Negative thoughts

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 A person’s thoughts influence their actions and their behaviour. If we do something that makes us feel good, for example, doing some exercise at the gym, although hard work makes us feel good. Therefore, our behaviour changes and we want to do more of it because it feels good. 

 

The difference comes when the person has negative thoughts all the time. Whatever they try and whatever they do their thoughts are negative. Even though it might be an enjoyable experience there is still negative thoughts that come into the person’s head. For example, you are going to a friend’s birthday party. For many of us when we have been invited to a party, we are excited. We think about the party and who we might see and the friends that we are going to see. Our thoughts are both excited and happy for the event.  We may leave early to get to the party, we ring our friends and are excited to see them. 

Now imagine a person with continuous negative automatic thoughts. They are invited to the same birthday party. Anxiety strikes them, they may have the following thoughts:

·      How will people see me?

·      No one will talk to me.

·      I have nothing to wear.

·      Why are they inviting me?

·      I don’t have many friends. 

·      It’s too far to go.

·      It’s too late. 

·      I don’t feel well enough to go.

·      How do I get in

·      I don’t know enough about the venue.

 

We may also have some sort of support blanket. We might ask a close friend or a partner to have their phone ready so that if it gets too much, we will get a fake emergency to get out quickly. 

 

This can lead to serious physiological issues.  If the person continues to make excuses not to go to events, they can become agoraphobic: that is frightened of going out. This may come from the thought process that happens after an event that was dramatic for them and caused a panic attack. Their anxiety maybe that they cannot find the bathroom, or the place became over whelming for them. They have a hard time feeling safe in places they don’t know so it is easier not to go out and stay in a safe space like home. 

 

Having negative thoughts about ourselves and the world around us can lead to other major issues with our mental health. One of the natural things that happens to us when we have these negative thoughts is low self-esteem. We constantly feel that we are not good enough and lead to paranoia. These negative thoughts and low self-esteem sometime come out of a desire to compare ourselves to others. In recent studies those who have been addicted to the internet and social media have had psychological traits of depression and low self esteem 

 

The results indicated that 40.7% of the students had Internet addiction. Of these, 2.2% had severe addiction and 38.5% had moderate Internet addiction. Globally, an average ratio of 2-5 million Internet addicts per 50 million regular users has been estimated. In other words, about 5 to 10 per cent of Internet users have Internet addiction. (Bahranian, S.A. et al. (2014) 

One of the things that social media does is to have a reinforcing nature to feelings and emotions. To boost self-esteem, they hope to get likes and positive feedback from the posts that are put up. It gives a chemical reaction in our brain that we are liked or loved by our social circle. We naturally want to be part of the social cycle but, when we are not in that cycle, or we feel we have been left out of an experience we feel left out and unloved. When this happens, and we are using social media to get out of the cycle of negative thoughts it can have the opposite effect and lead to other phycological problems.  We can see from this chart below that these negative thoughts have a knock-on effect on our total wellbeing. It has a effect on our whole way of life and how we function in the word. 

A diagram of thoughts and feelings Description automatically generated

(MindWell, n.d.)

 Another factor to having continuous negative thoughts is depression. As we can see from this chart above there is a triggering event but, what happens in the mind of a depressed person is that they are already in a state of continuous negative thoughts the person over thinks and see no hope at all in any events. Even the events that could be classed as a good event are self-deflating and hopeless. From here we can clearly see that these negative thoughts lead to our feelings as we cannot get out of the rut of negative thoughts and feeling. In this state people can catastrophize every situation. This negative thought led to anxiety and stress and manifest themselves in our bodies such as feeling unwell and tired. Our body aches and we are listless and have no energy to do anything. Some even feel that they can’t get out of bed or find it difficult to leave the house. These are all damaging to the phycological health of a person as well as the physical. 

 

The depressed person then may have other things to contend with and an unhealthy way of navigating life with the use and abuse of such things as overeating, drugs, and alcohol. All these things then take us back to the beginning of the thoughts and the cycle starts again.  Let’s see how this works within Aaron Beck describes that the underlining thought in depression is a sense of loss. “Depressed patients generally provide essential information in spontaneous statements such as “I am sad because I’m worthless; I have no future” (Beck 105) These thoughts colour the way that the depressed person thinks and feels and behaves. In depression these negative thoughts can lead to seeing the bad in everything, it can lead to apathy and lack of motivation this gradually can lead to being more and more isolated from friends and family. The depressed person can have no pride in themselves and their surroundings not, in some cases, noticing how they are living.  These psychological issues if they are not treated can lead to a person taking their own lives because they see no way out of their present predicament.

 

 

Reference List

 

(Beck, 1991)
Beck, A. T. (1991) Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. Harlow, England: Penguin Books.

 

(Depression, no date)
Depression (no date) Emory.edu. Available at: https://counseling.emory.edu/resources/depression.html (Accessed: April 12, 2024).

 

(Schimelpfening, 2013)
Schimelpfening, N. (2013) Can you die from depression? Very well Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/can-depression-kill-you-1067514 (Accessed: April 12, 2024).

 

Bahranian, S.A. et al. (2014) Relationship of internet addiction with self-esteem and depression in university students, Journal of preventive medicine and hygiene. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4718307/ (Accessed: 05 May 2024). 

MindWel

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