Help needed - How do you kill negative internal dialogue?

LordFlashheart

As anyone who's read my MAP will see, I have a pattern in feeling on top of things, getting laid a bit, then losing my inner strength with OI and STFU when things go south.

I've been thinking about this a lot and I'm realising that the problem here is me, in my head.  And I desperately need some tools to help me with this specifically.

Example, last night, I've been giving W some serious RC as she is quite stressed at present with a number of issues. When we go to bed, I get a clear signal she's still RED (and has been for 2 weeks again)  At this point, I'm OK and choose to cuddle her to help her sleep better and provide more RC.  I am absolutely fine with this.  My frame was sound and I felt good.

In the morning, as I'm waking up, the negative thought pops into my head. "Poor me, still no sex, I'm angry with W for this, why can't she do something about this...blah blah negative internal victim puke".  This puts me in a bad mood, W picks up on this, asks me what's going on and I calmly explain how pissed off I am at the situation at present of regular 2 week gaps, W saying she fancies me but has no libido, all the usual stuff.

Now all of this^^^ paragraph, is like a repeating record.  I intellectually know that I shouldn't be thinking like this as it shoots my MAP and progress to crap.  I know it, I really do.  But somehow I still seem to do it, to let the negative thoughts grow and then verbalise them even though I know they do nothing and make things worse.

So what I need to ask is, does anyone have any specific tools that they have used to stop this negative internal dialogue?  As I'm stumped, a bit annoyed totally pissed off at seeing myself repeatedly fail here.  

It's a massive RED and I need to deal with it once and for all.

monkeydog

First: STFU

Second is something @CartB4Horse said that really helped me with OI recently: remember, sex isn't the only way your wife shows you that she loves you. Look for actions, like cuddling or making you a sandwich, that she does to express love.
 
Finally, are you being awesome? If so, be awesome. If not, be awesome. You are awesome, right?

She'll come around.

SallyMander

 "Poor me, still no sex, I'm angry with W for this, why can't she do something about this...blah blah negative internal victim puke".

Have your Good Frame alter ego have a conversation with this guy.

CartB4Horse

Are you Passive Aggressive?

I have tons of negative thoughts go thru my mind, most of them from being PA.

Rorschach

It's okay to have those negative thoughts. That's normal. Something you care existentially about is not going well. You're not going to magically convince yourself you're happy about that.

The problem lies in your converting that into overt behaviour and then, worse, verbalizing it. That's a separable problem. Make the task smaller and more manageable.

Practice next time it gets you down. Her: "What's going on?" You: "Oh, nothing much, just thinking", or something like that to stop yourself from uttering the grievance, then change the subject, and concentrate on communicating something more upbeat. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's not blurting out how angry you are about the lack of sex.

forestleaf

Rorschach said:

It's okay to have those negative thoughts. That's normal. Something you care existentially about is not going well. You're not going to magically convince yourself you're happy about that.

The problem lies in your converting that into overt behaviour and then, worse, verbalizing it. That's a separable problem. Make the task smaller and more manageable.

Practice next time it gets you down. Her: "What's going on?" You: "Oh, nothing much, just thinking", or something like that to stop yourself from uttering the grievance, then change the subject, and concentrate on communicating something more upbeat. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's not blurting out how angry you are about the lack of sex.

What @Rorschach said is something I'm working on understanding/learning for myself and have discussed in my thread in Gold.  Negative emotions are normal; let yourself experience them and don't suppress them.  Negative actions/behaviors are the problem.  STFU doesn't mean "shut the feelings up."

Arrghmatey

+1 to all above.
I have this problem as well. I think the key part is to actually reframe the question... Don't worry about "killing" the internal dialogue. It's natural at this point.
The first step is recognizing when it happens in time to keep the internal from becoming external. Then, pause.
When I catch this happening to me, I basically say to myself "that's ok, part of the baggage I'm working on. Right now, it's fine to let this be for a bit." Then I find something else to do. Excercise works wonders for me, even if it's just heading down to the basement and doing a dozen push-ups. Gets the good juju (endorphins) flowing. Then it just doesn't seem like something I need to externalize anymore.

Between that, overall mapping, and just generally focusing on being awesome, I'm finding that slowly I don't need to "kill" the internal negativity, it's just sort of dying off on its own. 

Mrs_Beasley

@LordFlashheart. Kudos on being self aware enough to recognize the negative inner dialogue. I too have often struggled with stopping the negative thought loop. One suggestion I was given was the elastic around the wrist trick. Snap it when you feel the negative thoughts creeping in. More than once if necessary. The physical "sting" ideally acts as a temporary distraction and a prompt to re-frame the thoughts you're having, engaging instead in positive self-talk. 

Tennee

"This puts me in a bad mood, W picks up on this, asks me what's going on and I calmly explain how pissed off I am at the situation at present of regular 2 week gaps, W saying she fancies me but has no libido, all the usual stuff."

Let's break this down into pieces.  First, re: gaps, reframe the thought.  "I will be having sex again with my W, probably pretty soon".   Think about it in those terms - there will be sex, there will be sex again soon.  No need for anger, just patience.

Second, how do I improve Me more?  How can I continue to make myself more attractive?  More Awesome? 

Then drive your frustration/anger into that. 

Like_Water

Intense exercise clears my head.  If you can't do that at the time, just remove yourself from her presence for a few minutes to gather your thoughts and put away the negativity, so that she doesn't have to see/wonder.  You can't let her see you stewing about things, or the value of OI+STFU gets negated--if she knows you're stewing over something, she'll assume it's about the lack of sex because you've been complaining about it for so long.  "He says he's just preoccupied.  He must be angry about the sex thing again.  This is so tiresome..."

LordFlashheart

Wow!

Thanks so much for all of the posts up ^^^ there, a lot for me to take away and work on. I appreciate all of it.

What I'm initially taking away as a broad theme is that it's OK to have the feelings, they are natural and a simple indicator that something is not right... yet.  I can acknowledge them, which is healthy, but then be mindful not to express them, which would be negative and damaging to my progress.

I'm going to work on this.  Might take the elastic band hint @Mrs_Beasley as I've seen that before.

@CartB4Horse yes, I have a shitty passive aggressive tendency from my Nice Guy Days.  It's dying but not dead yet.  And it's really unattractive.

@Tennee @Like_Water @Arrghmatey driving the anger/frustration into something is now on my list. I've started a push up challenge (will elaborate in my MAP thread later)

RebuildingHusband

When my W and I were in marriage counseling, she brought it up that she has a very continuous negative internal dialogue that was destructive to our relationship. She would play out these worst case scenarios in her head then punish me in the real world as a result. 

The therapist recommended "thought stopping". Basically it was up to her to recognize that this was playing out, be aware of it, and just stop. If it isn't happening, there's no need to play worst case scenarios to an imaginary conclusion. He showed her that reality almost never matches up with her imaginary conclusion and that she was far better off stopping the process than allowing it to play out. She has gotten fairly good at it.

The other thing that helped is she would verbalize me that she was thinking through something in that manner and I would just hug her tight and tell her to stop. Between the external stimuli from me and her own internal efforts, it's not really a problem for us like it used to be. 

Husband3point0

I have struggled with this quite a bit in the past. 

What I finally realized is along the lines of the conclusion you've drawn here, but with an additional (rather important) twist -- having your feelings is ok, but letting them control your actions isn't. You can express feelings in positive ways, it's not about suppressing them. It's when they take control of you and drive your actions that they become a problem. 

Thougt experiment -- think about why you communicated your frustration with your wife. Don't let your hamster answer that question either. Think deep about why you really did it. 

The various ways I've used of attacking your question posed in the OP is/was: vigorous exercise, meditation, heavy housework, contemplative hobby (strategy games, deep discussion with others), etc.  In general, I either drown my body with physical exertion, my brain with mental exhaustion, or a combination of both (like contemplative exercise, listening to a thoughtful podcast while I run/bike, etc.). 

HowlAtTheMoon

When I'm in a negative spiral of anger, I find it helpful to unwrap it and figure out my real issue. Often times, when I take it apart and get real with myself, I see that what I'm really upset about is that I feel disrespected. And often the situation makes me feel powerless and like I don't have control in my life. By this point, the original situation is generally past enough that I cannot address it specifically anymore, so instead I formulate what my response should have been to convey my intolerance of the disrespect,  tuck that away, and bring it out the next time that situation arises. That way I have taken control back and can get over the powerlessness. And the more I do this, the more often I am prepared to address the next time as it is happening. And the less often those next times happen because I am non longer being passive. Passivity=powerlessness=internal rage for me.

CartB4Horse

LordFlashheart said:

@CartB4Horse yes, I have a shitty passive aggressive tendency from my Nice Guy Days.  It's dying but not dead yet.  And it's really unattractive.

@LordFlashheart - Two things that I've found in this regard (and it's still a work in progress):

1. Output - I don't want to be passive aggressive in my response.  I've had to change my 'knee jerk' reactions from what I'm thinking (extremely negative thoughts) to something assertive.  Often I need to wait and say my assertive thoughts later, after thinking how I can phrase what's bothering me in an assertive, non-passive aggressive way.
2. Negative Mind Loops - These mess with me even more than being passive aggressive, they feed on themselves and make thoughts worse, not better.  I've had to find ways to break the loop, stop thinking about the issue negatively, endlessly.

In my signature line there is a phrase that helps me.  It talks about that moment in time between the stimulus and when I open my pie hole.  That brief moment in time is where my battle lies.

LordFlashheart

Thanks @CartB4Horse real sage advice.

The negative mind loops are exactly what goes on in my head and they feed off each other.  What I'm going to do is find my own ways of breaking that loop, because it's like a car crash I can see coming each time.

And weirdly, I was only looking at your sig line a few days ago and thinking about it. Now it all makes sense!

"There's a hamster in my head and I'm gonna shoot the bastard dead" might be my new mantra when I feel the negative mind loops starting.

CartB4Horse

@LordFlashheart - The quote is from Victor Fankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning".  I believe I was told about the book by a former member, BrianC....  Good, quick read.

What I'm saying up there ^^ is that there are two areas that need work, what/how you say things and calming the negative thought loops.

LordFlashheart

Thanks @CartB4Horse I actually have a copy of the book, but haven't read it yet. Good insight though and more for me to work on.

Niceguysfinishlast

I would recommend reading Eckhart Tolle's "Power of Now". It addresses controlling your inner voice (ego). Athol Kay touches on it briefly in his MAP book but Tolle's book is necessary for a full grasp of the concepts involved.

HappyTrail

I find this post interesting - its putting words to the thoughts I encounter but really didn't know how to verbalize - so thank you!

I'm new on this path myself and don't have all the answers but I have been seeing some quick progress with using a centering word. It could be: gratitude, peace, happiness, or whatever is appropriate for you. When I catch myself starting to enter that loop, I focus on the word for a while instead. Then later when I come back around to whatever the topic was in my head, I tend to think about it more rationally instead of dwelling on it in circles.

george

I totally get this.  100%.  It is my biggest issue.  I call it the death spiral.  After a while of no sex or affection I get grumpy, which is not attractive.  So no sex.  So I get more grumpy.  And so forth.  To the point that when I finally get a green light I actually sometimes shut it down.  Honestly, I'm so frustrated I'm not interested anymore.  I'm frustrated when she gets a cold, because there goes any chance for the forseeable future.  Or she travels, because that could mean many extra weeks.  And the idea of a quickie - no way, because somehow that "counts".  That's life on the low low side of average.  I end up spending much of my time in various states of grumpiness, imagining what case I'd make in the appeals court of infrequent sex.  Oh, the argument I could make.  Logically, morally, statisitically - I win!  It would be so, so easy to move us to a better place, simply by doing a tiny bit more of something that is enjoyable (and free!).  How can this even be a problem, I think.  

None of this has ever helped.

I think, well to me anyway, this is what MMSL is all about, and Zen, Taoism, etc.  Finding meaning elsewhere.  Realizing that it could be worse.  Having a good life anyway.  And not being grumpy all the time.  Sometimes I can even see that when I'm no longer in the death spiral, counting the weeks, I'll probably - for cosmic karma reasons I don't understand - end up having more sex.  Or not caring about it.  Or both.

Meanwhile, I'll be following this thread....