Chatting online – finding online support groups or groups with people who have shared interests.

There are many ways to connect with others and they don’t all involve face-to-face communication. It’s normal to retreat inside and avoid spending time with others when you’re depressed, but connection plays a vital role in managing depression symptoms. You may not feel like spending time with anyone else when you’re feeling down or negative. If you experience ongoing negative thoughts that are impacting your day-to-day life or your thoughts become suicidal, it’s important to see your GP as soon as possible. Negative thinking can be mild to more serious. In time, you can get used to thinking differently and cope better with the negative thoughts associated with feeling depressed. It may help to have a go-to list of questions to ask yourself when you’re feeling negative – to help keep your spirits up. Consider whether there is a different way of analysing the situation.Ĭhallenging your negative thoughts takes time, and you will need to persevere. Similarly, if you notice that you are only focusing on the negative events instead of the positive ones (the one bad thing that happened out of the ten good things), you may be able to challenge your thinking. But is this fear true? What’s the evidence that it is true? Question your thoughts with logic. If you’re aiming for perfection in everything you do, you may feel you’re a failure if you can’t do everything flawlessly. To challenge negative thinking, you should aim to identify the negative thought then replace it with a rational, balanced belief.ĭifferent types of negative thoughts require different challenges. But you can control these thoughts and feelings by challenging them. These thoughts can drag you down and make you feel bad. Negative thoughts can be overwhelming and make it impossible for you to feel a sense of normality. Feelings such as hopelessness and being negative and critical about yourself are common symptoms of depression. Ultimately, these feelings are untrue – they’re a manifestation of depression symptoms. You may believe that everything is hopeless and there’s nothing that you can do about it. When negative thoughts and feelings consume you, it’s easy to feel like you’re a failure, that you’ll always be alone, that nobody cares about you, that people think poorly of you. Negative thinking is a characteristic of feeling depressed.

Depression dark thoughts