Overview

People with depression often have a negative attitude and spend a lot of time thinking negative thoughts — thoughts that are not real, are not helpful, make them feel upset, and worsen their depression.

There are things you can do to get rid of these negative thought patterns. Start by discovering what your negative thoughts are. The negative thoughts or messages one gives oneself are often specific messages like ("I am a jerk," "You are such a klutz!") and short messages ("Stupid," "Idiot"). You usually believe them no matter how untrue they are. You repeat them to yourself in your mind very quickly, without thinking. They may include words like should, ought, or must.

Each person has her or his own negative thoughts. They are hard to turn off. You learned them somewhere, but you often can't remember where. They may include self-doubts such as, "I'm not smart enough to go to college," "I am not creative," "I am not likable," or "I am not good at anything."

Phobias are fears of specific objects or situations that seem unreasonably frightening like snakes, spiders, crowds, heights, airplanes, and darkness. Phobias are an example of another kind of negative thinking that gets in the way of wellness.

Figure out what your negative thoughts are. Carry a small notebook around for a day or two. Every time you become aware of a negative thought, jot it down in your notebook. You could also ask your friends or family members to help you identify your negative thoughts.

The following negative thought patterns may help you in identifying your negative thoughts:

Filtering: looking at one part of the situation without considering the whole situation. For example, if you missed one shot in basketball, you are a lousy player.

Polarized thinking: seeing things as either one way or the other with no in-between. For example, everyone in school loves you or everyone in school hates you.

Over-generalizing: reaching a general conclusion based on just one piece of information. For example, your girlfriend forgot to call you; therefore, she doesn't like you anymore.

Mind reading: making assumptions about how others feel without enough evidence. For example, the teacher called on someone else in class; therefore, the teacher thinks you are stupid.

Catastrophizing: expecting the worst will happen. For example, there is going to be a tornado, and you and everyone you like will be killed.

Personalizing: relating everything to yourself, including continually comparing yourself with others. For example, "I am not as pretty as my best friend."

Controlling: feeling either totally controlled by some outside force or feeling that you are personally responsible for everything. For example, feeling that your parents run your life or feeling like you are responsible for your parents' divorce.

Fallacy of fairness: thinking everything must be fair or equal. For example, if your sister can stay out until midnight, you should be able to as well.

Emotional reasoning: believing everything you feel must be true. For example, if you feel your boyfriend is interested in someone else, he must be interested in someone else.

Fallacy of change: assuming your happiness depends on the actions of others and that if they would change, things would improve. For example, "If my father would move back home, everything would be alright."

Blaming: making someone else responsible for whatever is going badly. For example, dropping your radio and breaking it, then blaming the people who made the radio.

Shoulds: operating from a rigid set of indisputable rules about how everyone should act. For example, "Everyone should like hard rock music."

Being right: continually needing to prove that your view or action is right, even though evidence indicates that you are wrong. For example, needing to prove that a particular bicycle is best even though rating sheets and experience of others suggest it is not.

Perfectionism: expecting never to make mistakes, to always be perfect. For example, expecting always to get A's on your schoolwork.

Some examples of negative thoughts that will worsen depression are:

• "I will never feel better."
  
  
• I will never be able to play ball, skate, act, write (whatever it is you enjoyed doing) again."
  
  
• "I will never be able to go to college."
  
  
• "I am not smart enough for college."
  
  
• "No one will ever want to marry me."
  
  
• "I am ugly."
  
  
• "I am too fat."
  
  
• "I am stupid."
  
  
• "I don't deserve anything good."
  
  
• "Things will never get better."
  
  
• "I can't do anything right."
  
  
• "I am a complete failure."
  
  
• "I mess up everything."
  
  
• "I don't deserve to be alive."
  
  
• "I will never accomplish anything worthwhile."

These distorted thoughts 1) cause painful emotions such as worry, and depression and/or 2) cause you to have a hard time dealing with other people.

Questions to Answer

What are my negative thoughts?

The next step in the process of getting rid of your negative thoughts is to analyze your negative thoughts to see if they are true. You may find it helpful to have a special notebook in which to do this work. Ask yourself the following questions. Really think about them. Be honest with yourself.

1. Are these negative statements true? Examine the evidence.

Examples:

• Since you got two A's, 2 B's and a C, how could you be stupid?
  
  
• Your friend Mary calls you every night, and Linda calls you often. They must like you.
  
  
• Your mother and your father have been fighting for years about issues that had nothing to do with you. You are really not responsible for their divorce.

2. Would one nice person say this to another nice person? If not, then should you be saying it to yourself?
   
   
3. Ask other people you trust. Say, "Am I really a jerk?" "Am I really a loser because I missed that basket?"
   
   
4. Examine the words you use, like stupid and idiot. Are they really appropriate? Remember, when you are doing this, you can only proceed with a positive attitude about yourself.
   
   
5. What do you get out of saying this to yourself? How does it help? How does it hurt?

Often, this step of analyzing a negative thought is all that is needed to get rid of it. However, with most negative thoughts, you will need to do more work to get them out of your consciousness for good.

The next step is developing positive statements that contradict the negative messages you have been giving yourself. Write down one or several of the negative thoughts you use most often, the ones that feel most important to get rid of. Write beside it a positive statement that is the opposite of the negative statement. Use the following rules to help you in this process:

1. Avoid using negative terms such as worried, frightened, upset, tired, bored, not, never, and can't. Don't make a statement like "I am not going to worry anymore." Instead, say something like "I will focus on the positive."
   
   
2. Use only positive words like happy, peaceful, loving, enthusiastic, and warm.
   
   
3. Substitute it would be nice if for should.
   
   
4. Always use the present tense, for example "I am healthy," "I am well," "I am happy," and "I have a good job" as if the condition already exists.
   
   
5. Use I, me, or your own name.

Examples of negative thoughts and positive responses:

Negative thoughts have often become so familiar that reinforcing positive thoughts takes persistence, consistency, and creativity. It takes several weeks to several months of reinforcement of the negative thought with a positive response to effectively change it. Commit yourself to spending some time each day, maybe just before dinner or before you go to bed, to work on reinforcing your positive statements. Reinforce positive responses by:

• Repeating them aloud or to yourself over and over
  
  
• Writing them down over and over again — 10 or 20 times
  
  
• Asking someone you trust to read your positive responses to you

You can use other creative activities to enhance your work. Try making signs that say the positive response with markers or your computer and hanging them in obvious places around your bedroom. Read them to yourself every time you see them. You can think of other activities that will reinforce the positive statements.

Every time the negative thought comes up during the day, say "STOP!" to yourself and then repeat your positive response several times. Some people wear a rubber band on their wrist. Every time the negative thought comes up, they snap the rubber band and repeat the positive response several times. The rubber band method seems to work very well.

After you feel that you have gotten some of your negative thoughts under control, you can go through these same exercises with other negative thoughts. Or you may feel like taking a break from this work and coming back to it another time.

Next Steps

Refer to these books for more help in changing negative thoughts to positive ones:

Burns, D. (1980). Feeling good. New York: Morrow.

Burns, D. (1990). The feeling good handbook. New York: Plume.

Copeland, M.E. (2001). The depression workbook: A guide to living with depression and manic depression (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Fanning, P., & McKay, M. (1991). Prisoners of belief. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

McKay, M., Davis, M., & Fanning, P. (1998). Thoughts and feelings (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.