Treat them like a foreign invader!

Our amazing immune systems help prevent infection by fighting foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens. It includes Pattern Recognition Receptors, or PRRs; molecules which recognize a wide variety of foreign invaders. Once recognized, the body takes drastic action when they first appear, since it immediately sees them as signs of a foreign invasion.

But what can be just as harmful to both our mental and physical health is our near constant mental noise. I hope it’s not breaking news to you that there’s extensive noise going on in your mind. It’s part of being human. In fact, most researchers agree that we think, on average, over 50,000 thoughts a day. That’s a lot of noise.

Realistically, the noise is never going to stop. Unfortunately, much of what we think about is negative, counter-productive, or not based on reality. However, every thought we entertain creates a physical reaction, affects our outputs and performance, and if it is emotionally charged enough, creates our future.

Our inner critic can become embedded in us in childhood, transferred from a parent or influential figure, and we just unconsciously accept its presence— like white noise, but an evil one. This is what is meant by automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs, and how they can easily become automatic.

It’s easy to inundate ourselves with the same negative headlines about the same topics. “My life is a disaster,” or “I’m such a loser” can be common headlines for some. It’s called rumination in the psychology field and it’s one of the most harmful things that sabotages our enjoyment and success in life.

Some of these lies and harmful thoughts can be looping around in our heads for a very long time. This is when we must turn up the volume on the noise or navigate right into it to hear it more clearly. We need to be skeptical, dismiss it, and keep it off the front page of our awareness. Put it on the back burner.

We need to modify what’s normal and see our harmful noise as a foreign invader— just like how the immune system fights off a virus!