Negative thinking can be a habit that’s difficult to break, leading to depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. But just like any other habit, it can be unlearned. The key is to develop skills that can help you counter negative thinking, which will positively affect your overall emotional well-being. Online counseling can help you build skills to change the way you think, feel, and behave.
By teaching yourself to think about your thinking, by separating sensible from depressive thoughts, and by engaging in problem-solving behaviors, you position yourself to disengage from automatic depressive thinking, feelings, and behavioral habits. The skills you develop to counter this thinking will grow in strength through practice.
The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression
Learn to Think About Your Thinking
The first step is to become aware of your negative thoughts. Start by keeping a record of your negative thinking patterns and the situations that trigger them. Examine these thoughts and identify the evidence that supports them and the evidence that contradicts them. Analyzing your thoughts can help you see them in a different light and challenge them more effectively.
Separate Sensible from Depressive Thoughts
Once you’ve identified your negative thinking patterns, it’s time to separate rational from irrational thoughts. Depression often leads to distorted thinking because of negative biases and cognitive errors. Therefore, it’s important to spot these patterns and challenge the irrational thoughts and assumptions that underlie them.
Engage in Problem-Solving Behaviors
Negative thinking often leads to a sense of helplessness where people feel like there’s nothing they can do to change their situation. Engaging in problem-solving behaviors helps break the mental loop of feeling unable to make progress. Instead, it helps you to focus on concrete steps to solve the problem. Involve yourself in activities that will distract you from negative thinking patterns.
Practice Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
Learning how to be more present and finding ways to be more self-compassionate are other useful techniques that have been shown to reduce negative thinking and improve emotional well-being. Cultivating mindfulness through activities like meditation, deep breathing, or yoga, can help bring your attention to the present moment while self-compassion can help reduce harsh self-criticism.
Reinforcing Healthy Behaviors
The process of changing negative thinking patterns takes time. Therefore, it is essential to celebrate small victories along the way. Whenever you are successful in replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, reward yourself. Reinforcing healthy behaviors can help keep you motivated while you work on developing positive habits.
Learning the skills to counter negative thinking is a powerful way to improve your mental health and overall well-being. Remember, breaking a negative thinking cycle takes patience and practice. You need to be consistent in identifying negative thought patterns and actively replacing them with more positive alternatives. But the rewards are worth the effort as you will start to feel an increased sense of self-esteem, a more positive outlook on life, and a more fulfilled sense of purpose.