Being Positive is Over-rated!

Remember how I was really struggling with a certain child of mine and his negative thinking?  I even went as far as to buy a book on the subject and I have been reading it.   It has been helping him, but...

SURPRISE! It has been helping ME a ton as well. 

I didn't know I was a negative thinker!  I actually think of myself as more of a realistic thinker, but in my realism, there tends to be a lot of negativity.

The third chapter in the book screamed YES!! to my brain.  It made perfect sense and I have been using the techniques daily.  So of course I had to share with y'all.

Check it.  This is going to be "epic" as my 4 year old says about EVERYTHING!

Dr. Chansky says, "It is a common misconception that positive thinking is the secret fix to negative thinking.  While this misconception makes intuitive sense, decades of cognitive research have yielded the unexpected result that what differentiates those who are depressed from those who are not is NOT the presence of positive thoughts, but the presence of NON-NEGATIVE or NEUTRAL thoughts, which have a buffering effect on depression."

Yes, YES, and YeS!!!!

Think about it.  If you are having a bad day and you make some mistakes (you yell at the kids, you spend too long on facebook, you give your husband the cold shoulder) and you start to have a TON of negative thoughts (you are a terrible mom, you have no real friends, you are the worst wife to have ever walked the planet...) and you try to combat those negative thoughts with positive thoughts (You are the best mom ever, everybody loves you, you are a smokey hot wife who always treats her husband well.) Your brain is going to be like "Nuh-uh girlfriend, that statement ain't true and I'm not going to believe a word of it!"

It's too far of a stretch.  You can't even believe the positive thoughts and so they are worthless, garbage.

I was a bad mother for letting Thomas watch t.v. this close.

I was a good mother for letting them bring the car inside.

That is why positive thinking is over-rated when it comes to combating depression and negative thinking.

We need more neutral zones.  Here are some tools  that Dr. Chansky teaches in the book.

1. Rephrasing.  Instead of "You are a terrible mom, you have no real friends, you are the worst wife ever."  Try saying it like this.  "You momentarily lost your temper, you tried to escape your problems on Facebook, and you didn't give the attention to your husband that he deserves."  The second statements are more neutral and not so beat you down negative.

2. Accepting with Yes.  Instead of wasting energy trying to flip your thoughts to positive or by trying to cheer ourselves up.  Just accept your statement with a yes.  "Yes, I feel like a terrible mom right now."  Even just smiling and saying "YES" relaxes the tension you build up with negative thoughts.

3. Fact vs. Feeling.  Use a percentage scale to decide how much of your statement was fact and how much was feeling.  "You are a terrible mom."  Ok, in that moment I FELT like that was 100% true, but in the court of law, if they tried to prove with FACTS that I was a terrible mom, they would have no case.  That statement is only 2% true (Look, nobody is perfect :).

4. All-or-None Thinking.  Bring your thinking to the neutral zone.  Negative = "I am a terrible mother."  Neutral = "That was really bad when I yelled at the kids and I totally lost it.  But, then I said sorry and we hugged and kissed and we played UNO.  That wasn't so bad."

I like these exercises and ideas because I don't have to stop to practice them, or take time to write things down and work through them.  I can use these techniques daily, and I have.  They are quick "resteps" in my thinking process.  I love the neutral idea.  Sometimes flipping thoughts to the positive is too far and our brain will send out the troops to fight the positive thoughts down because we cannot believe they are true, they are too far out there.  But send in a neutral thought and we trick our brain.  He doesn't send out the troops (why is my brain a "HE"...haha, maybe I do have issues!.

Dr. Chansky is right.  Depressed people don't have the neutral zone and the positive zone is too far to reach.  I am working on my neutral zone (and so is my son!).  And we are having a fabulous neutral party over here.  It's not the best party ever...but it is also not the worst.  Join us :)

-Over and Out