How to Stop Negative Thoughts (The Truth No One Tells You)

Mind Body Rewire
38 minutes ago
4 min read

By Jenny Peterson

You’ve tried everything to stop your negative thoughts — journaling, meditations, affirmations, tapping, and all the “just think positive” advice out there. But no matter how hard you try to silence them, they always come back — louder than before.

You’ve probably even heard that your thoughts create your reality, so every negative thought feels like something you have to fix, erase, or fear. Instead of calm, you feel trapped inside your own mind.

If this sounds familiar, this post will completely shift the way you see your thoughts.

You’ll learn:

Why your brain was designed to think negative thoughts (and it’s not a flaw)
How those thought loops actually got there
What it takes to stop feeding them so they finally lose their power

Your Brain Isn’t Broken — It’s Ancient

Here’s the truth: your brain was never designed to keep you happy. It was designed to keep you alive.

That means your default mode isn’t peace and positivity — it’s “What could go wrong?” Thousands of years ago, that kind of thinking kept your ancestors safe. Today, it’s what makes you spiral over a comment, symptom, or situation.

This built-in “negativity bias” is why:

One bad comment online hits harder than ten compliments.
One stressful day outweighs a week of good ones.
A single symptom makes you think, “What if something’s wrong?”

Negative thoughts don’t mean you’re broken — they mean your brain is doing its job: scanning for threat, predicting danger, and trying to protect you.

The problem is that protection often looks like overthinking.

You Can’t Stop Negative Thoughts — But You Can Stop Feeding Them

Most people think they need to fight their negative thoughts, but the more you fight them, the louder they get.

Thoughts aren’t something you can shut off. They’re electrical signals firing through well-worn neural pathways — pathways that formed through years of repetition, fear, and survival.

Every time you worry about a symptom or replay a fear like “What if this never goes away?”, your brain flags that thought as important. So it sends it up again. And again. And again.

Here’s what happens next:

You panic or try to silence it.
Your brain interprets that as “This is dangerous.”
It cranks the volume up even more.

It’s like trying to stop waves in the ocean. You can’t fight them — you have to learn to surf them.

When you resist a thought, you give it meaning.

When you fear a thought, you give it fuel.

When you argue with a thought, you make it stronger.

Your thoughts keep coming back because you keep paying attention to them.

Your Brain Thinks It’s Helping You

Negative thoughts are learned responses. They’re echoes of old emotional experiences where your subconscious decided, “We can’t ever let that happen again.”

Some examples:

You got sick once and everyone panicked — now your brain equates sickness with danger.
You had a panic attack years ago — now every fast heartbeat feels unsafe.
You saw a parent constantly worry about their health — and your subconscious absorbed that pattern.

Your thoughts aren’t who you are. They’re outdated safety programs your brain installed when it thought you needed protection.

And if they were learned, they can be unlearned.

How to Stop Feeding the Thoughts That Keep You Stuck

You can’t rewire your brain by thinking positive. You rewire it by changing how you respond.

Here’s the exact process:

1. Catch the Thought Early

Notice it as soon as it shows up. Don’t run, fix, or judge it. Just say, “There’s that thought again.” That single phrase puts you in charge.

2. Label It for What It Is

Your thoughts are not truth — they’re predictions. Say to yourself:

“This is my brain trying to keep me safe.”
“This is a habit of fear, not reality.” Labeling creates distance — you’re no longer the thought; you’re the observer.

3. Redirect Your Focus

To weaken an old pathway, you have to stop using it.

Choose something neutral or empowering:

Focus on your breath or surroundings.
Remind yourself: “My body knows what it’s doing.”
Do something that makes you laugh or smile — laughter is a biological signal of safety.

The goal isn’t instant calm. The goal is consistency.

4. Repeat Until It’s Boring

Repetition is how the subconscious learns. Every time you catch, label, and redirect, you’re teaching your brain a new rule: “We’re safe now.”

Even if the thought comes back, it’s working.

Your Thoughts Don’t Need Control — They Need Leadership

You don’t stop negative thoughts by force. You stop them by refusing to feed them.

Every time you lead your thoughts instead of fearing them, your brain learns safety through your actions. That’s when the old fear patterns fade and peace becomes your new default.

Freedom doesn’t come from controlling your mind.

It comes from becoming the person who no longer feeds it.

Jenny Peterson is a Chronic Illness Expert, the Founder of MBR (Mind Body Rewire), and the host of The Rebellious Healer Podcast. She helps those struggling with multiple chronic symptoms reclaim their health and freedom—without diets, detoxes, or pills.

For 10 years, Jenny worked as a holistic practitioner, relying on supplements, diet, and detox protocols to support healing. But when she faced her own chronic health struggles, those methods failed her.

When Jenny was on her healing journey, she struggled to find a protocol that provided the structure needed to rewire the subconscious. So she created her own process to heal—and that process became the foundation of the Heal & Thrive Framework, a structured, step-by-step method that helps clients identify the subconscious patterns behind their symptoms and rewire them for lasting relief.

Using this exact process, Jenny fully resolved Lyme disease, digestive issues, panic attacks, skin conditions, cystitis, and more. Her own transformation ignited a mission: to help others break free from chronic symptoms and take back control of their health.

At Mind Body Rewire, we have an unwavering belief that healing chronic health issues doesn’t have to be complicated when the focus is on the root cause: the subconscious. We believe every person is fully capable of creating the health and life they desire when they unlock the subconscious programs influencing it.

Ready to say good-bye to symptoms and hello to freedom? START HERE