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Obsessive Compulsive Personality

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I have an obsessive compulsive personality type, which to cut to the chase, leaves me predisposed to extremes of negative thinking. In fact, you could describe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as the 'Mother of All' negative thinking patterns - one that can leave a sufferer trapped in a cyclone of catastrophic thinking.

Take the following example of how an obsessive compulsive mind can take one random negative thought and then elaborate on it until the world itself looks as if it will be lucky to see nightfall:

An OCD Sufferer's Guide to Thinking Negatively

'That person I've just passed coming out of the supermarket didn't look at all well. What if they've got some exotic, incurable disease - maybe Ebola? I've seen Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman …show more content…

Yes. Silly? Yes. Irrational? Yes. But that obsessive compulsive driven irrationality, of which I am a past master, highlights a vital facet of negative thinking: it's infectious, just like Ebola. And whilst OCD provides an extreme example of the potential of negative thinking, make no mistake we're all prone to the same psychological …show more content…

But if you do take the time to analyse it you'll find that one thought, for example 'that was a horrible thing she did to me' can quickly dredge up a Pandora's box of similar horrible experiences, not just related to that one person or event, but to negative experiences with different scenarios and involving different people throughout your life. And the negative feelings that resultantly arise from those negative thoughts - the anger, resentment, frustration, insecurity or whatever - just add to the explosive mix; spawning their own backlash of distorted negative thoughts in a downward spiral of negativity from which there often feels as if there's no escape.

Quarantine Your Thoughts

But there is an escape: By becoming aware of the separate stages of the above negativity trap you can learn to intervene. Once you appreciate that it's not all an automatic process - that you do have control - you can learn to deprive that initial negative thought of all its destructive, virulent power.

And this is the trick to doing just that:

Don't try to block a negative thought, quarantine

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