NEGATIVE THINKING CAN LEAD TO CHRONIC DEPRESSION: LEARN HOW

Negative Thinking Can Lead to Chronic Depression: Learn How



By Sasha Brown
Posted Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 10:58am EDT
Keywords: anxiety, depression, negative thinking
Ever heard of how pretending to be happy and smiling can actually make you feel happier? Likewise, negative emotions and thoughts have the same effect on your mind and body. What you think and tell yourself on a regular basis, your mind will start to believe is the truth and you can skew your entire reality. Read on to learn how your thinking can affect your entire outlook on life, leading to depression and the many side effects encompassed by it.

Effects of Negative Thinking

Depression is essentially your body’s defense mechanism to the fear, anxiety, and stress that is a result of constant negative thinking. When your body is constantly at risk for or experiencing these emotions, it becomes prone to chronic depression. Depression is essentially the body “depressing” all emotions, preventing the “fight or flight” response that stress and anxiety will otherwise produce. In order to help your mind and body overcome depression, you must learn how to control and have power over negative thoughts.

Negative thinking can have other harmful effects on your body. Wearing your body down due to stressful and exhausting negative emotions makes you more prone to becoming sick and less able to fight off bugs. It can also lead to a lack of restful, productive sleep. Not only does this make you tired and cranky, but it also make you less productive.

How to Change it

Your emotions are a response to what you think, see, and believe. Therefore, if you continue to frame your world and your situations from a negative or sad standpoint, your body will react appropriately. Sometimes you may not even realize when you are thinking negatively. Do you focus on what you don’t want or have as opposed to what you DO want or have? Judging yourself or others harshly will also lead to negative emotions.

Worrying about things beyond your control, trying to be perfect, feeling sorry for someone, and complaining are all more examples of negative thinking. Fear, which is the root of many of the emotions/instances mentioned, can be sneaky and affect your emotions maybe without you even knowing it.

This awareness is the first step to changing your attitude and reversing your depression. To beat chronic depression, you will need to retrain your mind to think and process sensations in a completely new fashion. This will definitely take work, focus, and dedication. By recognizing your negative thoughts and retraining yourself to respond differently to situations in life, you can be on your way to overcoming chronic depression.

Here are some specific tips on how to release your negative thinking:

Take responsibility: you need to realize that you define your thoughts, but that your thoughts don’t necessarily define you.
Prove it: realize that you don’t need the proof that good is prevailing over bad in any particular situation; retrain yourself to believe that good is happening and will happen, and the proof will follow.
Focus on solutions: when life brings you a problem, don’t focus on the problem. Accept it, come up with a solution, and move on. Don’t dwell on problems, past or present.
Turn it around: if you catch yourself thinking about what you don’t want or what you are afraid of happening, turn it around. Turn your thoughts to what you DO want, and the positive emotions will follow.
As Elsa says, let it go! When you do fall victim to negative thoughts, let them go as soon as you realize it. Don’t berate yourself or dwell on the negatives. Similarly, if something negative happens to you, let it go as quickly as possible and don’t dwell on any negative (real or potential) results.
Drop that but, and add a yet: don’t qualify your positive thoughts and abilities with that “but,” and remember that just because you can’t do something or don’t have something YET, doesn’t mean you never will or can. Don’t allow your mind to limit your capabilities.
Prune the negative influences from your life: if someone is constantly negative around you, you probably don’t need them in your life. If it is someone you don’t interact with often or do want to keep in your life, simply set boundaries with those individuals, and inform them that negative talk doesn’t fly around you.
Be kind: be kind to others and be kind to yourself. Nobody is perfect and that is an impossible standard for any human being, even yourself! Give people the benefit of the doubt and don’t assume the worst of them.
It is so important that you recognize and change your negative thinking right away. Once you learn how to stop and change these bad thoughts and turn them into positives, your mind and body will respond positively. Remember that these thoughts have an undesirable impact on your mood and your overall health. Say goodbye to negativity and your depression will soon follow suit.

Sources:

http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_00002d.htm
http://psychcentral.com/lib/depression-and-letting-go-of-negative-thoughts/
http://www.livescience.com/36586-stop-negative-thoughts-depression.html


http://blogs.naturalnews.com/negative-thinking-can-lead-chronic-depression-learn/