Over my life, I have had a particularly hard time with monitoring the negative self talk in my head.

In times when my anxiety is especially bad, life feels like the sky is falling and I can’t do anything to stop it.

If you’ve been there, you know there’s nothing fun about living in this state of mind, and it feels like nothing can stop the flow of the negative thoughts.

My experience of being stuck in a negative thought loop is like when you go underwater and look up at the sky… The shapes of clouds and trees start to distort, and the light of the sun refracts on the waves of the water. Reality warps, and the direction of life is not clear.

As Above, So Below. As Within, So Without.

I’ve come to discover over years of seeking to know myself more consciously that our minds are incredibly powerful.

In the Hermetic tradition, the Law of Correspondence states that patterns repeat throughout the universe, and on a personal level, our reality is a mirror of what's happening inside us at that moment.

The basics of understanding this law is having the knowledge that whatever I am attached to inside of myself will start to show itself in my outside experience of life.So if I don’t create a conscious distance between myself and my negative thought loops, my experience of life outside of me will start to match the chaotic inner world I am creating.

Most of our negative emotions and thoughts are born from our subconscious mind, the hidden aspects of our psyche that are developed through conditioning from society, our family lineage, and stimulus from our environment. There’s not much you can do about where and how you born, so you can see how the law of correspondence is can get tricky real quick.

Thankfully, there are tricks to cope with any trauma you came to the world with, and heal…

Who is the master - you or your thoughts?

While of course I never want to live in a state of fear or anxiety, the choice to live in that fear is in fact a choice on some level. I am choosing to shape my reality with that warped lens, whether this choice is conscious or subconscious. It just is.

To create power around making better choices in the future, the first step to heal is to gain awareness of the subconscious beliefs that trigger these negative thought loops, then start the work to heal and redirect the energy.

To aid with this process, I’ve found a combination of energy healing and therapy have helped a lot. But the healing process has layers. It takes time.

As you heal and release one layer of chaos, a deeper layer appears to the surface to be healed. Throughout this process, you get stronger, and you get wiser. But many times on the journey, it’s not so easy to snap out of the negative thought loop state, when the chaos of life appears as particularly dire and unbearable.

The one thing that’s helped me cope the most in the most difficult legs of my healing journey is practicing gratitude.

Practicing gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life in anxious times because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. Your brain only has so much power to focus its attention. It cannot easily focus on both positive and negative stimuli.

That’s right - biologically, you cannot be both grateful and anxious at the same time.

Life is happening for you, not to you, and any chaotic event that triggers negativity can be used as an opportunity when you make the effort to react to life more consciously. Instead of wallowing in negativity surrounding the lessons, you can choose to be grateful for the lessons.

Doesn’t that feel so much more empowering?

So next time life throws chaos at you, get centered and in the present, and meditate on what you are grateful for. Ask what each situation can show you about yourself, and what requires healing from within. If you feel the fear or anxiety come back into your mind, get centered again.

After a few minutes of this practice, notice how things shift.

The chaos might just leave, and you might realize it was an illusion the whole time.