How To Overcome Negative Thoughts: 4 Secrets From Philosophy

We’ve all got that voice in our heads. The internal heckler perched in your skull’s cheap seats, shouting things like “You’re not good enough,” or “Why are you even trying?” (My internal voice sounds like a mix between my fifth-grade gym teacher and one of those scary moms from a reality show about cheerleading.)

This voice narrates our lives like it’s Ken Burns in a documentary about self-doubt. It’s not helpful. But we listen. We always listen. So what’s to be done?

Let’s look in a less-than-expected place: philosophy of language.

Enter Ludwig Wittgenstein. This guy changed the face of philosophy twice. In his first book he proposed that philosophy was a problem, not a solution. That the reason philosophers keep getting stuck in the same debates is because they’re asking questions that are just grammatically broken. He felt asking “What is the meaning of life?” is like asking “What flavor is Thursday?”

And his second book, Philosophical Investigations, spends 300 pages systematically tearing his previous ideas to shreds. (Imagine if Darwin published “The Origin of Species” and then came back ten years later with a treatise titled, “Actually Never Mind.”) In it, Wittgenstein introduces the idea of “language games”: the concept that the meaning of a word is based entirely on how it’s used.

So what’s that have to do with our internal narrator, that Terry Gross of your inner despair? Surprisingly, a lot.

Sometimes self-improvement isn’t about changing who you are. Sometimes it’s just about changing your wording. And when you clean up the language, you clean up the mess. You stop assuming that your brain is a lighthouse of universal truth and start treating it like a confused foreign exchange student.

Please note: I’m using Wittgenstein’s ideas as a springboard here. These are my interpretations. Wittgenstein would probably look at this post the way Da Vinci might glare at the Mona Lisa coasters on sale at the Louvre.

That said, let’s get to it…

 

Those Awful Words In Your Head

Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” What he’s saying, in essence, is that the way we talk shapes what’s possible in our lives.

So if the default phrase in your vocabulary is “I’m falling apart,” then congratulations, you’ve successfully trained your brain to treat a mild inconvenience like the apocalypse. Hope you like cortisol.

This aligns eerily well with the mechanisms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, though Wittgenstein predated it. CBT teaches us that our thoughts shape our emotions, and our emotions influence our behavior.

So, if you reframe the way you describe your experience, the experience itself begins to shift. CBT asks you to interrogate your thoughts like a suspicious customs agent. “Did you pack this thought yourself? Is it based in reality or are you just hungry and irritated because someone didn’t like your Instagram post?”

Which brings us back to the Wittgenstein quote. Because this is exactly what he meant (at least, that’s what I’m saying, and he’s dead so he can’t correct me). Sometimes feeling better is just a matter of proofreading your internal narrator.

Take one negative phrase you say to yourself regularly. “I’m a failure.” Okay. Cross-examine. Did you fail at everything? Did you forget to call your grandmother or did you set fire to an orphanage? Why are you calling it failure and not disappointment or learning or simply not ideal? Look at the words you’re using and ask, “Is this accurate?”

For instance, stop saying “Everything sucks.” Unless you’ve personally verified the entire known universe and confirmed it is irredeemable, just say “I am mildly inconvenienced by the long line at Chipotle.” One of those you can deal with. The other requires a bunker and canned goods.

Be more accurate, neutral and constructive: “I’m freaking out” becomes “I feel unprepared.”

Stop labeling your identity. Describe your state. “I’m lazy” becomes “I’m avoiding it because the task feels scary.”

You know what happens when you change “No one likes me” to “I feel disconnected from people right now”? You start to look for connection instead of confirmation that you’re unlovable.

You think you need therapy, but maybe what you need is a thesaurus.

But what if it does go deeper? What if it’s a negative pattern you’ve had for decades?

 

Those Awful Patterns In Your Brain

You might notice that the voice doesn’t even try new material. It’s like around puberty, someone handed us a psychological screenplay full of bad dialogue, tired plot twists, and an obsessive emphasis on how everything is our fault. And instead of rewriting it, we just keep doing table reads.

Enter Wittgenstein, stage left, muttering about language games. If the story I tell myself when I receive a curt email is “I’ve disappointed someone again,” that’s not an objective truth. It’s a game I’m playing. A narrative I’ve defaulted to.

So the next time you find yourself mid-rumination, ask: “What role am I playing right now? And is this really the game I want to keep playing?” The trick is to start treating your inner dialogue like malfunctioning software. If your GPS got you lost five times in a row, would you continue taking its advice? No. You’d throw it out the window and go back to printing out MapQuest directions like it’s 2004. Same principle applies to your brain.

Let’s bring in our modern psychological accomplice: Schema Theory argues that our minds operate through interpretive templates formed in early life, like masochistic Mad Libs.

Insert disappointing behavior here → apply abandonment schema → cue existential tailspin.

You think your inner monologue is you? It’s not. It’s a propaganda machine run by a committee of childhood wounds and cultural expectations. And that voice keeps chattering away with all the fervor of a conspiracy theorist at a municipal zoning meeting. But the truth? You can change the game. You can choose a different role in the story.

So, here’s the exercise — call it Wittgenstein’s Role Roulette. When you’re mid-sulk, ask: “What would a different version of me say right now?”

You get a text message: “Hey. Can we talk?” Now, your default schema flips the panic switch. “This is bad. I’m about to be shamed, fired, or dumped.” But this time imagine you’re a different you:

• The Dispassionate Scientist: “Interesting. My heart is racing. Let’s observe that.”
• The Calm Executive: “They probably want clarification. Let’s see what it is.”
• The Chronically Unbothered Dad: (Shrugs. Continues grilling sausages.)

Yes, it feels ridiculous. It should. You’re detoxing from a lifetime of believing your internal narrator was you. It’s not you. It’s just the tired, neurotic screenwriter in your head who keeps recycling old plotlines.

Now some people are going to say no matter what they do, the voice pushes back. Okay, then we need to dismiss it altogether…

 

Turning The Voice Off

What fascinates me is how little scrutiny we apply to this inner voice. We challenge our news sources, roll our eyes at politicians, but when the voice in our head says, “You’re a loser,” we assume it must be reporting based on verifiable data from the Department of Existential Appraisal.

What Wittgenstein’s work on language games said is that language is a very poor substitute for reality. And what we call “thoughts” are often just language in drag, pretending to be truth.

Simply put: don’t believe everything you think. This is the same voice that told you bell bottoms would be a good idea. It cannot be trusted. You are not your thoughts. You are the person having them. And until you stop confusing the two, you’ll keep calling this prison home.

So how does this relate to modern psychology? Acceptance and Commitment Therapy talks about how we emotionally “fuse” with thoughts that pop up. You don’t challenge the premise; you accept it as context. Then you act in accordance with the tone it sets. You’re no longer trying to solve a problem; you’re playing a game your thought just started.

And cognitive de-fusion is when we choose to step out of the game entirely.

When a thought is distressing or emotionally sticky, don’t engage with the content. Instead, name the pattern. Label it. Abstract it. Metaphor the hell out of it. Describe it in a way so comically mundane that you break the trance:

• “Oh, the ‘Imposter Syndrome Monologue’ again. Seen it, heard it, not buying merch.”
• “That’s an AM radio station that only plays guilt rock.”
• “My brain has scheduled another showing of Shame: The Unauthorized Musical.”

Once labeled, the thought is moved from the Limbic Fire Pit of Panic to the more manageable Linguistic Holding Cell of Detached Observation.

It loses the hypnotic power of being The Truth™. You turn it from a predator into a punchline. It’s like when someone insults you and rather than wrestling with their statement, you just say, “Oh, that’s my brother being a jerk again.”

Time to up the ante. What about when you’re full-on spiraling and cannot get a grip?

 

How To Stop Spiraling

One irritating comment from the voice and now your central nervous system is reenacting The Battle of Dunkirk. It’s like being caught in a mental centrifuge that starts with a mundane annoyance and ends with the irrevocable conclusion that you are fundamentally unlovable.

Cognitive Load Theory says the human brain can only process a limited amount of information at once. You know how your browser crashes when you have 47 tabs open, half of them YouTube videos and the other half articles you’re pretending you’ll read later? That’s your mind.

You might think you’re spiraling because you haven’t found the “answer” to your issue yet. The reality is you’re spiraling because you haven’t asked a question precise enough to be answerable.

This is where Wittgenstein, who never used the word “vibes” even once, steps in. He famously said: “Philosophical confusion arises when language goes on holiday.” Which is a gentle way of saying: Your mind isn’t broken; it’s just clogged with poorly defined words.

Words with just enough emotional seasoning to feel profound, but not enough precision to be useful. Again: a language game. You’re speaking in phrases that look like sentences, but when examined closely, they collapse into slogans. They’re not wrong. They’re just hollow.

You need to ask: What am I actually saying to myself? “Healing,” “growing,” “evolving.” These aren’t destinations. They’re generic menu items at the spiritual Cheesecake Factory. These phrases are not insight. They’re camouflage. They give the illusion of depth while actively preventing it. They allow you to avoid eye contact with your feelings.

Instead of saying “I’m paralyzed by indecision about my life,” say: “I haven’t defined what I want.” That’s it. That’s the whole monster. Say it right, and the monster shrinks from a Lovecraftian beast into an irritating but manageable rodent.

Ask yourself: “What’s the simplest way I can say what’s wrong?” And not in florid poetry:

• “I feel like a failure.” — Too dramatic. Try again.
• “I don’t feel successful.” — Still vague. Try again.
• “I haven’t defined what success means.” — Ding ding ding!

Congratulations. You’ve just been yanked into the realm of solvable problems.

You do not require a breakthrough. You need clarity. Say your problem in one sentence without using the word “journey.” A sentence that feels like a slap instead of a poem. If it sounds like a quote on a candle, try again. It’s probably about fear. Or shame. Or recognition. Or control. The thing underneath the thing which you can actually do something about.

You can solve “I haven’t defined what progress looks like.” You cannot solve “Am I a cosmic disappointment?” unless you’re planning to email God and request KPIs.

Okay, we’ve covered a lot. Let’s round it up and see what Wittgenstein had to say about dealing with good feelings…

 

Sum Up

Here’s how to overcome negative thoughts…

• Those Awful Words In Your Head: You’re not broken; you’re linguistically self-harming. You’re not failing at life. You’re failing at semantics.
• Those Awful Patterns In Your Brain: Next time your brain decides to spin up another melodramatic, self-defeating narrative, pause. Don’t respond yet. Take a breath. Ask: “What game am I playing here?” And pick a new role.
• Turning The Voice Off: When that internal narrator starts criticizing, don’t debate it. Just nod and go, “Ah. That rant again. Haven’t heard that one in a while.”
• How To Stop Spiraling: If you insist on narrating your life like a Shakespearean tragedy, remember: most of those end with everyone dead because somebody misheard a message. Don’t let bad phrasing be your tragic flaw. Start speaking about your emotions with the boring specificity of a DMV form.

Okay, you’re feeling good. Sun’s shining. Coffee’s perfect. No one’s talking to you about crypto. What does that voice in your head all too often do?

Starts dissecting the feeling like it’s the Zapruder film:

“Why am I happy?”
“Do I deserve this?”
“Is this joy even legal in my income bracket?”

Can you imagine applying this same logic to sex? “Hang on, I need to understand why this feels good before I continue.” Congratulations, you’ve just killed the mood and the species.

In psychology there’s the concept of “labeling”: putting feelings into words makes them manageable. Works for anxiety, guilt, shame. If you label them, they lose their grip. And this is where our friend Ludwig lurches into frame with his most famous quote: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

It’s not advice. It’s not a koan. It’s not some cryptic Austrian burn. It’s a warning. It means: language has limits. Experience is bigger. Not everything survives translation.

Like joy, for instance.

Wittgenstein understood that language has boundaries. That experience, real capital-F Feeling, exists outside the reach of words.

When you’re depressed, anxious, spiraling — language is your weapon. You name it; you tame it. It works because naming a thing gives you distance. But with happiness we don’t want distance. So what if we took Wittgenstein’s advice and just shut up when the moment demands it?

The next time you feel good, resist the urge to interrogate it. Don’t ask it for ID or proof of residence. Let it breathe. Let the sun hit your face. Let the cat stay asleep on your chest. Let the world be briefly kind.

In these moments, we should remember that Wittgenstein taught us that language is imperfect.

So let the world, as it is, be enough.