An Introduction to Coping with Depression by Lee Brosan

Author:Lee Brosan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472140227
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

A three-step plan to overcome negative thinking

Step 1: Recognise your negative thoughts and how they trigger depressed mood

Because negative thinking is often automatic, you may not always realise that you’re doing it. It’s important to become aware of negative thinking patterns and how they are affecting your mood. A good way to help to identify negative thinking is to fill out a ‘thought record’ like the one on page 47 over the course of a week. Every time you notice your mood getting worse write down:

• the date

• the situation you are in

• what was going through your mind just then?

• the emotions you’re feeling. Rate each one on a scale from 0 to 100 so that you’ll be able to remember how strongly you felt that way.

Try to complete your thought record as soon as you can. If you wait, it’ll be harder to remember exactly what you were thinking.

Keep this record for a week. At the end of the week look at your negative thoughts. Do you notice similar kinds of thoughts repeating themselves? Using the list of kinds of distorted thinking (pages 42–4), try to pinpoint any mistakes you made in your thinking. Watch for the same kind of mistake happening over and over again. This will help you identify the most common kinds of negative thinking that you use.

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