The more you try to suppress bad thoughts, the more they flood through your brain. Trying to force yourself not to think “I’m useless” makes you think it even more and it becomes a vicious cycle that can spiral into depression.
Using a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach in layman’s terms I would firstly try to examine what your negative thoughts are. It will help to write them down, as the thoughts seem to lose their power once they are on the page and not swirling around your head at 4am while you are prone in the darkness.
Sometimes we hold such deep-seated beliefs that are triggered instantly in certain situations that we do not realize that we are thinking them. Slowing down the thought process so that we can see exactly what we thought before we began to feel bad or castigate ourselves is vital. It also takes practice so start on the easy thoughts first.
One of the easiest ones to debunk is one of the most common, “I’m a failure”. Listening to the horrid voice in your head that whispers this to you when you are afraid of doing something wrong; afraid of embarking on a new journey; afraid of being rejected by others is the easy thing to do because you’ve done it for so long. However, you can stand up for yourself and tell that horrid voice (or ‘crap FM’) you are not a failure because you have achieved things in the past. One of the best ways to demonstrate this to yourself is via the ‘Big I, Little i’ diagram. Draw a capital letter I. This is your whole self. Within this Big I are all the little i’s that make you an individual. Draw lots of little i’s inside the big I. Then start to label what they are for you and it doesn’t matter how insignificant you might think they are to begin with. They range from getting a spelling test right in primary school, the colour of your hair, the length of your nose, the fact that you have friends that love you, the fact that you were on the swimming team at school, the fact that you are literate and numerate. And yes, you add in all the perceived negatives about you as well. At first you might find that there are a lot more negatives than there are positives. I’m not going to list some here in case I help add to your negative list! If you can’t find any more positives yourself, then ask a friend to help you. What this will teach you is about rational thought. You can not rationally be a complete failure because of the successes that you have identified. If you are not a complete failure then you are well on your way to learning how to argue against the rest of your bad thoughts. Give yourself time. You have probably been saying “I’m a failure” for many years so turning that statement on it’s head and arguing with it might feel artificial and fake at first – you can’t be expert at something after only a few minutes, especially when you’ve been advocating the exact opposite for so long.
I try to use the ABC model of CBT in my daily life. A is the activating event – the trigger to the bad thought. B is the belief that you hold about the event. C is the consequence of holding that belief. An example that I have learned from profoundly in my own life is as follows:
Activating event – I asked my mother to help me financially. She said no.
Belief – parents should always help you any way they can.
Consequence – I got angry with my mother, internalized that anger and became despondent and low.
By subtly changing my belief to “it would be nice if parents always helped you in any way they can but it is not the end of the world if they don’t”, I was able to diffuse the anger and understand my mother’s position. I therefore didn’t have to carry around that anger within myself any more.
Altering bad thoughts with CBT is a fantastic resource. It appeals to me so much because it is based on the power of language. By slightly tweaking a sentence that you hold as a belief to make it less rigid makes an enormous positive difference to your life.
