Think about a possible precipitating event or interaction that may have triggered your bad mood. Has it led to a bad feeling? Or, if it can’t work to start from the present, try to retrace your steps.
You can start w/looking at the initial thought, and try to notice whether it’s a negative thought. You can approach it from the beginning or the end. We often think “if I think this, then it must be true.” After we get good at noticing our thoughts, our next steps are: looking at the validity of these thoughts then and offering yourself a more rational, balanced, open-minded alternative view.īut the first step is noticing. It’s not the thoughts that unnerve us but the meaning we give to those thoughts. Our thoughts are hypotheses or guesses that can be reality-tested. If we’re able to do this, we may be on the road towards being able to replace the negative thoughts with ones that help us rather than hurt us. If we can get in the habit of recognizing the thoughts we have, we may be able to see the connection between thinking them and these negative feelings.
Many times, we accept negative thoughts as truth when in reality they are irrational thoughts that lead to negative feelings. Understanding the way we think about things is crucial to understanding how and what we feel.
