How can I understand these feelings?

The way you think about things affects the way you feel, which affects the way you behave. It is difficult to change the way you feel, but you can change the way you think. When you are feeling depressed you might have negative thoughts a lot of the time. With each negative thought the feelings of depression are likely to increase.

Sometimes negative thoughts can stop you from doing the things that you would normally do. As a result, you may get critical thoughts about being lazy, or irresponsible which make you feel even worse. In other words, you get caught up in a vicious cycle.

A vicious cycle can be like this:

Can I recognise these gloomy thoughts?

When you are feeling low the gloomy thoughts may be so familiar and happen so often to you that you just accept them as fact. Gloomy thoughts are often about yourself for example: "I'm no good", "People don't like me", "I'm a bad mixer", "I look ugly".

Do you have any gloomy thoughts about yourself? Jot them down:

 

 

 

 

 

These thoughts are sometimes about other things such as the world around you or the future. For example: "People are unkind", "the world is a horrible place", "nothing will work out well".

Do you have any gloomy thoughts about other things? Jot them down.

 

 

 

 

 

What more should I know about these gloomy negative thoughts?

We have given examples of the negative thoughts people have when they are depressed. It is important to remember that you might still occasionally have some of these sorts of thoughts when you are not depressed. The difference is that you would generally dismiss them from your mind. When you are depressed, however, these thoughts are around all the time.

Lets look at these negative thoughts in more detail:

  1. Negative thoughts tend to be automatic. They are not actually arrived at on the basis of reason and logic, they just seem to happen.
  2. Often the thoughts are unreasonable, and unrealistic. They serve no purpose. All they do is make you feel bad and they get in the way of what you really want out of life. If you think about them carefully, you will probably find that you have jumped to a conclusion which is not necessarily correct. For example, thinking someone doesn't like you because they haven't phoned recently.
  3. Even though these thoughts are unreasonable they probably seem reasonable and correct to you at the time.
  4. The more you believe and accept negative thoughts, the worse you are likely to feel. If you allow yourself to get into the grip of these thoughts, you find you are viewing everything in a negative way.

When people become depressed their thinking often changes. They may make some of the following errors when they are thinking negatively:

  1. Exaggerating the negative
    This means you think things are much worse than they really are. For example you make a small mistake at work and fear that you may be dismissed because of it. In other words you jump to a gloomy conclusion and believe that it is likely to happen. You may spend a long time worrying that you have upset a friend only to find later she didn't even remember the comment.
Do you ever exaggerate the negative? Think back over the last 2 weeks and please list:

 

 

 

 
  1. Overgeneralising
    For example, if one person doesn't get on with you, you may think "no one likes me". If one of your many daily tasks hasn't been finished you think "I've achieved nothing - nothing has been done". In other words from one thing that has happened to you, you draw a negative conclusion which is much bigger and covers all sorts of things.
Do you ever overgeneralise? Think back over the last 2 weeks and list examples:

 

 

 

 
  1. Ignoring the positive
    People who are depressed tend to focus their thinking on negative or bad events and ignore positive or good events. You might have had a game of football and missed the goal once, but played well in general. After the game you just think about that one missed shot and not the rest of the game played well. You may have many good friends who you have known for years but you concentrate and worry about one that has fallen out with you rather than remembering all the other good friendships.
Do you sometimes ignore the positive? Jot down some examples from the last 2 weeks:

 

 

 

 
  1. Taking things personally
    Often if our mood is low we blame ourselves for anything which goes wrong, even if things have nothing to do with us in reality. For example, you go into a local shop and the assistant who knows you is `off-hand`, your automatic thought is `she doesn't like me ... ... have I done something wrong?", but the most likely reason is that she's tired or upset or has had a `bad day`. In this example you have taken the blame personally.
Do you sometimes take things personally when they probably have little to do with you? Give some examples from the last 2 weeks:

 

 

 

 

In Summary

When people are depressed they often have gloomy or unhelpful thoughts about themselves, the world and the future. They can also make errors in the way they think. They exaggerate the negative, over-generalise bad events, ignore positives in their lives and can take things personally. It is important to uncover gloomy thoughts and errors in thinking.

Depression: how can I help myself?