How to Change Your Emotions

Personality is a three part system composed of thoughts, feeling and behaviors. Changing how you think about something will help change how you feel about it, and, ultimately the choices you make. It can be easy to become stuck in the mire of a negative thought spiral. However, following some simple steps will help you disrupt this pattern.These methods are based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, an evidence-based approach validated by over 30 years of well-controlled scientific studies.

Things You'll Need

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Instructions

Understand and Challenge your Negative Thoughts

• 1

  Understand that thoughts influence feelings. Negative, untrue thoughts are known as cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions typically form early based on negative experiences, and can rob a person of joy and happiness in life. An example of how a negative thought-feeling pattern can develop is during the first dating experience. If this was bad, a person may develop thoughts such as "I'm the ugliest person alive" or "no men are interested in me." Absolute statements are not reality based thinking -- there is always an exception. Negative thoughts such as this lead to negative behaviors such as not going out on dates, not trying new hairstyles or makeup and not attending to personal hygiene. Keep a list of these negative thoughts and their positive counter-thoughts. You will discover that you tend to recycle the same six or seven negative beliefs. Over time you can try different positive counter-thoughts to disrupt these six or seven negative beliefs, finding what works best for you.

• 2

  Personality is a three part system of thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

  Understand that feelings influence thoughts. In the dating example above, if someone has insulted you, perhaps even inadvertently, depression may develop. Because you feel depressed you may start to think, "I will never have a successful dating experience."

• 3

  Challenge negative thoughts that lead to negative feelings. Distorted thinking patterns are best eroded with logic. If you are thinking "I'm the ugliest person on the planet," you should remind yourself of instances where people have complimented your looks, that there certainly are less attractive people than you, or that, in the overall scheme of life, looking like a supermodel is not the most important thing.

• 4

  Remember the two-to-one rule. For every negative thought, you need to have at least two positive counter-thoughts. Negative thoughts about yourself usually begin in childhood so they are strong and can be difficult to break. Once new habits are learned, however, more and more of your thoughts will become positive, leading to increasingly positive emotions.

The A-B-C Method

• 5

  Use the A-B-C method to disrupt negative thought spirals.

  Use the A-B-C method. First invented by Aaron Beck a co-founder of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, the A-B-C method has been used successfully to disrupt negative thought spirals for over 30 years. The "A" stands for activating event, the thing that happened to precipitate your negative feelings.The "B" stands for your belief about the event, while the "C" stands for the consequences of that belief, such as that you are feeling depressed.

• 6

  A negative dating experience may have caused you to fear rejection.

  When you become aware of a negative consequence, or "C" in the model's terms -- such as not going out on many dates, look at the activating event ("A") to discover what happened to trigger your behavior. You may recall some negative dating experiences that caused you to fear rejection.

• 7

  Look at your beliefs ("B") about the activating event. If you believe, for example, that your negative experience means that you are unattractive or not likable, the behavior that you are demonstrating now (isolation) makes sense. Ask yourself if that belief is logical or distorted.

• 8

  Attack negative thoughts with the two-to-one rule.

  Change distorted beliefs with positive counter-thoughts.Think about logical alternatives. Perhaps you are not ugly, maybe the man you dated was a jerk, for example. Remember and use the two-to-one rule.

• 9

  Reinforce new, positive counter-beliefs. Every time you find yourself thinking positively, focus on how good you feel. This is known as a positive thought spiral. Happy emotions lead to positive thoughts, leading to positive behaviors. Practice these skills and your emotions will tend to become more positive over time.