns, beliefs, and emotional conflicts that created those thoughts in the first place and your symptoms. That's where the real rewiring happens. So if you're thinking when you're doing this work, why are my symptoms not gone yet when I've done what Jenny is telling me to do? This is not the finish line. This is just the warm-up. It's the part that creates enough safety in your system so that the deeper healing can actually happen. All right, so here's your final takeaway. You don't stop negative thoughts by force. You stop them by refusing to feed them, by showing your brain over and over that you're safe now. And when you stop giving fear the mic, your body finally gets to do what it's been trying to do all along: heal. And you were never meant to control your mind. You were meant to lead it because you can't rewire what you keep running from. But you can teach your brain what safety feels like by how you respond every single day. So I want you to practice this for 30 days. Let your body see you as the safe one. And when you're ready to take this work deeper to uncover the subconscious patterns that created those thoughts and your symptoms in the first place, that's exactly what we do inside the Heal and Thrive Academy. It's where you learn the full Heal and Thrive framework to rewire old patterns, understand your body's language, and lead your healing from the inside out. One calm, confident decision and step at a time. You can find a link for more information about the Heal and Thrive Academy in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and remember, freedom doesn't come from controlling your thoughts. It comes from becoming the person who no longer feeds them.