I enjoy studying and learning new stuff. The free online course I took yesterday was about the hidden secrets of psychology and I've been trying to remember to try putting into practice something that was explained in the first module.
Apparently thoughts lead to feelings and those feelings, in turn, lead to actions.
It said that angry thoughts make you feel angry which makes you act angry to those who may or may not be to blame for your angry thoughts. It said that those with depression often experience negative thoughts, which lead to negative feelings, which lead to negative actions.
It's true for me so far.
It explained that negative thoughts cause sadness which in turn leads to lack of motivation.
Yup. Guilty as charged.
The Psychologist who was explaining all this mentioned that a theorist called Skinner had discovered this and eventually worked out that if you combat each negative thought as soon as it arises with a positive thought and keep countering each negative thought with something positive, you will find that your mood starts to change.
I doubt it'll work from one extreme to the other - suicidal thoughts to pure joy for example - and IME it's not instantaneous unfortunately, so maybe it's the more often you do it and counter each negative with something appropriately positive the easier it will slowly become? For example, today I've been countering my "nobody cares about you" with "you've got friends and family who love you" and my "you're too thick to study" thoughts with "you passed a course first time after skipping well over half of it yesterday" instead and my "you'll never recover" thoughts with "never say never - nobody knows what the future holds for you". It has to be realistic and immediate, but it's gotta be worth a try, right?
