I know a negative pattern when I think it

Patterns have an accent. If you listen for a week you notice that yours uses the same four or five expressions, and that the worst of them turn up between eleven at night and one in the morning, in the same room, usually with the same amount of sleep behind them.

That is the thing worth collecting. Not the content — the timetable.

A thought that only ever visits at midnight is telling you something about midnight. One that appears reliably on the walk back from the school gates is partly about the walk.

Recognition doesn't stop it arriving. It does change what you are standing in when it does, which is the whole difference between hearing a pattern and being inside one.