5 Ways to Challenge Negative Thoughts That Cause Anxiety

negative thoughts

Having negative thoughts that cause anxiety can become habitual. Even as adults, we can recognise in ourselves the patterns:

  • “I’ll never be able to do this.”
  • “I’m no use at parties.”
  • “They won’t like me.”

It’s much safer to think the same old thought than refute it and venture into unknown territory! I mean, we might succeed!

We might become a sensation at the party and want to go to more parties. We might find someone actually likes us – and then what will we do??

The answer is to shake off the negative and move into new territory. But that's hard without a plan. So we'll form a plan to help our children take a different path from day one!

Why challenge our children's negative thoughts that cause anxiety?

If children get into this way of living early on, it harms their: 

  • Development  – they won't learn skills or go out and do the things children of their age need to experience.
  • Physical wellbeing – the anxiety and stress affect their cortisol levels, which affects their endocrine system, which affects their digestion and health.
  • Mental wellbeing – high cortisol levels lead to different brain development over time.

However, high levels of stress cause your child to not be able to think of any alternative thoughts.

So obviously you need a few calming techniques up your sleeve before you can help them rethink. Even a hug or cuddle can do the trick while empathising with their dilemma.

But challenge the negative thinking you must! 

You’ll manage it in a way only you will know how – because you know your child best.

So the five suggestions here are for you to adjust and apply in the way you think best. But first…

Benefits of challenging negative thoughts

Encourage your child to think of their ability to challenge negative thoughts as having a superhero power they can use to strike fear into the negative thought!

They’ll defeat the villains of the peace that are bothering their mind!

They’ll be saving the day and grow in superhero status!

You could even set up a score card so they get points for each time they win a round against the thought villains! When they reach a certain number… award time! A star, or badge, or treat.

For you, though, their growing ability to challenge their negative thoughts that are causing them anxiety and worry is something you’re investing in.

When your child learns to successfully challenge their negative thoughts , you’ll see they 

  • become more relaxed
  • are realistically positive
  • have better self-awareness
  • can become a problem solver in all sorts of ways and situations
  • are more likely to gain new friends

What’s not to shoot for?!

challenge negative thoughts

Five ways to challenge negative thoughts that cause anxiety

1 Smile deliberately

Did you know that smiling turns boring sprouts into choc cake? Actually, I love sprouts, but many children don’t. Use your own analogy when you chat with them!

Baking a cake is a good one because you can explain how changing one thing changes everything. Take the chocolate out of the cake and you have a cake, but a different one! 

Perhaps you can take the sprouts out of a sprout cake and put chocolate in??

2 List three things you're grateful for

It’s impossible to not realign thinking while you’re naming those things. It simply changes our thinking.

The trouble is, your child has got on a habitual anxiety-escalator, and unless you can help them off – by diversion to gratitude – the negative thoughts that cause anxiety will gain power each time they encounter the same problem.

At any one moment, then, yes, empathise first, as ever – but then, when they feel heard, suggest: “You’re really worried about that and we’ll deal with it. But there are also lots of good things happening today/this week/whatever…” and "Let's brainstorm a few together" and name them out loud.

This is another shift like the chocolate cake one above. But you can instil a grateful attitude in their hearts throughout their childhood – and it'll stand them in good stead when they leave home.

Try a gratitude rap together?

3 Practise alternative thinking with a karate chop!

There’s a lot of sense in Traditional Chinese Medicine – for example, using acupuncture/acupressure points around the body where your bio-energy is nearer the surface.

Tapping is a child-friendly way of calming the dysregulated energy in their body.

A good way to do this is to tap the karate point on their hand (see the diagram in the link above), and when they’re calmer, help them think of a more positive spin on the event.

Then they can tap it for themselves (along with you) and say “Even though I think this [negative thought] I choose to think [the more positive thought].”

Until you’ve given it a go, don’t dismiss it as woo-woo! Several hospitals in the UK, and probably elsewhere too, use energy therapy as a successful intervention. This is a child-friendly "mini use" of it.

4 Think of others and help them

One of the parts of the acronym CLANG for wellbeing is the last letter: G – Give to others.

You don’t need to link this directly to the occasion that makes your child anxious.

And you don’t need to challenge the negative thoughts that cause anxiety then and there.

However, if you can help them often think of others and what they can do to help, they become other-oriented as children. This helps them grow in a more balanced way.

Yes, a modicum of worry and anxiety keeps us safe. But if there’s nothing to counteract it, it can grow out of proportion.

Helping others keeps things in balance because it proves to the child they have resources and skills they use to solve their own problems too.

5 Keep a fun journal to review progress

According to how old your child is, encourage them to keep a super little notebook in a secret place (what child doesn’t like a secret place?).

In it, they can note down

  • the anxiety and their negative thought, including an image, plus
  • the thought they decided to think instead that was more positive and helpful.

Maybe they can also write down if they used the tapping in point 3 to help them and how it worked.

Every so often, together (or on their own in secret if they're older) it's good to look back and see their achievements.

How to help normalise negative thinking that causes anxiety

If you can bring yourself to also admit to a negative thought or two on occasions and show your re-thinking out loud – ie how you changed it to something positive – this will help your child realise anxiety and negative thoughts do happen. It also demonstrates how to deal successfully and healthily with negative thinking that causes anxiety!

Give it a go?

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