Why does it feel like you are avoiding reality if you stop negative thinking?

[now is forever]

@MM1988 it seems like you are avoiding reality if you start positive thinking because there is a difference in just positive thinking and hoping on positive outcome and working towards achieving a goal. of course reality doesn’t just change completely on its own if you don’t change reality. 

but if you are positive in that the positive outcome will be more realistic than if you think negative in that. because if you stay positive you make the effort to try and try again until it works. in the negative mindset you have thought it through till the end and you don’t even start as you already know it won’t work, so why even bother in the firstplace. you can’t reach the top of a mountain if you don’t bother to go uphill.

Edited December 12, 2018 by now is forever

[Thelanjaron]

What if there are 2 different realities and they change depending on your mood. A positive one or negative one. For example I was in a bad mood even can say depression for several months and the world seemed so dark and useless to me. But then I decided to change this circle in my life and went travelling for 6 months. At the end I fell in love with Spain and decided to buy apartment in Alicante https://tranio.com/spain/adt/1761345/ where I am going to live now with my pets. So from my experience the fact how you see reality is about your mood at this moment. 

[Hellspeed]

You don't need to avoid negative thinking, you need to avoid thinking all together hahaha, this is the reason we follow breath and heart above anything.

[XYZ]

Because you are so used to relying on external feedback for your thoughts and feelings, so choosing positive states in spite of an apparently negative reality can feel disingenuous. But then you realize directly that your entire perception of events that seem objective are colored by the thoughts and feelings you ascribe to them, and this can be conditioned.

[purerogue]

You could have at least give reasons why breathing helps to deal with negative emotions.thinking, you sound like alien even to me!  

Yes, focusing on breathing will help you  Hell will not explain anything as he just writes words that make no sense for someone who has no clue why he even wrote it. 

Edited December 14, 2018 by purerogue

[Hellspeed]

7 hours ago, purerogue said:

You could have at least give reasons why breathing helps to deal with negative emotions.thinking, you sound like alien even to me!  

Yes, focusing on breathing will help you  Hell will not explain anything as he just writes words that make no sense for someone who has no clue why he even wrote it. 

Explanations disables one from his true target. Go follow the breath.

[Pilgrim]

On 11.12.2018 at 1:16 PM, MM1988 said:

How am I going to get better by getting lost in these thoughts? On one hand I should not surpress them and on the other hand its clearly dysfunctional and I need to get rid of this type of thinking sooner or later. its a complete contradiction.

I would suggest you the following:

those thoughts are connected to your subconscious. It won't help if you just pretend that the problems don't exist and only "think positive". This equals to lying to yourself and your subconscious can clearly notice this. Go deep and feel these problems, feel the emotion linked to your thoughts. You have to ask yourself if the assumptions you are making are really true? My guess is that you are having a disparity between reality and perceived reality. Yet you cannot change this by simply forcing yourself to believe it is not true or does not exist. It's more work sadly.. you have to analyse yourself in depth and change your perceived reality by feeling your emotions and asking yourself if the assumptions you are making are true? 

For example if you feel a lack for not having a relationship and your thoughts are constantly around this lack. You feel unworthy and bad about yourself.. this is a negative cycle going on and on, which is linked to your self-image. This won't change though unless you change the perception of yourself. You cannot willingly force yourself to change the perception of yourself. You have to convince yourself that this self-image is not true (and really people with a negative self image are most often more sensitive to criticism and internalise this much heavier). There are several techniques in the book Psychodynamics and you have to work on your self-esteem. 

Also with more practical problems, there might be an underlying emotion such as fear which is the actual problem. Not so much the situation in which you are in, but your perception of how you are able to handle the problem. Or you might feel a lot of guilt for how you behaved. Your negative thinking is likely linked to an emotion. 

What you see in the world is a reflection of yourself and negative thinking equals to a negative self-image. You cannot externally force yourself to think positive, because subconsciously you are still having a negative self image. Thus you feel like you are lying to yourself. You have to internally change your subconscious self-image and convince yourself through arguments that your current self-image is not true. 

May I ask what kind of negative thoughts you're struggling with? What are the exact problems?