Thinking Traps 109
mishap and how its consequences might affect you? Many
people think about former romances and what led to the
eventual breakup. W hen you engage in repetitive negative
thinking, you are directing your attention to a world that
exists only in your mind, a world fraught with fearful cir-
cumstances. As we have seen, mindfulness can foster a
greater sense of present awareness, enabling you to savor life
experiences that are happening now.
Combating repetitive negative thinking can be tough.
It’s incredibly difficult to let go of thinking about something
that you perceive as dangerous or distressing. After all, when
you adopt repetitive negative thinking as a means of hand-
ling anxiety, you do so likely because you believe it will
somehow prove beneficial. Worrying feels a lot like problem
solving— you are exploring every facet of an uncertain pre-
dicament in order to obtain some sense of closure. Yet pro-
longed worry can have devastating consequences. First, it
prevents you from actually facing the emotion or circum-
stance that you perceive as threatening. As we mentioned
earlier in this chapter, worry has an avoidance function that
prevents you from actually learning whether the uncertainty
of the future is all that bad. Second, worrying takes you away
from the present moment by forcing you to focus on the
future. This can diminish the quality of your everyday expe-
riences. Third, worrying is both cyclical and negative, which
means that it’s hard to just “turn off ” the process by sup-
pressing your thoughts.
With practice, however, you can achieve mastery over
your thoughts and overcome the unwelcome presence of
repetitive negative thinking. W hat follows are some
mindfulness- based practices for targeting common think-
ing traps that lead to repetitive negative thinking.