Positive Thought Processing
My depression is killing me. I’m tired of feeling and being pessimistic toward myself, only capable of seeing and feeling the negative when I am upset. While I am significantly better equipped at weathering my melancholy than I used to be, there are still things I need to improve upon. I feel like these negative thoughts are manifesting as negative experiences. I’m done with it.
I don’t know how to think positively, though, so I am going to teach myself how to do this. I am going to learn how to consciously turn my despondent thoughts into encouraging ones, or find positive in every negative situation. This is not to say I will become deluded and incapable of viewing the grittiness of reality, but just that I will be able to continuously understand that there is always another way to view things.
I DO see that there is another way to view things; I just haven’t had much success with remembering or holding onto the good thoughts. Right now, I’m opposite of what I need to be – positive thoughts are fleeting, dark thoughts are all-consuming. I want the negative thoughts to be fleeting so that I can focus on the good things of my life.
I do see the good things, I do feel thankful for the good things, I do feel like I have a good life. But, this one thing needs to change, and I am the only one who can change it. I must change this for myself, to make my life better. I want to live, not survive. When I am stuck in darkness, I am barely surviving. I feel like I want to die during some of these deeper depressive states, because I just get too tired of struggling to survive each moment. The thoughts are too much to bear anymore. I realize that I have a choice: remain in pain forever OR move forward into understanding. I need a new way to cope with this pain, because these current mechanisms are not working for me.
I don’t know how to have hope anymore. I lost all hope when I was younger; I forgot how to find light when I fall into the dark. I find small glimmers of hope, but then those get completely crushed in massive disappointment, so then I think, “I’m not meant to have hope.”
I need to stop telling my story with absolutes. I don’t want to think that I’ll “never” or I’ll “always”. This is not the truth, and it does not have to be MY truth.
I need my internal story to be positive, “I will”, “I do”, “I can”. I need to be able to comfort myself and tell myself it is okay to feel my feelings, that they do not define me and that I should not feel badly for feeling them. These stories I tell myself, about how I’m not good enough, are hurting me too much. I can’t handle it anymore.
I’ve been doing an exercise to pull myself out of negativity when I get stuck. The process is this: I recognize the negative emotion or thought, examine it, find a rational version of the same idea, then find a positive aspect of the idea. Here are today’s thoughts:
| Dark (Negative) | Gray (Rational) | Light (Positive) |
| I am invisible. Nobody sees or hears me. Everybody talks over me and dismisses my feelings as inconsequential and tries to convince me I should do what they think is right for me. | There are people who know I exist, who listen to me, who try to help me, who do not try to force me to follow their ideals. | I know what is right for me. I do not need to feel like I must conform to the ideals of others to be “happy”. My happiness can only be found when I follow my intuition. I do not need to go against my feelings just because other people make suggestions. They are making suggestions based on their own perception of reality. Their perception is not my own. I do not need to try to mold myself to their perception. I am me. It is okay to be me, to meet my needs in my own ways. |
| I can never be loved as I am. | People love me. | I am loved. I am loved by other humans who care about me and want me in their lives. Perhaps the “romantic” love I feel a need for is not present, but that does not mean it will NEVER be present. Besides, I DO feel like I’m not completely ready for a mate yet. I’m still working on so many things internally – I need to focus on healing myself and learning how to deal with the world in healthy ways before I try to add another set of emotions to the mix. I need to remember that being whole within myself is the most important thing I can do for myself and my future partner. |
| I’m tired of waiting for life to get better. I already know it won’t. | Life doesn’t “get better”. There will always be trials and tribulations. It is how I deal with and perceive the issues that causes me to think my entire life is bad just because of one setback. | It is better today than it was yesterday. I was able to survive yesterday. It was hard, but I survived it. I’m here today, I’m doing something NEW today. I’m helping myself in a new way TODAY. My life is better simply because I am working on making a better environment inside my head. |
| I don’t deserve a good life. | Bullshit. There’s no such thing as “deserving a good life”. Who determines which humans “Deserve” a good life? Nobody. That’s something I made up on my own to try to explain why it always seems like there’s something bad happening to me that I have no control over. | I can, do, and will make my life good. I can overcome obstacles, I can become the person I’ve always felt like I needed to be. I am doing this right now. I’ve been doing this for years. I will continue to do this the rest of my life. My life is a good life, I have made it a good life, I will continue to make it a good life. |
| The universe is against me. | This is what I say I am overwhelmed with too many seemingly hopeless situations, things I don’t know how to fix. | I can deal with things one at a time. The longer I take to handle problems, the more time I have to think and formulate well-rounded solutions. When I take the time to completely solve a problem, things are far better afterward – I do not have to encounter the same problem again. |
| I hate being around people, I should just go be a hermit. | I hate being around people whose action, inaction or words cause me to feel badly about myself. The only way I know to protect myself is to withdraw from them: they can’t hurt me if I’m not there to be hurt. | I need people who are kind and loving. It is perfectly okay to remove myself from the influence and vicinity of people who are unkind. It is good to protect myself from emotional harm, and it is good that I recognize that I do not have to tolerate degradation from others. |
| I have and will always have bad luck. | Luck is what I say it is. It’s all perspective. | Luck is just a term for the uncontrollable course of events in my life. It does seem like there have been more bad than good events, but that is because I focus on bad things because they feed my negative self-talk. I can choose to focus on the good things and brush the bad things off as incidental casualties of life as a human. |
| Every time I get ahead, something happens to drag me down. | I still have trouble being present in the moment – I keep getting lost in dark thoughts, getting overwhelmed with things I cannot understand and cannot change. | Every failure & setback provides an opportunity for change and growth. I learn something new EVERY SINGLE TIME I break down. I am learning to pull myself back to the present moment so that I can cope with the issue moment to moment. This is what I can do to remain calm, and it is enough. |
| I am a worthless, ugly, fat, stupid, boring, annoying piece of shit. They’ve told me this over and over, so it’s true. | Forget them. These are all subjective judgments coming from myopic people. I keep thinking these things because I feel like so many people have made these judgments about me that they “must” be true. Not the case. | I can choose how I view myself. If I view myself through the lens of the unthinking anger of others, I will feel badly about myself. I can choose to view myself as my children see me: comforting, smiling, warm, loving, nurturing, caring, goofy, laughing, huggable, and good for snuggling. |
| I want to die, I can’t deal with this anymore. I’m tired of dealing with this. I’m tired of struggling. I was made to suffer. | My suffering is all emotional. It is caused by my thoughts. I can change my thoughts. I get overwhelmed and I get tired, but death is not the solution. | I am changing my thoughts. I am learning to enjoy life. I am becoming what I want to become. It’s hard sometimes, when I am tired and I feel like my body and mind are betraying me, but I can remember these things: I am alive. I live in a beautiful place. My general circumstances are ones I have chosen. I have a working body and I am healthy. I have goodness in my world, there are things that make me smile. I am loved. |