Do our negative thoughts come from Satan?

[WildCatholic]

I have been going to counseling and unfortunately I am plagued with negative thoughts and this is something I’ve been plagued with since I was about 10 or so. Anyway without getting into too much detail, my counselor, a fully licensed one who works for a Catholic agency, keeps saying that negative thoughts are from the devil. How can this be if Satan can’t read our minds and also isn’t possible that my thoughts are just from a chemical imbalance or something like that and not Satan. I don’t necessarily believe Satan causes illnesses or thing s just like I don’t believe God necessarily heals us or when we aren’t following him allowing us to get sick or have bad thoughts.

So are my and other negative thoughts from Satan (obviously they also come from my past experiences, so it could be Satan is using them. This makes more sense to me since I feel Satan can twist our thoughts and certain illnesses just like God can use them but not necessarily cause them.

Anyway I feel like that is just an excuse for my bad thoughts. Unfortunately I was just born with something in me that made me negative and it’s just the way it is and I have to live with it. Maybe God will use it for good.

 

[meltzerboy]

I have been going to counseling and unfortunately I am plagued with negative thoughts and this is something I’ve been plagued with since I was about 10 or so. Anyway without getting into too much detail, my counselor, a fully licensed one who works for a Catholic agency, keeps saying that negative thoughts are from the devil. How can this be if Satan can’t read our minds and also isn’t possible that my thoughts are just from a chemical imbalance or something like that and not Satan. I don’t necessarily believe Satan causes illnesses or thing s just like I don’t believe God necessarily heals us or when we aren’t following him allowing us to get sick or have bad thoughts.

So are my and other negative thoughts from Satan (obviously they also come from my past experiences, so it could be Satan is using them. This makes more sense to me since I feel Satan can twist our thoughts and certain illnesses just like God can use them but not necessarily cause them.

Anyway I feel like that is just an excuse for my bad thoughts. Unfortunately I was just born with something in me that made me negative and it’s just the way it is and I have to live with it. Maybe God will use it for good.

Some in Judaism believe that our negative thoughts and particularly behaviors may actually CREATE demons. Personally, I don’t believe this or that they come from Satan (not a bad guy anyway according to Jewish belief). But I also believe your negative thoughts CAN change by means of learning cognitive skills through cognitive therapy as well as pharmacotherapy (medication). Prayer can certainly help as well.

 

[glendab]

Well, I’ll start by saying I’m no expert on things psychological or demonic, but I do have some knowledge of both and can share.

Not all thoughts that are “negative” come from the devil and to categorically say so isn’t good counsel whether or not the person giving the counseling is Catholic, Buddhist, Atheist or whatever, Martian! While it is true that sometimes the devil is given access to a particular person’s life, i.e. the story of Job, and can therefore vex them in their thoughts, it is extremely rare. Unless your counselor has the ability to discern spirits, which would give them a Saintly air, and if they cannot as yet walk on water or work other miracles to prove that yes, their discernment of spirits is a genuine charism, then the best they can do is render a well-educated guess about the demonic, just like the rest of us.

Since you haven’t shared about the particular type or frequency of your negative pattern of thinking, it probably isn’t any worse or better than the rest of us experience in every day life. We all have negative thoughts and temptations. It is what we do with them that makes all the difference. Some folks seem to have stronger temptations then others. We all are expected to fight three things in this walk with Jesus: the world, the flesh and the devil.

I’d like to share a thing someone once shared with me and it comes from American Indian culture and it helps me with the above three fold struggle. It goes like this: An old Indian Chief was walking with his grandson and they began talking about different things. The boy asked his grandfather how he could be at peace, and the grandfather went silent for a few minutes and then told him that there are two wolves inside every warrior, a good wolf and a bad wolf and they fight each other and this causes a lack of peace. In order to be peaceful they must end their battle, with one of the two winning. Then he left the boy for a while. They met again later and talked and the grandfather asked if the boy had found peace yet and he said “How can I, Grandfather? I have two wolves in me fighting all the time.” So the grandfather said “You need to help them end their battle,” to which the boy grew frustrated and nearly shouted at his grandfather, “How can I do that? I cannot even see them?” and the grandfather chuckled a little and said, “my dear little Chief, which wolf have you been feeding? That is the one who will be the victor.” And he walked away knowing his grandson would learn to feed the wolf he preferred.

Feed your good wolf.

Glenda

 

[dshix]

Thoughts can come from God, Satan, or ourselves. Negative or sinful thoughts come from either ourselves (concupiscence), or Satan.

 

[Jared2914]

Thoughts can come from God, Satan, or ourselves. Negative or sinful thoughts come from either ourselves (concupiscence), or Satan.

I add that “ourselves” means both your own person (your own thoughts) but also those people around you. A person who keeps putting down someone might cause that someone to also have those same negative thoughts. I know this because I was bullied in school as many kids are these days. As much as I told myself I didn’t believe what other kids said, it still caused me to have low self-esteem and a negative image of myself for years.

 

[dshix]

I add that “ourselves” means both your own person (your own thoughts) but also those people around you. A person who keeps putting down someone might cause that someone to also have those same negative thoughts.

Yes, definitely.

 

[marymary1975]

I don’t know if negative thoughts come exactly from the devil but I do think many of our negative thought come out of our fallen nature and hence are a consequence of sin. Let’s face it sin has consequence and sin acts like when you push down the front domino on a row of domino’s standing up. It is all a connected chain that goes tied to out fallen nature and Adam and Eve’s sin.

 

[WildCatholic]

Great Answers folks. Thanks for your help. The basic picture I’m getting is that while Satan can cause negative thoughts, a lot of it is from ourselves and others. This makes sense to me because i guess from what I’ve seen (I don’t know if it’s necessarily in line with Catholic teaching and if it’s heterodox then i’d better change it) but I feel that Satan in a sense twists everything and makes it work against us. He can twist our own inner thoughts as well as words and actions of others and ourselves and also while I don’t believe he causes illness except in rare cases, just like God can use them to bring good unfortunately satan can use them to do evil and try to make us weak (though obviously he isn’t anywhere near as powerful as God).