Dealing with negative thoughts

Dealing with negative thoughts

As you have read my previous blogs about my experience with anxiety and my experience with talking therapies, you may know that I learnt about negative thoughts. I guess one thing that inspired me to write a post about this particular aspect of anxiety and depression is due to the fact that I've been having neagtive thoughts lately so I thought it would be a good idea to blog about this. Also I would like to help some of you who have been having negative thoughts and how to deal with those thoughts. In this post today, I'm going to talk about the different thought errors and how to write these thoughts down and challenge them. I hope that this helps people who have been or are suffering with anxiety and depression.

Some people tend to start thinking negative about their life, themselves and even the world. From my experience by having these thoughts, I know that it can be difficult to stop these thoughts once you have started thinking that way. However there are different ways of dealing with those thoughts.

Thought errors

There are many categorised thoughts errors that people with depression and anxiety tend to have. These include:

• Negative filter: Picking out a negative feature and focusing on that without letting anything positive have an effect on it. This is basically looking at yourself, your life and the world in a negative point of view.
• Catastrophising: Believing that a disaster is always around the corner and predicting that the worst will happen.
• Magnification and minimisation: Exaggerating the importance of negative events and underestimating the importance of positive events.
• Emotional reasoning: Thinking that what you're feeling must be true about yourself.
• Mind-reading or jumping to conclusions: Assuming that others are thinking the worst of you and reacting to what you believe they are thinking. Ignoring the facts that might indicate otherwise.
• Labelling: Calling yourself unhelpful names such as 'stupid' and 'useless' and thinking that this amounts to who you are.
• Black and white thinking: Seeing things as completely one way or the other, ignoring the grey area and other possibilities in-between.
• Unrealistic expectations: Thinking about how you 'should' and 'ought' to be and placing unrealistic expectations on yourself.
• Self-blame: Thinking that everything is your fault and ignoring any other contributing factors.

By recognising the negative thoughts that you seem to have, you can then challenge yourself making them into a more balanced thought. I know that it can be difficult to challenge these thoughts once you start thinking like that but it can be done by practising.

Ways of challenging negative thoughts

There are different ways of challenging your thoughts. These include:

• Using a thought diary: You can do this by thinking of a situation then start thinking about the first thought that would pop into your head if this situation occurred. You can rate your emotions and moods as a percentage then find evidence that supports the thought and evidence that does not support that thought. You will then have to think of a alternative/balanced thought and then rate your emotions and moods after that thought. This is the best way to challenge the negative thoughts because it gives you a balanced thought by using evidence supporting the thought and evidence that does not support that thought. You are most likely to feel happier after thinking of an alternative thought.

Referring to the image above, this is an example of a thought diary and it gives you how to use it.

• Thought stopping - When you notice that you are having negative thoughts or you feel overwhelmed with negative thinking, shout 'STOP' out loud or say it in your head. You can also use a elastic band to flick yourself with. This provides you with the means of instantly stopping those thoughts and it gives you a break in your thought process to start to question yourself. This also prevents these thoughts from becoming out of control.
 

 
 
• Cost-benefit analysis - We can asses how useful our negative thoughts are by using a cost-benefit analysis. You do this by noting down the benfits of the thought you are having but you also state down the costs (negatives) of that thought and you rate the benefit out of a percentage as well as the costs so that they add up to 100%. You are weighing up the positives but also the negatives of that thought.
 

 
• How responsible am I? - Sometimes our negative thoughts are focused on events that took place in the past or situations that we remember in a bad light. Think of all the different factors that contribute to this thought and other explanations that may be involved. Then allocate an amount of pie chart to each factor involved, and whatever segment is left is your amount of responsibility.
 
 

The image above shows a pie chart and how you could split it up into sections. It may look similar to this one depending on the factors that effect your thought.
 
• Continuum - This can be useful for looking at grey areas in black and white thinking. If a thought occurred, such as "I am bad" draw a continuum with 0% at one end and 100% at the other, think about who is the most 'bad' person and think about who is the least bad person, put names at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% (roughly) then put yourself in where you would fit.

 

 

I hope that this post helps some of your who have been having negative thoughts. Feel free to leave a comment below or email me if you need any advice on what you have been going through.

 

Natasha