Did you know that on most days, the average person has between 25,000 and 50,000 thoughts? That’s an impressive amount of thoughts. But what happens when the majority of these thoughts are negative? Imagine the impact on your emotions and your life if you had thousands and thousands of negative thoughts each day? This amount of negative thinking is a hallmark of depression. Negative or pessimistic thinking is depression speaking for you. It is the voice of depression. What many people don’t realize is that depression is manifested in negative thinking before it ever creates a negative thought itself.
Sometimes life is hard and there are bad things that happen. Naturally our thoughts tend to dwell on these things when they happen. However, the hard and the bad are not the WHOLE story. There are still good things. There are still things to be thankful for (maybe they are small things – like a good cup of coffee or comfortable slippers, but they are still there). One thing that you can do is: Intentionally come up with 10 things a week that you are thankful for and try not to repeat from week to week. This exercise will help your brain pop out of the negative because it will take effort to find the things to be thankful for (assuming you try not to repeat). Your thoughts do impact how you feel so this is a start of something you can do to shift how you feel.
While we are awake our brains are either in the Cognitive Control Network (network of the present moment) or the Default Mode Network (mind wandering network). Everyone is in the Default Mode Network about 40% of the time but if this jumps up to 60-80% of the time, this is usually associated with clinical depression. The problem with this is that our brains, in order to heal, have to be in the here and now. So, another thing that you can do if you are struggling with depression is: try to limit the amount of time you let your mind wander and instead be more present in the here and now. What helps with this things like movement, fidgets or grounding techniques.
Meditation is a technique that blends working with the body and working with the brain to help someone give their brain a chance to heal. There are lots of different types of meditations but it’s basically a way to start to have “check-ins” with your thoughts, emotions, body and breath.
There are lots of ways to help fight depression. I’m passionate about trying to help people get to the root of the issue so they can heal their brain and not just have to keep managing their symptoms. Two things I use to try to help clients with this is Microcurrent Neurofeedback and incorporating neuroscience into therapy. If you feel like this is something you’d be interested in, please reach out.
