A recent client suffering from depression walked into the counseling room and sat down slowly, sighed softly and said, "I'm such a useless person." "I could feel that he was in the abyss of disappointment for himself because of self-denial, and there was no strength to sustain him to climb out.
This is a often mental disorder in depressed friends, they will blame themselves for small things, or feel that others blame themselves, they will find "clues" from events to prove how much they have failed, and those glorious moments will be attributed to them as "luck", or they will think that things that are sparse and ordinary in the eyes of others are so difficult that they cannot be controlled.
In The Book of Overcoming Depression, it is mentioned that people with depression often misunderstand neutral and even positive situations because of deviations in their automatic thinking. Automatic thinking, on the other hand, is unconscious, unintentional, spontaneous, and does not require effort, that is, thinking that automatically jumps out when something happens.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dr. Baker, the founder of cognitive therapy, found that there were very few themes of hostility in the dreams of depressed patients, but many themes of defects, deprivation, and loss, which corresponded to the patient's waking thoughts, which were embodied through automatic thinking. As Dr. Baker continued to listen to his patients, he realized that almost all patients experienced this type of negative automatic thinking.
For example, when we are learning a slightly obscure knowledge point, people with positive automatic thinking will think: This seems a little difficult, I need to learn it a few more times. And people with negative automatic thinking will think; it's too hard, I won't, and I may never even learn, so they'll fall into anxiety because of their preconceptions about themselves.
The book "You Are Your Own Psychiatrist" tells us that we need to first get out of this negative automatic thinking before we can objectively examine ourselves and our environment and find the factors that can support us.
First, we need to practice recognizing automatic thinking.
We can observe when our emotions get worse in our lives, and ask ourselves," what is going on in my heart right now?" "If it's convenient, recording the current thoughts with a pen will be helpful for analyzing the automatic thinking later."
For example, Xiao Li did not perform well in the company's public speech, and fell into negative emotions after the speech, at this time Xiao Li needs to stop and think about it: What am I thinking now? His answer was: My speech didn't work out, I was a failure. Xiao Li's automatic thinking that "my speech did not succeed" is correct, but his conclusion from this" is wrong.
Second, evaluate automatic thinking
When we can perceive automatic thinking through practice, we can evaluate automatic thinking by asking questions. For example, xiao li mentioned above believes that he is a failed person, so he can ask himself: what arguments can be used to prove that he is a failed person? Obviously, failure in the speech alone is not enough to prove this conclusion. Next, Xiao Li can continue to ask questions, if it is against the conclusion of "I am a failure", what is the evidence? Perhaps he could find arguments from some of his previous brilliant achievements, and thus, it was enough to prove that the conclusion that "I am a loser" was incorrect.
Third, again, respond to automatic thinking
We can take a series of countermeasures against the negative automated thinking that often occurs.
For example: "The book is so hard I don't think I'll ever learn it." "We can find ways to make ourselves feel better, so that we have the motivation to open it, we can tell ourselves that we can read a book while making a record of what we don't understand, maybe in fact we don't understand as many places as we think, and we can find answers by looking up information, or asking others for help, which is not an embarrassing thing."
Or if we get caught up in negative emotions and don't want to do anything, just want to lie in bed, we can tell ourselves that, from past experience, usually doing something makes us feel better, and doing nothing makes it feel worse.
And when we feel that no one cares about us and that we are alone, we can think back to the interesting things that our family and friends have done with us, the warm words we have said, and prove to ourselves that I am someone who cares, and they can give me the love I expect.
Finally, new core beliefs are developed
When we have completed identifying, evaluating, and responding to core beliefs, we can smoothly transform old core beliefs into new core beliefs, for example: I am useless - I have succeeded many times, only this time I have failed; no one cares about me - my family and friends around me will always give me love; my illness will not get better - as long as I actively cooperate with treatment and change my cognition, I can return to normal, or even better.
We see a lot of negative thoughts are negative automatic thinking at work, it hinders us from seeing the truth of things, let us fall into a vicious circle without knowing it, so we may as well start now, identify it, change it, turn negative into positive, then our lives will open a new chapter.