COMBATING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS

Negative thoughts tear through your mind and fill you with emotions that push you deeper into the black hole of depression. The bad emotions begin to suck the breath out of you and stab your soul. You struggle to fight them, but it seems hopeless. There is no end to the thoughts and emotions that ravage your mind and body. So what do you do?

Fighting your thoughts and emotions is like going to combat. Your mind has been thinking bad things for so long it doesn't know how to think otherwise. You have to stand up and fight it. You have to change the negative into positive.

Thoughts are connected to your emotions. I learned in therapy that the only way I could feel better emotionally was to change my thoughts and then my feelings would follow. The more negative things filled my mind, the worse I felt within.

When I started therapy while I was ill, I thought changing my thought pattern was impossible. What could I find good to think of? Then my therapist gave me a chart to fill out. Below is an example of a chart I had to fill out for each of my negative thoughts.

Date	Negative Thoughts	Emotions	Positive Thoughts	Emotions
Example 4/23 4/24	I can't do anything right. I'm a looser. My life is a hopeless wreck. I hate living.	Hopeless Sad	There are many things I can do well. I am a talented writer, I am a good cashier, and I am good at woodburning. I am a winner. Life is beautiful and being alive is wonderful. I have a lot to live for.	Hopeful Happy

Filling out the negative side of the chart was the easy part. Turning it into positives was the hard part. I was blinded by the darkness within me. I saw everything like the pages of a newspaper, in black and white. How could I see the color of positivity? How could I shine light within my mind? I spent hours trying to find a positive thought.

In order to get better, I had to declare war on my thought process. I had to force myself to find something good to think about. That was the only way I could control the emotions that kept eating at my soul. I made copies of the chart and each day I filled one out.

In time, positive thoughts came to me more easily. Once the thoughts became brighter, so did my emotions. Eventually, I no longer needed the chart. It's not that bad thoughts no longer cross my mind, but now I can fight them on my own. They do come to me less often and my emotions are brighter.

Fight your negative thoughts and emotions and find the light. Make copies of the chart. The book, Feeling Good The New Mood Therapy by David Burns M.D., has a variation of the chart. In that chart you link your thoughts to cognitive distortions. Find a chart that works best for you.

Since I went to combat with my negative thoughts and learned how to change them, I now stand in the light with joy.

Date	Negative thoughts	Emotions	Positive Thoughts	Emotions