How you deal with Negative Thoughts

How You Can Deal With Negative Thoughts

Depression can cause you to view everything in a negative light, from your daily living to how you view the future.  Trying to simply “snap out of it” or “think positive” often will not help unless you replace the negative thoughts with more even thinking.

How can you Challenge such Negative Thinking?

Do not be hard on yourself – Do not place expectations on yourself that you would not expect of others

Realize you are not Perfect – Allow yourself to make mistakes, no one is perfect and mistakes are a chance to learn, not the end of the world.

Spend Time with more Positive People – The people you spend time with will often shape how you view things. Spend time with more positive friends and try to adopt their attitudes.

Keep a “Negative Thought Journal” – When you have negative thoughts write them down, then write down a more positive or realistic view of the situation, event, etc. This can help change your way of thinking and viewing things.

Do not View Things as “Black or White” – Allow for a middle ground or “grey area,” most things in life are not all good or all bad (e.g. a disagreement with a loved one over one issue does not mean one or the other is right, just a different viewpoint).

Do not Over-Generalize – Just because one thing does not work, does not mean everything will not, or that it will always happen.

Do not Ignore the Positive – It can become easy to look for the flaw and ignore the good, focus on what is going right and less on what is going wrong.

Do not Jump to Conclusions or Assume – Many times it is easy to assume the worst or jump to a conclusion, often negative, without looking at all of the evidence or waiting for the outcome.

Do not use Emotional Reasoning – Do not base your beliefs on how you feel, instead focus on what is actually happening (e.g. I feel bad, therefore I am no good, which is not the truth of the situation),

Do not hold Yourself to a Strict List of Should and ShouldNots – You will often end up feeling bad over not living up to such a strict list, allow room for all that is in between those extremes.

Do not Label Yourself Based on Mistakes – Realize if you make a mistake it does not make you a failure, etc. We all make mistakes they do not define who we are.  

By: James Clapper – Graduate Level Intern, Loring Therapy, LLC

Adapted from:http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_tips.htm