Several years ago, I asked a client to describe for me what it was like when his depression showed up. He said things like: “I don’t want to get out of bed. I think there is no one there for me. I don’t see any meaning or purpose for my life. I am sad and I cry a lot.” The air in the room felt very heavy as he spoke.
I asked him how often it was like what he just described. With a heavy sigh, he said about 35 percent of the time. I responded: So, 65 percent of the time, it’s not like this.
This client’s experience is a good example of how your negative thoughts contribute to your depression.
This client was allowing the 35 percent to dictate how he saw and experienced his life. Anything in the 65 percent that did not fit the depression-saturated story was minimized or ignored. Negative thoughts can trigger your depressed mood. Your depressed mood can trigger more negative thoughts.
All of us have negative thoughts. In fact, our brains are hard-wired with what is called a negativity bias, a heightened awareness of any situation or any person that might be a threat. This negativity bias was an amazing tool for our primitive ancestors; it helped them survive a world that contained a lot of threats. But it isn’t always helpful in your life today.
Think about a time when you got feedback from your supervisor at work. Think about a time when someone evaluated you for an athletic or musical performance. You probably gave much more attention to the negative feedback than the positive comments. And, in some ways, that can be okay. Giving attention to the negative can motivate you to be more focused and to do better.
But it can also create an onslaught of negative thoughts about our ability to do something or about who we are as a person. And we end up giving much more attention to these negative thoughts.
So how do these negative thoughts contribute to your depression? Everybody has negative thoughts. Studies show that up to 80 percent of your thoughts contain some negative ideas.
The problem isn’t that you have negative thoughts. The problem is that you think these thoughts are true.
Like my client, these thoughts shape your mood, and you think they define who you are. When that happens, you give in to these moods and these self-definitions, and the depression takes over.
Of course, instead of giving in to them, you could try to control them. There are many ways to do this. You could try to push them away and not have them. But we are learning that trying to control your negative thoughts can actually make them more present and powerful in your life. If I tell you, “Don’t think about chocolate cake,” you must have a mental image of chocolate cake…in order not to think about it. In order to push away a negative thought like “My life has no meaning”, it has to be there, and now it has a stronger hold on your mind.
Another way to control these negative thoughts is to analyze them and figure out where they come from. Your mind says that if you know their origin, then this knowledge will lead to the depression going away. But there is no guarantee that this insight will lead to change. And the mind has an endless supply of data to figure out where the negative thoughts come from. It can reach deep into the past or far into the future. Your mind says, “Ah, this must be why I’m depressed.” And then your mind comes up with yet another possibility explanation.
Again, it is not the negative thoughts that create your depression. It is the power that you give them in your life. So, the goal of depression treatment is not to eliminate or to control these negative thoughts. The goal is to develop a different relationship with them. The goal is to look at your thoughts instead of through your thoughts. The goal is to realize you are fused with these thoughts and find some ways to defuse from them.
In my next blog post, I will share some meaningful defusion techniques that will help you develop this different relationship with your negative thoughts. Please visit my depression treatment specialty page to learn more.