Understanding and managing depression and Stress by Josephine Spire

Author:Josephine Spire
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847167323
Publisher: Straightforward Publishing

Negative thinking in depression

In many cases depression is the result of habitual negative thoughts called cognitive distortions. This is a term used in psychology to describe irrational inflated thoughts or beliefs that distort a person’s perception of reality usually in a negative way. Cognitive distortions come unprompted and always seem true and believable to the thinker, often associated with feeling down or under a dark cloud and can take a serious toll on one’s mental health. They include;

1. Catastrophizing: Assuming the worst outcomes of situations. "Why bother I will fail”.

2. Mind reading: Assuming that you know what people think about you. “I can sense they don’t like me from the way they look at me”.

3. Personalising: Taking things personally resulting into self-blame. “The relationship failed because of me”.

4. Should statements: “I should have done things differently”, “They should have told me earlier”.

5. Fortune telling: Predicting the future negatively. “I know that I will fail the interview”.

6. Overgeneralization: Perceiving a wide pattern of negatives basing it on a single event. “I am never successful at anything”.

7. Labelling: Labelling yourself and other people based on one experience or event. ”She is a horrible person”, “I am useless at everything”.

8. Blaming: Blaming someone or something for your faults.

9. Dismissing the positives: Failing to recognize the good things in your life or the good things about other people. “It's his job to do that” “My achievements are nothing they don’t account for anything”.

10. Black and white thinking: Seeing everything in terms of either/or, winner/loser and nothing in between. “It was a complete waste of time”.

11. Magnifying: Blowing things out of proportion.

12. Emotional reasoning: letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel stressed and frustrated about my work, its not working for me, I’m resigning”.

13. What ifs: Asking questions frequently of what ifs. “What if I fail at it?”, “What if they don’t like me?”

14. Judgement focus: Evaluating yourself, others and events without accepting or understanding basing your judgement on a personal whim aiming to find shortfalls. “I don’t do well enough”, “He always performs better than me.”

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