Reactions and thinking patterns that may worsen depression.

I would like to share this little excerpt from the book Making Friend With Depression with you written by Sarah Rayner and Kate Harrison.  I woke this morning with a lot of self attack going on, all I could see was the mess at my place, all I could feel was pain and self judgement around the circumstances associated with Mum’s death a few weeks ago and all I could think was what a mix up it all was.  Anyway I did a lot of tidying up and then I found a lost car key when sorting through some old magazines (that cheered me up), I had already had a shower.  I put some clothes on to wash made myself scrambled eggs and listened to a lovely programme on Bruce Springsteen, then I opened my blog because I wanted to share this part of the book which I found while sorting out my bookshelf earlier.

How we react in depression and to depression can literally make or break our day.  Today I could on one level observe all my negative thoughts and then get a bit of distance from them.  I was able to take action to do things to make me feel brighter.  Some of these things will not be new to readers but I just thought I would share them anyway.

..becoming aware of our common thought patterns and learning to challenge them can help reduce overwhelm, and learning to be more objective about how others see us and trying to be less tough on ourselves is also useful.

The cycle of negativity

One of the most useful insights I gained from CBT was that people with depression are prone to thinking in certain ways.  Common thoughts include

• ‘It would be better if….’ – going over and over past events and ruminating.
• ‘I should have done..’ – negative, self critical thoughts.
• ‘I can’t do it’ – pessimism
• ‘It’s all too much.’ – overwhelm
• A sense of unreality and disconnect from others
• Increased sensitivity to criticism
• An inability to concentrate.
• A desire to self harm.

Some of us are more inclined to certain thoughts than others, nonetheless depressed people share a common tendency to criticise and berate ourselves, tell ourselves we’re failures and useless.  These thoughts can lead to feeling such as:

• Sadness
• Loneliness
• Worry
• Guilt
• Shame
• Anger
• Frustration
• Apathy
• Vulnerability
• Powerlessness
• A sense of rejection
• Numbness
• Emptiness
• Regret

Other patterns of thinking common in depression:

Black and white or all-or-none thinking – when we polarise outcomes into extremes …we see ourselves as complete failures, totally unloveable, never likely to be happy again and so on.  We become prone to filtering out information that might make us perceive situations with a greater subtlety, missing out on the full spectrum of experiences.

Over generalising – evidence is extrapolated from an experience and an unjustified conclusion is drawn.  This is a form of mental filtering, because we only allow negative information into our minds and ignore positive information.  Thus we tell ourselves ‘bad things are always happening to me’, and ‘I never meet decent men /women’.  etc.

Self blame situations are interpreted as reflecting something negative about you when they may have nothing to do with you. When we’re low we often assume we can read other people’s minds, intentions and motivations and so we end up thinking.  ‘She’s not very chatty, I must have done something to upset her’, for instance.

Commanding the self – we’re always saying ‘I should do x’ and ‘I must finish y’, barking internal instructions at ourselves.  This means we’re continually setting ourselves impossible goals which the weigh us down.

Catastrophising or fortune telling – we exaggerate a threat or the likelihood of a negative outcome occurring, thinking ‘they’re late home, they must have had an accident’ or ‘what’s the point in trying? It won’t work out.’

..the irony is that (such) belief(s) serve to reinforce the experience, so gloom becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  As such its a classic example of a ‘thinking error’ – an irrational pattern of thinking that can cause us to feel bad and sometimes act in self-defeating ways.  .. On bad days I still find it hard to convince myself things could get better soon, but I’m less inclined to see my state of mind as permanent because I’ve discovered that if I am open and self-aware change is possible….

‘But I feel it, so it must be true’,  I can hear you protest.  I know where you are coming from.  ‘I think therefore I am.’ is a tenet of western philosophy, I was sure that my thoughts were what made me, me, and without them my sense of self would disappear.

Certainly when I was mid breakdown, it felt like my brain was out of control, my thoughts were spinning so fast.  It was terrifying, so then I would panic, and with that release a bucket full of adrenaline, and end up with the shed load of physical symptoms that come with anxiety. The upshot was I’d feel even worse. Anxiety and depression can trigger one another, and like me, you may suffer from both.  Over half of those who experience depression also experience symptoms of anxiety.

As so many of us know its not easy to break out of this ongoing negative feedback loop of depression and depressive thoughts triggering anxiety but with right effort we can work to become more aware of negative patterns.   We can be soothing, show ourselves compassion, allow ourselves to kick back and do less, rather than more.   We can also learn how to speak more as a loving parent to ourselves than a demonising, shaming inner tyrant putting less pressure on ourselves and going easier with life.  If something our critic is saying is valid we can take steps to improve what is bugging us, instead of collapsing in a big heap.  We can learn to be more positive when that is called for and we can reach out and share about our inner thought processes so they do not possess us so completely from within.  We can draw towards healthier people who help us to not be as confounded by negative thought patterns or reactions.