The Complete Guide to Overcoming Depression, Low Mood and Other Related Problems by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self Help
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The way you think about things can affect the way you feel. Below is a summary of some typical ways of thinking that can worsen depression. This is a brief summary of what was discussed in Chapter 10. If you can learn to spot these styles of thinking in yourself, it can be a helpful first step to pulling back from them, taking the view from the balcony, and trying to bring balance to one’s thinking We all use these styles of thinking from time to time; no one is 100 per cent logical or compassionate all the time. But in depression they are taken to extremes.

• Jumping to conclusions. This involves the tendency to make decisions rapidly, especially when under stress. For example, you might jump to the conclusion that someone does not like you because they ignore you. You may predict the future, e.g., that nothing you do will work out. Jumping to conclusions means that you don’t look at the evidence. Instead, you go for immediate gut reactions and assume these to be true.

• Emotional reasoning. This involves an over-reliance on feeling to guide judgements, for example, ‘I feel this is dangerous, therefore it is’, or ’I feel I am stupid therefore I am’, or ‘I feel unlovable or unattractive therefore I am’. You assume that negative feelings reflect the way things actually are: ‘I feel it, so it must be true’. Feelings are often poor guides to reality. The ‘power’ of feelings comes from our more primitive brains having more control than is often good for us. Remember to test out feelings: look for alternatives and explore the evidence for and the evidence against. Does it pass the friend test – is it something you’d be happy to say to a friend?

• All-or-nothing thinking. This is also called ‘black-and-white’ or ‘polarized’ thinking. We see things in ‘either/or’ categories. If our performance falls short of what we wanted, we see it or even ourselves as a total failure. We may think: ‘Either X loves me or s/he doesn’t’, or ‘Either I succeed or I fail’. However, life is full of indeterminate areas. Love is not either/or; there are degrees of love. Success is not either/or; there are degrees of success. It is more useful to think of the degree of success rather than the degree of failure. It is always worth thinking if there is a sense of threat, fear or loss that might be driving this all-or-nothing thinking. If so, consider some of the ideas I have offered to become compassionate to your fears and balanced in your thinking.

• Overgeneralizing. This is when we take a single negative event and see it as a never-ending pattern of defeat. Here, one swallow does make a summer. We may think that things can never change, or that one failure means that everything one has done was a failure or faked. Think back and ponder if you tend to think like this and it turns out to be wrong.

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