4 Ways to Change Your Thoughts and Relieve Depression & Anxiety

The human mind is powerful. Did you know that on most days, the average person has between 25,000 and 50,000 thoughts? So, when the majority of these thoughts are negative, that means that you are telling yourself that everything sucks, over and over again throughout the day.

This recurrent, frequent negative thinking is a hallmark of depression. Anxious thinking is similar, but more focused on what could go wrong or how you might have already messed up. Depressive thinking tends to be more hopeless, while anxious thinking is more fear based. Most people are not even aware of the degree that this is happening. It just feels like life – everything and everyone including you – just suck.

This is why it is so important for those suffering from depression and anxiety to become aware of their thought patterns. If not checked, negative thinking becomes a habit, one that has the potential to completely shape your life, and not in a good way.

Change How You Think

Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all linked and by changing one, you can cause change in them all. So, one of the most powerful ways people can lift themselves out of the darkness is to change their thinking patterns. Cognitive therapy helps you see the thought-processing errors, like focusing on the worst case scenario, that contribute to a depressed and/or anxious mood.

By changing how you think, you automatically change how you feel. Once you become aware that you can change your thinking, you have a sense of choice that can benefit your mental health. I know, this sounds about as easy as changing a tire in the rain with nothing more than a hardboiled egg and a paper clip, but it can be done.

Here are some tips on how you can begin to change your negative thoughts:

Keep Track of Your Thoughts

Many people are unaware or in denial about their thought patterns. They think that they see the world as it really is and don’t want to believe they are overly negative or pessimistic. Learning to watch you inner dialogue and catch your thoughts will help you to see your own mental patterns. Mindfulness can be very helpful for this. This practice teaches you to learn how to be in the present moment and see your thoughts as part of what is occurring, but not your whole reality.

As you watch your thoughts, be particularly mindful of making generalizations from one specific event. “I made a mistake, so I am terrible at my job.” Also, black and white thinking can be particularly harmful. “Judy canceled on me, so she is not a good friend.” It assumes people are all good or all bad and they are much more complicated than that!

Try journalling your negative thoughts to help you see patterns and assess frequency.

Identify Triggers

Once you learn to observe your thoughts, you can start to pinpoint the triggers for them. Your journal will come in handy here, because they will help you see how certain types of events that set off a chain of negative thoughts. Triggers can be internal or external like assuming that you are being rejected or ignored or hearing an unkind remark said about or to you.

Positive Conversion

Since the human thinking process is habitual, you can create good thinking habits too. To do this you’ve got to start converting negative thoughts into positive ones. It will be hard at first, and you will most likely feel as if you’re lying to yourself and pretending to be a glass-half-full Pollyanna.

This is a good time for the old adage, “You’ve got to fake it until you make it.” Though thinking positively may feel foreign to you and like a waste of your time, you are re-training your brain to think (and feel) good.

Every time you catch a negative thought, recognize it as negative, and reframe it to a positive opposite thought. For example:

Negative thought: “I’ll never get this report done on time.”

Positive Switch: “I’m making great progress and being careful to always check my work.”

To get the hang of how to do this, go through your negativity journal and create a separate column in which you will write the positive alternative of your many negative thoughts.

If you feel too dark and down to complete these exercises, a trained therapist can support you in starting to shift your thinking.  If you or a loved one are suffering from depression and/or anxiety and are interested in exploring treatment options, please contact me. I would be happy to discuss how I may be able to help.