Depression - Negative Thought Patterns and How to Overcome Them
We all have negative thoughts from time to time, but what if a negative thought pattern keeps recurring and just won't go away? It can be downright frustrating when this happens and cause the individual to fight to 'get rid of' the negative thought.
The mind is always busy.
It loves to think and think...
and think.
The mind is such a chatterbox that sometimes we can be exhausted by our own thoughts.
It constantly jumps around from thought to thought...
and when it gets onto a thought that gets a reaction out of you then boy! It loves to keep bringing that one back around for more.
When this 'reaction provoking' thought is a negative one then it loves to dwell on this all the more.
You see the problem is that the mind wants to protect you.
It's always judging, evaluating, and deciding what is the safest and best way for you to get to where you want to go.
It is usually risk averse and doesn't like you to get out of your comfort zone at all.
But in a world that demands that we get out of our comfort zones regularly this can be problematic.
It's as if the agenda of your mind can be different to the agenda of you! In other words, you may wish or need to go this way but the mind often says 'no it's much safer if you go THAT way so let's do that instead.
' This puts you at loggerheads with your own mind! The mind is actually always trying to help and protect you so in this regard it is actually the 'good guy' so to speak, however sometimes it does it's job far too well and tries to protect you way too much.
When you believe in or fuse with a thought that is not necessarily true then this can cause all sorts of problems.
For example.
If you had a thought that you were a useless person and you believed or fused with this thought then it could lead you to a lack of belief in your own abilities and in turn, this could cause you to either not attempt something that you wish to do or to do badly at it due to your lack of self belief.
When I was going through depression I found myself riddled with negative beliefs and thought patterns such as these.
I didn't realise that they were just 'thoughts' that weren't necessarily true.
I considered that because the thoughts had originated from ME then they must be true! How wrong I was! When you begin seeing you thoughts as just a bunch of..
well..
'thoughts' and you stop believing in the unhelpful ones it can be the beginning of a whole new world of freedom for a person.
Conversely if you have a helpful thought you could choose to search for evidence of why this thought might be true and then reinforce the positive thought in this way.
In order to avoid being a victim of our own thinking it is really important that we take our own thoughts with a grain of salt and choose to give more energy to the helpful ones than the unhelpful ones.
The mind is always busy.
It loves to think and think...
and think.
The mind is such a chatterbox that sometimes we can be exhausted by our own thoughts.
It constantly jumps around from thought to thought...
and when it gets onto a thought that gets a reaction out of you then boy! It loves to keep bringing that one back around for more.
When this 'reaction provoking' thought is a negative one then it loves to dwell on this all the more.
You see the problem is that the mind wants to protect you.
It's always judging, evaluating, and deciding what is the safest and best way for you to get to where you want to go.
It is usually risk averse and doesn't like you to get out of your comfort zone at all.
But in a world that demands that we get out of our comfort zones regularly this can be problematic.
It's as if the agenda of your mind can be different to the agenda of you! In other words, you may wish or need to go this way but the mind often says 'no it's much safer if you go THAT way so let's do that instead.
' This puts you at loggerheads with your own mind! The mind is actually always trying to help and protect you so in this regard it is actually the 'good guy' so to speak, however sometimes it does it's job far too well and tries to protect you way too much.
When you believe in or fuse with a thought that is not necessarily true then this can cause all sorts of problems.
For example.
If you had a thought that you were a useless person and you believed or fused with this thought then it could lead you to a lack of belief in your own abilities and in turn, this could cause you to either not attempt something that you wish to do or to do badly at it due to your lack of self belief.
When I was going through depression I found myself riddled with negative beliefs and thought patterns such as these.
I didn't realise that they were just 'thoughts' that weren't necessarily true.
I considered that because the thoughts had originated from ME then they must be true! How wrong I was! When you begin seeing you thoughts as just a bunch of..
well..
'thoughts' and you stop believing in the unhelpful ones it can be the beginning of a whole new world of freedom for a person.
Conversely if you have a helpful thought you could choose to search for evidence of why this thought might be true and then reinforce the positive thought in this way.
In order to avoid being a victim of our own thinking it is really important that we take our own thoughts with a grain of salt and choose to give more energy to the helpful ones than the unhelpful ones.
Source...