Kick out negative thoughts for ever

Starting today, a brilliant series of clever tips and techniques to help reprogramme your brain and banish anxiety, insomnia and unhappiness

FOr MUch of the past 12 months we have been dealing with a pandemic that has taken an enormous toll on our health, wealth and general sense of wellbeing.

Another harsh lockdown brings new challenges — but at least, with the rollout of a mass covid-19 vaccination programme, the end is in sight.

Now though, another pandemic is beginning to kick in — a psychological one that comes as a direct result of the acute sense of jeopardy we have been living with for so long.

Every therapist I know tells me their skills have never been in greater demand than now. They are being inundated with pleas for help from people suffering from stress, insomnia, low self-esteem, strained relationships and a general sense of unhappiness.

I get that. Many mornings during this pandemic I’ve woken feeling troubled by something I can’t quite put my finger on — unnerved by goodnessknows-what before I’ve had a chance to even set two feet on the floor.

I’d be surprised if you haven’t felt a similar sense of foreboding, to a greater or lesser extent, in recent months. Perhaps you’ve also seen your sleep disrupted and lack motivation, your confidence in your own abilities having been knocked by so much uncertainty.

People frequently tell me that their relationships with family and friends seem particularly fractured right now.

First of all, let me offer some reassurance: this is all perfectly normal.

These are the manifestations of stress and worry that we, as human beings, are pre-programmed to respond to when plunged into a long-lasting crisis such as this. The coronavirus has turned our world upside down.

It may help you to know there is a scientific explanation for how we’re feeling.

For the past year, a part of our brain called the amygdala — where we process feelings of threat and fear and which triggers a fight-or-flight response — has been receiving high and constant levels of stimulation.

Think about it: at every turn we’ve been advised to stay alert — to take care so that we protect ourselves and keep our loved ones, and those who look after us, safe. That is, of course, a crucial message and one we’ve needed to take to heart. But, unsurprisingly, being in a collective state of such high alert has al also wreaked havoc on our ou emotional wellbeing wellbeing. The result is th the mental healt health crisis that is unfolding ar around us. It has been r reported that more than six million people were prescribed a antidepressants s in the th three months leading to September, the highest figure on record.

A survey by the Office for National Statistics, conducted at the start of the first national lockdown, showed that about half the adult UK population — some 25 million people — reported that they were experiencing high levels of anxiety.

That’s more than double the number of people (21 per cent) found by another study to be suffering the same levels of distress in the last three months of 2019.

But please don’t think that means we have been rendered helpless in the face of a tsunami of fear and worry. Even though we find ourselves locked down again, it is possible to use this time to keep moving forward in ways that will bring us out the other side feeling mentally stronger, not weaker.

MY STRATEGIES TO HELP YOU TO COPE

FIrST, you have to think about your brain as a brilliant computer, with its own software that helps organise your thinking and behaviour.

Next, you must recognise your own power to re-programme that computer: to stop the negative programmes that are running in your unconscious mind and replace them with software that fills it, instead, with positive thoughts and feelings.

Starting today, and continuing throughout next week, I am going to share lots of psychological insight into what you are feeling in these difficult times. I will also explain why this is happening, while recommending various tricks and techniques that will, crucially, help you adjust any negative thinking. There are five key areas we will focus on: stress, confidence, happiness, sleep and relationships.

My aim is to give you the tools you will need to be able to re-programme your own brain, dialling down the sense of fear and stagnation and rebuilding feelings of hope and purpose.

The vaccination programme provides a sense of an end