For helping young people (or adults!) deal with negative intrusive thoughts. Full instructions provided. Perfect growth mindset practice. By Nicola Morgan, The Teenage Brain Woman.

1. STRESS WELL
by
Nicola Morgan
www.nicolamorgan.com
3.1
Pathways –
Negative
thoughts

2. “Negative intrusive thoughts”
Sometimes a worry, fear or negative thought
goes over and over in our mind

3. Thoughts
• A thought is just an
electrical signal in your
brain
• The signal follows a path
between brain cells
• Each time you have that
thought, that path becomes
stronger

4. How we learn things
• Your brain contains
billions of nerve cells
called “neurons”
• When you learn
something new, you grow
pathways between them
• This works for skills, facts,
memories and thoughts

6. Learning a fact
Paris is the capital of France
© andersphoto

7. Learning a fact
• You’ve had that thought lots of times, so the
neural pathway is strong
• When you learn a new fact, the pathway is
weak. You make it strong with practice
• A fact is just a thought – it’s a piece of
knowledge or belief in your brain

8. Negative thoughts 
• But the brain learns negative and false
thoughts, too
• Each time we have the negative thought, that
pathway gets stronger
• So we are more likely to have the thought
again

9. This is a steep hill going down
Let me show you

10. Imagine you come to this place
in the path. You have to choose
a way down.

11. Imagine you choose this path the
first day

12. Next day, you will PROBABLY choose the same path. It will be easier. And
harder to choose a different one.

13. Each day, that path will be more obvious and easier to follow.

14. Soon, it will be the only path you bother to try. It will be a habit.

15. Imagine that this path was a negative thought in your brain. It has become
the thing you keep thinking. It’s hard to have a different thought.

16. BUT WAIT! STOP!

17. You COULD choose another path. It wouldn’t be easy at first. But
you could. You could choose to think a POSITIVE thought.

18. The more you have the positive thought, the
stronger that new path would become and it
would be easier each time

19. Soon, it would be the easier path to follow and the old
negative one would fade away and become weak.

20. The old path won’t completely disappear. You might have that thought
again, but you’ll be able to find the positive one more easily. You did it
once – you can do it again.

21. Keep practising the positive thought. Soon you’ll be brilliant at it!

22. STRESS WELL
by
Nicola Morgan
www.nicolamorgan.com
3.1
Pathways –
Negative
thoughts