Our thoughts affect how we perceive the world around us. When we’re depressed, our thoughts tend to be much more negative, creating a distorted view of reality.
Learn to Rewire Your Negative Thoughts
Depression tends to make us see things through a negative filter. It can flood our minds with dark and painful thoughts, blinding us from seeing any of the positives in our lives.
With depression, it’s easy to find ourselves ‘stuck in our heads,’ caught in spirals of negative thinking. We may have a critical inner voice that repeatedly reminds us of past mistakes and flaws, constantly worries about the future, or endlessly compares us to the people around us.
Dealing with depression can be a confusing experience, often making us feel like it’s us against our minds.
Negative thoughts, also known as cognitive distortions, can be a source of chronic stress, damaging our overall health and continually dragging down our mood. They can manifest as incorrect assumptions and unrealistic self-criticisms, convincing us of things that aren’t true.
Common negative thought patterns include:
We’ll go into more detail on these and others patterns on the next page.
Negative thinking is a major component of depression, so we need to learn strategies to manage these thoughts. One of the best tools we can use to combat negative thinking is called “cognitive restructuring”.
Cognitive restructuring, a technique of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), is a strategy that helps people change the way they think. The goal of cognitive restructuring is to replace stress-provoking automatic negative thoughts, or cognitive distortions, with healthier, more balanced thoughts.
Even though our thinking may feel automatic and beyond our control, with the right techniques and practice, we can learn how to restructure negative thoughts.
The more we recognize how depression distorts our thoughts, the less influence depression will have over us.
This course will guide you through four key steps of cognitive restructuring, breaking down and explaining each one as we go. These steps include:
Step 1: Identifying the triggering situation
This step involves recognizing what initially sparked our negative thoughts. For instance, we might think:
Step 2: Recognizing the automatic negative thoughts activated by the triggering situation
Here, we uncover how we’ve interpreted the triggering situation, identifying negative biases or incorrect assumptions that are part of our thinking. Continuing the example above, we may then think:
Step 3: Identifying one’s feelings and behaviours in response to the negative thoughts
This step involves reflecting on our emotions and any actions resulting from them, helping us to better understand their impact. From the example above, our thoughts may result in:
Step 4: Challenging and replacing the negative thoughts
To help challenge our thoughts, we need to first convince ourselves that they may not be true. In Part 4 of this course, we’ll explore two different strategies. Here, we’ll use the “Putting Thoughts on Trial” technique to expose inconsistencies or unfair assumptions we are making.
‘People did not immediately support the idea. No one came by my office to talk more about my idea after the meeting.’
‘A few people said it was a good idea. I often get complimented on my ability to think outside the box. My idea was not the only one that the group didn’t take up. People tell me they like the way I work. I usually do a good job.’
‘People at work think that I am capable and often have good ideas. I do my work well, but this wasn’t one of my most feasible ideas. My team seems to appreciate that I share more ideas, rather than no ideas at all.’
‘I feel calmer and the negative thoughts aren’t so intense anymore. I was overreacting earlier.’
By the end of this course, we aim to:
Ready to take back control of your thoughts? Let’s get started by exposing the most common negative thought patterns we can fall into.
Development of our Cognitive Restructuring Course was supported by Haywood Securities Inc. and Beedie Foundation. Learn more about Our Partners.