Negative Thinking Patterns

Living with chronic illness forces people to deal with a wide range of negative emotions.

Negative emotions often stem from what your chronic illness has taken from you: whether it’s your social life, your spouse, your active lifestyle, or your job, no one escapes unscathed.

With major loss comes changes in our thinking patterns. Anger, blame, self-doubt, and despair become all too comfortable emotions. Indulging in these emotions for an extended period of time could very well lead to secondary depression. Secondary depression refers to mood changes that are due to some other pre-existing medical or non-psychiatric disorder, and which precede and parallel the symptoms of depression.

What is the mechanism underlying this descent?

Some speculate that hopelessness and despair come from cognitive distortions which we practice and impose upon ourselves. It often begins with “snapshot thinking”. We take a snapshot of our lives at the nadir — the lowest point — and fixate on that negative self-portrait. Our negative self-portrait appears ugly to us because it was never what we envisioned for ourselves in our younger, healthier years. Everyone has dreams and anything that keeps you from realizing those dreams, whether chronic illness or some other force, becomes a dream stealer, a foe.

Negative self-perceptions, in time, change how you define yourself, your signature. For instance, the person who was always known as a Type A “go-getter” may now be the person who is utterly dependent on others and medications. Self assurance is replaced by self pity, and prolonged self-pity can lead to full-fledged depression.

To make matters worse, our loved one’s place the weight of expectations on our shoulders. They might say: “She was always the active one — who would have thought she’d be housebound? Poor thing.” Poor thing. The words echo in your mind a million times. We hear them and we start to believe them. And then we think, “How cruel for this to happen to me!” If others are taking pity on me, then I must be pitiable. They can’t all be wrong”.

Can this descent into depression be prevented? Yes. And your biggest allies in battling the forces of depression are facts and logic. Consider the situation objectively.

FACT: Nobody knows why chronic illness befalls one person and not another. It could be accident of birth, genes, environmental factors beyond our control — nobody knows for certain. The only thing we do know is that we have an illness and we must now deal with it with all our strength and fortitude.

FACT: Your illness may limit the activities you participate in, but there are other ways to be fulfilled. Remember: the life you envisioned for yourself may have changed, but this is true for healthy people too. We all know someone who wanted to pursue a particular career only to become a stay-at-home mom, or vice-versa. Things change, and life is all about adapting to the change.

LOGIC: The notion that one can unlearn negative thoughts is central to cognitive therapy. In the book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” (Avon Books, 1999), Dr. David D. Burns outlines a set of cognitive therapy techniques that people can use to boost their self-confidence and break the cycle of recurring depression.

The goal is to eliminate the distorted, self-defeating, and ultimately destructive thoughts that lead to depression.

Does this sound familiar?

1. All-or-nothing thinking. In this type of thinking, you’re either a hero or a failure. Any small misstep marks you as a failure. This kind of thinking can lead to crippling perfectionism.

2. Over-generalization. When someone comments negatively about your illness, you expect it to happen again and again. You start to generalize that all people are cruel and judgmental, and isolate yourself. Ironically, this can deepen your depression.

3. The mental filter. You dwell on the downside of any situation while overlooking anything positive. You receive news of a blood test that is overwhelmingly good, but you take it negatively because your cholesterol is slightly above the normal range.

4. Jumping to conclusions. You become either a mind reader or a fortune teller — whatever it takes to see trouble on the horizon. If a friend doesn’t return a call, he secretly dislikes you. If you like your job, you’ll probably lose it soon.

5. The binocular trick. It’s as if you’re wearing a special lenses that let you see everything blown out of proportion. Little problems become monstrous; major victories, trifling.

6. Emotional reasoning. You believe mood reflects your true identity: You feel lousy because you are lousy.

7. ‘Should’ and ‘must’ thoughts. You constantly remind yourself of things you should or must do. At the end of the day, you feel buried in guilt and shame. You may also dwell on things that other people should or must do, setting yourself up for frustration and bitterness.

8. Labeling and mislabeling. You tend to equate your ’self’ with what you do, and since everyone makes mistakes, over time you develop a negative self-image based on errors you’ve made. Don’t fall prey to the label game. And don’t label everyone else presumptively. You may find yourself alienating good people through mislabeling.

9. Personalization. You assume responsibility for anything that goes wrong, even when it’s not your fault. Your child has hurt another child at school by accident, but you reason (illogically) that it’s somehow your fault. No one should bear the brunt of so much responsibility; particularly someone with a chronic illness.

Logicians will call these logical fallacies, but in the world of chronic illness, they are mental pitfalls that could lead to secondary depression.

A Friend Indeed

Don’t isolate yourself from others who will catch you when you start to display negative thinking patterns. This is not to say every person in the world you encounter will be able to identify your flawed thinking and set you right. On the contrary, some may miss it while others may seize any opportunity to put you down for becoming ill. The important point is not to paint the world with the same brush. Chronic illness can be lonely, and we all need allies to help us when we get down on ourselves.

After reading this article, make a note to yourself and your best friend to stop you when you begin to demonstrate some of these negative thinking patterns. Failing this, you should consider talking to your doctor about seeing a cognitive psychologist. It might just save you from a whole new illness called depression and the medications needed to treat it.

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About the Author:
Jessie Baker is founder and senior editor of FOG Magazine.

Click to order a copy of the Feeling Good Handbook - The New Mood Therapy.