Automatic Negative Thoughts, Negative Thinking and Depression

One of the main characteristics of depression is the presence of negatively biased thinking. This can sometimes be overwhelming, leading to a seemingly endless stream of negative thoughts.

In this video, we’re going to explore the nature of these negative thoughts and what we can do to reduce our negative thinking, and as a result, reduce our levels of depression.

So, when we’re depressed, we have a lot of negatively biased thoughts that can consist of exaggerated, unrealistic, or illogical characterizations and conceptualizations called cognitive distortions—a topic I talk about in more detail in another video. These thoughts bring about the negative moods, feelings, and emotions we experience when we’re depressed.

These thoughts can arise in response to external stimuli. Something happens, and we have a negative thought about that situation or event, and it leaves us feeling sad, discouraged, or depressed. Or, if we were already feeling this way, it intensifies these feelings.

For example, we text someone and they don’t text us back right away, and we think, “They must not like me” or “I don’t have any friends.” Then we feel sad, lonely, or neglected, or experience a similar negative change in our moods.

These thoughts can also arise unprompted. We start ruminating and dwelling on negative things without anything triggering these thoughts, completely independent of any external situation.

And these negative thoughts are automatic; they arise automatically without any prior reflection or reasoning. We don’t assess the situation and then have a negative thought; the negative thought just pops into our heads right away.

And these thoughts are involuntary. Even if we can anticipate the type of depressive thought we’re going to have in a certain situation and prepare ourselves to have a different type of thought in that situation, that automatic negative thought will still pop up despite our intentions to avoid having that thought and to think something else instead.

Similarly, our emotional reactions to these thoughts are also automatic. We don’t have the thought and then ponder over how we should feel; the thought arises automatically, and then the emotional reaction follows automatically from that thought as well.

Regardless of how inaccurate or implausible these thoughts may seem to someone else, these thoughts are plausible to us, and we regard them as true without even giving them a second thought.

The more uncritically we accept these thoughts, the greater the emotional reaction they provoke. When we’re able to question their validity, our emotional reactions are reduced. But the greater our initial automatic emotional reactions, the more difficulty we have in disputing these thoughts.

We each tend to have our own common themes that run through our negative thoughts. The main themes of negative thoughts associated with depression are things related to ourselves as being worthless, unlovable, or helpless, and related to the world and other people as being hostile, unfriendly, or rejecting, and related to the future as being hopeless.

So, for example, a theme of us being unlovable and other people being rejecting could lead to situations like: We see some people walking down the street together looking happy and we think, “I’m such a loser. Why doesn’t anyone want to hang out with me? Nobody likes me. I don’t have any friends.”

Or, our friends don’t text us back right away and we think, “I’m such a loser. Why aren’t they responding to me? Do they not like me?”

Or, we’re watching TV and everyone on the show is having a good time with their friends and we think to ourselves, “I’m such a loser. I don’t have any friends like that. I don’t have anyone to do anything with. I just sit here and watch TV by myself all night.”

Or, we wake up Saturday morning and think, “I’ve got nothing planned all weekend. I’ve got nothing to do, no friends to do anything with. I’m such a loser, nobody likes me.”

And we have these thoughts even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Maybe last weekend we woke up with the same thoughts and within a few hours we had plans for the afternoon and were invited out for dinner that night, but that doesn’t stop us from this weekend having those same thoughts: “I don’t have any friends, nobody likes me, I’m such a loser.”

Or our themes might have something to do with perceiving ourselves as being worthless or stupid or just not good enough. So we make a small mistake at work and we think, “I’m such an idiot. I can’t do anything right.”

And we stopped for groceries after work and when we get home we realize we forgot something and we think, “I’m such an idiot. I can’t even buy groceries right.”

And then we make dinner and we forget about the food in the oven and the smoke alarm goes off and we think, “I’m such an idiot. I don’t even know how to cook.”

And again, we can have these thoughts in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. Maybe we just got promoted at work, but one small mistake and we forget all about that and label ourselves an idiot.

And these types of thoughts where we label ourselves—”I’m an idiot,” “I’m so stupid,” “I’m such a loser,” “I’m a bad person”—are examples of the cognitive distortion labeling. We label ourselves in a negative way based on a single event or behavior or attribute that doesn’t really define who we are.

And when we do this, the emotional impact of that labeling thought is proportional to the negative connotations of the label rather than to the actual severity of the situation that triggered us to use that label.

So, for example, if we spill our coffee and think, “Oh, that was clumsy,” or we send an email and we realize we wrote “It’s” instead of “its” and think, “Oops,” we might have a slight negative emotional reaction. But if instead in these situations we were to think, “I’m such an idiot,” then the emotional response will be much more severe because being an idiot is so much more negative than being a little clumsy or making a small mistake. And so when we label ourselves, we set ourselves up for much more intense negative emotional reactions than we’d have with a more reasonable thought or assessment about the situation.

Some common categories that our negative thoughts associated with depression tend to fall into include: low self-esteem or feelings of inferiority; negative comparisons of ourselves to others; self-criticisms; self-blame and guilt; being deprived of things that are important to us; overwhelming problems and responsibilities; and self-commands and injunctions.

When we’re depressed, we make unrealistically negative judgments about ourselves, devaluing ourselves and putting ourselves down, particularly in those areas that are most important to us. These could be personal attributes such as abilities, virtues, or attractiveness.

We make a mistake at work and think, “I can’t do anything right.” We look in the mirror and think, “I look terrible, I’m so old and fat.”

Or it could have to do with the quality of our relationships with friends or families or romantic relationships. We check our phones to see if we missed any texts and there’s nothing, so we think, “I’m such a loser, my friends don’t even care about me.”

Or it could involve our performances in important roles, for example, as parents, partners, or children. One of our kids has a bad day and we think, “I’m such a bad mother.” Or we get into an argument with our partners and think, “I’m a bad husband.” Or we forget to wish our parents a happy anniversary and we think, “I’m a bad son.”

And we have these thoughts even in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. We think, “I can’t do anything right,” even though we got a promotion at work a few weeks ago. We think our friends don’t care about us, even though we have plans to do stuff together this weekend.

In whatever areas are most important to us, we tend to magnify any of our perceived failures, deficits, or weaknesses, and to minimize or ignore any of our successes, favorable characteristics, or strengths—which is a common type of cognitive distortion called magnification and minimization.

So we make a small mistake at work and think, “I’m so bad at my job, I can’t do anything right.” But when our bosses give us some positive feedback we think, “Well, that’s nothing, anyone could have done that,” which is also an example of the cognitive distortion discounting the positive.

We also tend to compare ourselves with other people in these areas and regard ourselves as inferior or less than others. “Why is everyone else so much better at their jobs than me? All of my friends are married already and they have their own houses and their lives are so much better than mine. What’s wrong with me? Why am I such a loser?”

And again, these comparisons often have very little basis in reality—we’re the ones that just got the promotion. And social media can be a huge trigger for negative comparisons to others because we end up comparing our real lives to the curated and perfect versions of other people’s lives, and so of course the realities of our own lives are never going to measure up. And as the cliched motivational poster goes, “Don’t compare your inside to someone else’s outside.”

We also engage in harsh self-criticism for our perceived shortcomings. “I’m no good at my job. I’m so stupid. I’m such a bad friend. No wonder nobody likes me. I hate myself.” Or, “I can’t even afford a nice apartment. I can barely support myself. I’m such a loser.”

And we engage in self-blame and experience guilt over things that aren’t entirely our fault or maybe not even our faults at all and that we have no control over.

One of our kids comes home with a bad grade and we tell ourselves, “It’s all my fault. I’m a terrible parent. I should have made them study more. I should have gotten them a tutor. I never should have had kids. I’m ruining their lives.”

Or, we invite our friends for a barbecue on the long weekend and it rains and we’re stuck inside and we have to just order pizza, and we tell ourselves, “It’s all my fault. I’ve ruined everyone’s weekend. What was I thinking? I should have known it was going to rain and picked a better day.”

And we can also have negative thoughts about being deprived of close personal relationships and feel alone, unwanted, and unlovable despite overt demonstrations of friendship and caring from other people.

Or we can feel deprived of material possessions: “My house is so small. I don’t make as much money as I should. My car is not nice enough.” And again, we can make these assessments despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

We can also have thoughts about overwhelming problems and duties. Because we can feel so discouraged and such a lack of energy when we’re depressed, we often distort the magnitude of our duties and responsibilities and just how difficult they’ll be.

Things that are relatively insignificant when we’re not depressed can seem so overwhelming that we don’t even know where to start. But usually once we do start, we’re able to complete them without nearly as much difficulty as we predicted.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to cook for everyone tonight.” But once we start, it turns out making dinner was manageable, and it was just the getting started part that was so much effort.

Or, “I’m never going to be able to get all of this work done by the end of the week.” But then once we’re able to get ourselves to start working on it, we manage to finish it in a few days, and it doesn’t take us that much longer than it would have if we weren’t depressed.

And finally, we can have a lot of negative thoughts that are self-commands and injunctions. And these are often in the form of should statements and can be problematic in a few ways.

We can nag ourselves to do things, and it’s often a list of things that’s impractical because there’s no way we could get it all done: “I should clean the house. I should do my taxes. I should cook a bunch of meals for next week. I should clean out the garage. I should spend more time with my friends.”

And the should statements can also be too vague or general to be meaningful in any real way: “I should be a better parent. I should be a better person. I shouldn’t be so lazy. I shouldn’t just waste my life. I should do something good with my life.”

And the should statements can involve things that are beyond our control: “I shouldn’t make mistakes. I shouldn’t get so anxious. I shouldn’t feel depressed.”

We use should statements because we’re trying to motivate ourselves to do things, but should statements come with a judgment, and when we don’t do the things that we’re telling ourselves we should do—which is most of the time—we end up feeling shame and guilt.

“I should be doing my taxes this weekend, but I’m not because I’m lazy and disorganized.” “I should spend more time with my friends, but I don’t because I’m a bad friend.” “I shouldn’t feel so depressed, but I do because I’m weak.”

And the reason our negative thoughts are associated with depression is that they provoke emotional reactions like feelings of sadness, discouragement, loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness, and so on.

And then these feelings provoke further negative thoughts, which feed back into and reinforce our negative moods and feelings, leading to more negative thoughts, and so on, creating a vicious cycle between our negative thoughts and our moods and how we’re feeling that’s typical of depression and can quickly pull us into downward spirals.

So, what can we do about our negative thoughts? First, we need to learn to differentiate thinking from believing. As we discuss in another video, our thoughts are not facts, and just because we think something doesn’t mean it’s true. And therefore, we shouldn’t automatically believe a thought just because it’s come into our minds.

In CBT, we learn to evaluate our negative thoughts, assess how accurate they are, and what evidence there is that supports and that doesn’t support them.

And then if our negative thoughts aren’t completely accurate, we either modify our thoughts to make them more accurate, or we change our thoughts and think about things from different, more accurate perspectives.

And since our negative thoughts are a big factor in determining our moods and how we feel, when we change our negative thoughts to make them better reflect reality, our moods tend to improve, and we start to feel less depressed.

And as we become less depressed, our thoughts naturally become less negative, which helps us feel even less depressed, and we start to reverse the vicious cycle of depression between our thoughts and how we feel.

You’ll find lots of videos about how we can do this in my free self-help for depression course at selfhelptoons.com, as well as videos about what we’re going to talk about next.

We can also limit the impact of our negative thoughts by learning to relate to our thoughts more mindfully. We just become aware of our negative thoughts and acknowledge that we’re having them without getting caught up in them, and so they don’t pull us into vicious cycles and downward spirals.

“I’m having the thoughts ‘I’m such a loser’ or ‘I’m an idiot,’ ‘I’m a terrible person,’ ‘I ruin everything,’ ‘I hate myself,’ and I really do believe these. But no matter how real they seem, I know it’s just my depression talking, and I don’t have to let my depression tell me what to believe.

My depression is not a reliable source. I know the things my depression is telling me aren’t accurate and tend to be very negatively biased. And so I don’t need to listen to what my depression is telling me I should believe. I don’t need to pay attention to these negative thoughts; I can just acknowledge them and then let them go.”