Challenging unhelpful thoughts

[This thread was submitted to be a featured thread by the general support community. If you have a thread you'd like to be featured, please submit it here!]

I would imagine that most of us would agree that how we feel overall can be impacted by our thoughts. Often we do not consciously choose to have our thoughts, they occur outside our control. As someone that suffered from Anxiety and Depression I recognise that these conditions can have a impact on my thoughts making them more negative overall. These thoughts , even though they are just thoughts and not necessarily facts can be truly powerful to the extent that I truly believe them.

When feeling particularly low, stressed anxious etc I find it a lot easier to believe these unhelpful thoughts. One way of dealing with these thoughts is to challenge them. The following section will help you begin to identify if you are having unhelpful thoughts, going onto discussing how you can start to make changes to this. By doing so, you can learn to see things in a more realistic light which can help to improve your mood and reduce your anxiety or stress levels. You might have unhelpful thoughts about all kinds of things. Here are some examples:

At first it can be hard to identify an unhelpful thought, however being able to recognise them is the first step towards being able to challenge them. It is said that it is also useful to recognise what pattern these unhelpful thoughts follow so we can understand why we have them. Common patterns can include:

Predicting the future, The What ifs?

When I am worried about something and I am sure others will identify with this. We start daydreaming about what we are worried about and what could go wrong. Instead of accepting things as part of life I start to predict what will go wrong, and the wrong will be the worse possible outcome making it lot bigger issue than it ever was. For example:

What if I go to go out and no-one talks to me?

What if I don't make friends when I start my new school?

I cannot go out as if I have a panic attack I will not be able to cope, and everyone will laugh at me.

Jumping to conclusions, Taking things personally ,Mind reading

When feeling emotionally vulnerable, it is so easy to take things to heart and become more sensitive to what people say. Making assumptions about why someone said something, begin overly quick to draw conclusions, and thinking that they are the focus of what has been said. For example:

You sat in the staff room and group colleagues are sat whispering together instantly you think that it is about you. Instantly you start with the what if questions.

They must be laughing at me, Focusing on the negative , Ignoring the positive, Filtering

When feeling low it is so easy to ignore the positive aspects of life, all that we see if what is negative. Thinking this way can make us stop feeling good about ourselves, leading to lower self confidence and self acceptance. For example: Despite getting good grades in most subjects we focus on the one grade that .we did not do so well at

Black & white thinking, All or nothing, Perfectionism

Sometimes we only see things as black or white, with no grey area or in-between. Having this polarised view can lead some people into setting themselves impossibly high standards, being overly critical and struggling to recognise any achievement due to their perfectionism.

That was a complete waste of time, They must hate me, I should always get full marks.

Over-generalising, Labelling

Based on one isolated incident you might assume that other events will follow a similar pattern in the future. You might find it hard to see a negative event as a one-off. This can also mean that you label yourself, often unkindly, which can lower your mood and confidence, perhaps even leading to feelings of hopelessness. For example: I failed at my driving test, I always fail

Once being able to recognise what unhelpful thoughts we are having and what patterns these follow we can start to think about how we can challenge these thoughts. Diagram below helps do just that:

source @kate