by Jules Roberts

Created on: March 20, 2008

The best way to stay positive is to recognise how using negative language can pull you into a bad mood and keep you there. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) teaches people that they can change their behaviour if they are aware of the impact of their negative thoughts. This way, as soon as you realise you are thinking negatively, you can break the unhelpful cycle of thinking by challenging your negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts instead.

An example of the kind of words that can feed anxiety and depression are; "I SHOULD have...", "its ALWAYS the same...", "I'll NEVER be able to change this...", "IF ONLY i had...", "EVERYBODY hates me..." and "I CAN'T do this...".

Lets start with "SHOULD". This is a negative word because we tend to use it when we are beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves for things. If I say "I SHOULD have done this differently", the chances are I will then move on to contemplate all of the different things that I 'SHOULD' have done and feel bad about how I have handled things. Why waste all that time and energy crucifying myself? If I catch myself saying "I SHOULD have...", I can change it to "I could have done this differently, NEXT TIME I'll do this... instead". Which is more positive, because I'm learning to look forwards and see that I have control to change situations around.

Using the word 'ALWAYS' can have a similar effect. I can say "It is ALWAYS raining" or "My plans ALWAYS get ruined" and then I'll feel glum, because its saying that no matter what I do things will ALWAYS be the same. How depressing is that? The truth is that it doesn't rain every day, and actually some of my plans go well. I'm just focusing on the things that go wrong because I tend to remember them more vividly. When things go right I just sail through it and don't stop to remind myself that things are going great. So if I catch myself thinking "its ALWAYS like this", I can challenge myself by saying "thats not true actually, SOMETIMES things go badly, but mostly its not that bad". This is more likely to stop me from dwelling on negative stuff.

The same can be said for 'NEVER'. I can think to myself "I'll NEVER be any good at maths", and feel hopeless about it. Why write myself off like this, have I ever bothered to try? If being good at maths matters so much to me, I can choose to make an effort to improve. Then instead of feeling like an idiot, I can change this to "Maths is not my strongest point, but if I make an effort and take a few

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