How to Heal People with a Negative Mindset

Many years ago, a young kickboxer came to see me for Reiki.

He was in a miserable state, physically, psychologically and emotionally, and I knew right away that he would require a little extra care.

He had torn his hamstring and been unable to fight for months, and perhaps unsurprisingly, was stuck in a negative mental loop.

He feared he'd never be able to fight again – and the more he dwelt on the idea, the more miserable he became.

He spent almost every minute of every day focusing on his hamstring. He kept pumping it with anxious mental energy, and as a result, it was like picking at a scab – he never gave his injury a chance to heal.

Now, this isn’t the place to focus on the power of the mind in healing (placebo, nocebo, etc.). Instead, in this article, I want to zero in on what to do when someone comes to see you with a truly negative mindset.

For when you encounter such people, it can be a challenge to help them think more positively, and as many healers have discovered, trying to help them ‘rationally’ typically fails, since if someone isn't in the right emotional state, they'll never hear what you’re saying.

The same, of course, goes for us. When we're worked up, we just don't want to listen to others! Think of the last time you argued with your partner, and you’ll see that this is true.

At such times, they could be spouting all of the wisdom of Solomon, and we’re unlikely to take on board anything they say.

So, what's the solution?

7 Tips for Dealing with People with a Negative Mental Attitude

Tip 1 – Shift Their Energetic State

If you want to influence a negative person’s mind, then you'll generally need to change their emotions, for our thoughts tend to reflect them.

A happy person will have positive, happy thoughts, while a miserable person will have negative, pessimistic ones.

So to shift thoughts, we’re going to need to work on emotions, and one of the best ways to do this is to shift someone’s energetic state.

A Reiki, Pellowah, or Chi activation session is brilliant for doing this, and it's amazing how much more open-minded people are to new ideas when their emotions have been soothed.

That said, as you work on them, remember that your job as a healer is simply to be a channel. The healing energy, not you, is doing the work. So relax, let go, and forget about results.

They’re not your responsibility.

Your job is simply to let the healing energy flow through you.

Do that, and you can pump vast amounts of energy into your client without ever straining or losing energy yourself.

Tip 2 – Work on Their Base Chakra

When someone's in a worried or fearful state, the best energy centre to work on is typically the base chakra.

Doing so will both calm and help them to confront their situation with greater serenity.

It will help them to feel more emotionally stable, and as a result, they’ll be able to look to the future with increased positivity.

Then, if you want them to have even better results after a session, give them a meditation or exercise to help strengthen their base chakra. This will double down on your good healing work.

Tip 3 – Help Them Understand the Importance of Their Mental State/Thoughts

You might have heard the saying that ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself’.

In many ways, this is true.

Beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies, and fear tends to attract the very thing we fear.

I once had a client who was living proof of this phenomenon. By the time he saw me, he was allergic to over 150 things. But it all started with a single allergy: shellfish.

After suffering an allergic reaction to some shellfish, he started paying more attention to what he ate and what things he might be allergic to.

Superficially, this no doubt seemed sensible, but his intense focus on allergens ultimately led to him discovering a second allergy.

This seemingly validated the need to be mindful of what he ate, and so he doubled down on the care he took to avoid allergens.

But since what you focus on grows, this soon led to allergic reactions to other foods, and before he knew it, he was allergic to over 150 things, including his leather belt!

I admit this is far from scientific evidence. But I’ve seen this phenomenon enough times to be convinced that focusing on what you fear is a dangerous game!

So to help people avoid the snowballing effect of fear, they need to understand first why what they focus on matters, and then practise shifting their focus whenever they start obsessing over something negative.

Tip 4 – Positive Programming

The mind is like a sponge that soaks up the beliefs and opinions of those around you.

Left to its own devices, it will therefore end up reflecting the average thoughts, ideas, and beliefs of the society you live in.

If you like the results of the world around you, this is great. If not, you'd better become more intentional about what goes into your mind.

A great way to become more intentional is to curate what you listen to and watch – something which is all the more critical for anyone with a negative mindset.

If you want to help them ‘reprogram’ their mind, you can suggest they watch positive videos, read positive literature, and listen to positive audiobooks.

You might also suggest they use positive affirmations.

The thing to remember here, however, is that it's more about the feelings the affirmation gives someone than the words themselves. So they need to be something a person can accept without resistance. If they say they’re rich, but are poor and feel poor, then their affirmation is hardly going to help. In fact, it will do them harm because they will just end up spending more time wallowing in a negative emotional/vibrational state.

Additionally, as you've probably heard, make sure that all of the affirmations are expressed positively in the present tense. If they say they will be something, then, like a mirage in the distance, they may well find that they never get what they want, for it will remain perpetually stuck in some future, distant point.

And if they say they don’t want to be something (like being overweight), then they will pump mental energy into the thing they don’t want to be!

Tip 5 – Get Your Clients to Make Concrete Positive Changes to Their Life

It isn’t enough for your client to simply receive your healing sessions. You need to get them to make positive changes in their lives as well. You need to get them to do things that improve their wellbeing.

This is critical.

For if they keep doing all of the same things, they'll almost always end up going back to where they started before your healing sessions.

To help with this, I recommend getting them to think of a period of their life when they were doing well. When they remember one, ask them what they were doing. Then get them to do more of that!

Tip 6 – Help Them Raise Their Emotional Setpoint

We will always gravitate back towards our emotional setpoint.

This is our average state of wellbeing.

If we average 7 out of 10 for daily happiness, for instance, then a 7 is our emotional setpoint.

As a result, if bad things happen to us and our happiness levels fall to, say, a 4, they will generally start to gravitate back to a 7.

Conversely, if something particularly good happens in our life and we shoot up to a 9, we will also, in time, tend to be drawn back down to a 7.

One of the best things we can do for ourselves, therefore, is to raise our emotional setpoint. That way, if bad things happen to us, we’re unlikely to stay in a negative state for long.

Our emotional setpoint will soon lift us out of our doldrums.

And unsurprisingly, we can raise our emotional setpoint by doing things like meditation and healing work.

Tip 7 – Help Clients Connect to the Core of Their Being

As a rule, external things will neither fully satisfy us nor satisfy us for long.

Even so, most people tend to look to ‘externals’ to find happiness. But in time, they are always ultimately disappointed.

To find true happiness, we must turn within. We must tap into the being that lies at the heart of us.

When we meditate, when we connect to a place of stillness within, we touch this being. We touch our essential nature.

In such moments, we feel whole and complete.

We lack nothing and can simply enjoy being in the moment without needing to get anywhere or change anything.

The more we access this state, the less external things matter, and as a result, the less we will be emotionally affected when external things don’t go our way.

Conclusion

Usually, if you're working with someone who has a negative mindset, you're not going to get them to implement all seven of these ideas at the same time.

That would be overload.

Instead, simply pick one or two things, start small, and see if you can build some momentum over time.

The key to success will be to help your client or friend become an active participant in the healing process.

You don't want them simply to rely on you.

You want them to learn how to help themselves.

That way, when they recover from whatever issue is bothering them, they will not simply return to Ground Zero.

Rather, it will be Ground Zero+.

It will be a better version of them, and that will make their entire journey worthwhile.

— Article by Om Reiki Founder, Jeremy O'Carroll