Feelings, thoughts and action

When you are depressed, a mass of negative thoughts race through your mind about:

• yourself such as "I am a bad person", "I can never do anything right" and "I am not good enough"
• other people, such as "I can't trust anyone else", "No one likes me", and "They are only out to harm me"
• the world and the future, such as "The world is evil and it will never be any different"

It is very important that you realise your negative thoughts have nothing to do with reality. Negative thinking is a symptom of depression. Your negative thoughts put you in a bad mood and give you negative feelings.

Specific ways of thinking

Throughout your life, you develop specific ways of thinking. Therefore, your thoughts patterns becomes part of your unconsicous self that when you allow negatives thoughts to dominate your thinking, Inevitably, you will feel negative in anything and everything. That's how powerful your mind is!

Let's look at an example: Perhaps you have experienced the break-up of an important relationship. In such a case, you trigger previous unhappy patterns and ideas. this can be recalled even if it had happened a long time ago. If you allow these thoughts to dominate your thinking, you risk taking yourself into a vicious circle of negative and depressive reactions.

Here are some typical negative thoughts:

• "My relationship has broken up because I am not good enough".
• "I am worthless".
• "There is nothing worth loving about me".

Link between thoughts and feelings

You can risk reinforcing your own negative feelings to the point where they become insurmountable. This is because there is a direct link between thoughts and feelings. We have illustrated this link in the box shown below:

The vicious circle of negative thoughts can become a trap. But you can learn to break it. You can do this by taking a step out of the circle. You can break the vicious circle by changing your thoughts and feelings. This is because you are so fortunate that you can be active and take part in your own healing process to get out of the depression. You can see the vicious circle of depression here: