If you suffer from anxiety and lowered mood on a regular basis, you have what I consider to be a ‘thinking problem’ which means that the majority of your thoughts are distorted and negative. Luckily, there is a very straightforward remedy for this: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
I help clients struggling with anxiety/depression develop a habit of turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts through the consistent and arduous application of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) tools and techniques. The premise behind CBT is that our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings create behaviour and our behaviour reinforces thoughts. Here’s a quick diagram to make it simple:
We are born with an inherent ‘Negativity Bias.’ Our tendency to look for the bad in our environment served us well to keep us safe from danger and helped us survive. However, now that we’re no longer nomadic beings fleeing from Sabre-Toothed tigers, the Negativity Bias has become for many of us, our own Achille’s Heel in that it prevents us from living calm, peaceful and relatively happy lives and keeps us stuck in a cycle of gloom, doom, and hopelessness.
Changing our negative thought patterns into positive ones is relatively easy, but requires a lot of psychological elbow grease- you must practise replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts repeatedly until the new positive thoughts become automatic. This takes dedication, practise and hard work. But it does work if you keep at it and the hard work you put in will be worth it in the long run.