Why Cleaning Up our Negative Thinking is the Most Spiritual Thing we can Do.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Arizona for my nephew’s college graduation.

While I was there, I found myself in a conversation with someone about our work. I’m a therapist and she’s a parenting coach, and we’re both working on books right now, so we were casually sharing notes about themes we see clinically with our clients.

We’re also both deeply spiritual. She has a more Christian-informed theology, whereas part of my journey as a gay man unlearning a lot of religious trauma has been to explore many different spiritual and religious teachings.

What I’ve found is that at their core—whether it’s Christianity, 12-step, Kabbalah, Science of Mind, A Course in Miracles, or Buddhism—there is one Truth with a capital T, and it’s spoken in many different ways.

She started telling me about the fruits of the spirit. In Christian biblical terms, from Galatians 5:22-23, there are nine: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. What was so fascinating to me was how similar they are to what I’ve learned from other religious and spiritual traditions.

In 12-step recovery, we talk about what life looks and feels like when we’re spiritually fit or finding peace, love, and joy through service. In Buddhism, the brahmaviharas point us toward loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. In Kabbalah, connecting with our soul means cultivating qualities like chesed, or loving-kindness. In Science of Mind, we’re taught that our natural state, when aligned with the infinite, is one of abundance, peace, and wholeness.

The names and practices are different, but every tradition, in its own way, is pointing us toward the same qualities of being.

She also told me about an acronym coined by well-known psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist Dr. Daniel Amen, who has written over 30 books on mental health and the brain. He uses ANTS to describe our Automatic Negative Thoughts. As humans, we all have ANTS. We have to work on a daily basis to clean them up, otherwise we won’t be able to access the fruits of the spirit and live in alignment with our soul. Whether we’re talking about Christianity’s fruits of the spirit, recovering through the 12 steps, or following Kabbalistic principles, negative thinking is part of the human condition that creates suffering. A Course in Miracles even says, “The ego always speaks first. It is capricious, and does not mean its maker well.”

Research now shows that negative thoughts can contribute to dementia and Alzheimer’s. A 2020 study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia found that repetitive negative thinking was associated with cognitive decline and greater deposits of tau and amyloid proteins linked to Alzheimer’s. The woman I spoke with told me that the research she incorporates in her work with youth and families shows that if we use a positive affirmation or thought and repeat it more than 1,000 times, it creates a new neural pathway. Repeated negative thinking, on the other hand, erases the new neural pathway and reinforces the old stories we’ve been trying to leave behind. Which is why consciously working on cleaning up our ANTS is so essential to our spiritual and emotional well-being.

Just this morning, I used the ANT metaphor with a client who has struggled with treatment resistant depression and often talks about how difficult the mornings are for him and his negative thinking. I told him that if he woke up and walked to his kitchen and saw an infestation of ants on the counter, he would immediately get some bug spray, wipe down his counter, make sure any food was tightly wrapped, and maybe even call an exterminator. In order to get rid of the ants, he would need to actively do something about them.

Similarly with his ANTS—his Automatic Negative Thoughts—he needs to take care to not immediately reach for his phone and scroll while still lying in bed. He would also want to take a daily walk to move his body, get some sun and vitamin D, drink enough water, and possibly even revisit medication.

There are many ways to address our ANTS, and the first step is recognizing that we have them and that, left unattended, they multiply.

It’s such a useful metaphor and a reminder that we’re not alone in having negative thinking. Most of us walk around believing that the critical, fearful, or self-defeating thoughts in our heads are just the truth about who we are or what our lives will be. We don’t stop to question them.

In 12-step recovery, I’ve often heard the statement, “We’re not responsible for our first thought, but we are responsible for the second and third.” Whatever our tradition, when we consciously work to clean up our ANTS and challenge the thinking that gets in the way of our natural state, we create more space for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control to enter our lives.

We start to bear the fruits of our own spirit.

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Chris Tompkins is a gay male therapist in West Hollywood (Los Angeles) who specializes in working with adult gay men, individuals and couples. He supports clients navigating identity, relationships, religious trauma, addiction, and self-esteem. To learn more, explore therapeutic services or schedule a free consultation.