by Mandy Kloppers

Created on: October 01, 2009

Counteracting Depression

People who suffer from depression tend to be introspective. They attribute all failures to their own shortcomings/inadequacies and all successes are attributed externally. By this, I mean that they often do not give themselves credit for any success in their life, explaining it away as luck, or because someone else made it possible. This ends up in self-defeating thinking, a no-win situation with neither thought process serving one's self esteem in a positively reinforcing way. This can often lead to the person feeling powerless and ineffectual in their lives which further compounds the cycle of negative thinking.

Monitor Your Thoughts (Basic Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy)

One of the most effective ways to counteract mild to moderate depression is to monitor thought processes more closely. Keeping a daily diary is a good way of becoming more aware of the negative self-talk that we all tend to have going on silently in our minds.

The trick is to be aware when you are berating yourself and/or using irrational thinking that does not serve any benefit to you. You could have thoughts about yourself that were told to you as a child. For example, you're useless, you're not good enough...there are a myriad of examples of negative inner self talk that we can repeat to ourselves day after day.

The result of this continuous negative talk is that these thoughts take on a life of their own and aren't challenged anymore. They become truth when in fact there often is no evidence to support these incorrect outdated thoughts about yourself.

Identifying these ill-serving thoughts is the first step in stopping the negative downward spiral of pessimistic thinking. It will drag you down and has no advantages to you wellbeing. You need to:

IDENTIFY the negative, outdated thoughts

CHALLENGE these thoughts. Where's the evidence? Where did this thought come from? Was the source reliable? Often you will find that the source (eg a parent,care giver) had their own issues and these words were not meant at all.

REMOVE these thoughts and replace them with more appropriate ones. Eg I am not good enough is replaced by: I am worthy as I am

IMPORTANT: Thoughts lead to feelings. Feelings lead to behaviour. Allowing positive thoughts to stay and weeding out the negative, critical thoughts will lead to more positive feelings, a lighter happier mood and more positive, optimistic behaviours and outlook on life.

Healthy balanced diet:

A healthy, well balanced diet

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>